Smart Space

The transition to a low carbon economy is one of the big climate challenges. Cities play a pivotal role as they account for the largest energy consumption and CO2emission. Especially, standard public street lighting accounts for ~30% of cities‘ total electricity consumption. Advances in intelligent lighting systems offers the opportunity to significantly increase energy efficiency, thereby reducing the carbon footprint.

SMART-SPACE aims to facilitate the uptake of smart lighting in small/mid-size cities to enhance energy-efficiency and reduce CO2 emission. Using smart sensors streetlighting intensity can be automatically adjusted to the actual local needs, realizing 60% reduction in light energy consumption. However, until now implementation occurred mainly in small scale pilot projects, indicating that to reach the low carbon objectives requires a strong, transnational collaboration to move beyond piecemeal solutions.

The SMART-SPACE project aims to overcome the barriers that hamper the uptake of high energy-saving smart lighting systems in municipalities to achieve significant CO2 reduction.

SMART-SPACE brings together end-users (cities and citizens) and key innovation stakeholders (research institutes, SMEs, enterprises and associations) from the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Ireland to jointly develop and implement an interoperable smart lighting system.

TU/e Intelligent Lighting Institute (through the Innovation, Technology, Entrepreneurship & Marketing (ITEM) group and the Building Physics & Services group) and TU/e Innovation Experts (LightHouse) are both partner in the project. TU/e research is focusing on the following topics:

- LightHouse will identify the use cases in the four pilot cities (Middelburg in the Netherlands, Oostende and Sint-Niklaas in Belgium and Tipperary in Ireland). A series of workshops in the cities is held to identify stakeholders’ needs and requirements and develop use cases to address them. These needs and use cases are the foundation of the functional requirements for the smart lighting system. Together with the companies Intemo and Spie, these will lead to the definition of the modules for the smart lighting system.

- The ITEM group will investigate the REPLICATION POTENTIAL of the smart lighting solutions based on the identified use cases by analyzing the potential in the pilot and follower cities and beyond. Replicable business models will be formulated, exhibiting suitable technical performance and high replication potential.

The ITEM group will also develop a TRANSITION ROADMAP with existing and upcoming solutions to address the identified use cases. Through a desk study on existing solutions and future opportunities in smart lighting enriched with interviews with experts in the field, a contribution will be made to the catalogue  of smart lighting modules, including an assess of the impact of these solutions on energy consumption and CO2 emission.

- The Building Physics Group (BPS) will investigate the IMPACT of the smart lighting system and EVALUATE the implementation process in the pilot cities. For this an evaluation method for assessing the perception of citizens and users is designed and assessment parameters are defined in line with the use cases. Then a baseline measurement and impact assessment of the smart lighting solutions will be executed.

Reducing Co2 emission through the uptake of smart lighting in small and medium sized cities

Project Partners:
• Stad Oostende (Lead Partner)
• Stad Sint-Niklaas
• Stad Middelburg
• County of Tipperary
• Spie Infratechniek B.V.
• Intemo Special Products B.V.
• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven- Light and Lighting Laboratory
• Université de Picardie Jules Verne
• Technische Universiteit Eindhoven Intelligent Lighting Institute
• Technische Universiteit Eindhoven Innovation Experts BV
• LUCI - Lighting Urban Community International