Intelligent street lighting in Oslo, Norway

Over the last few years a lot of test and full scale intelligent street lighting installations have been installed both in Oslo as well as other municipalities. The experience gained and the developed skill within the field has opened the way to a rapid increase of the market. The technical challenges are not all solved, but the systems can demonstrate high quality performance although there have been some challenges to overcome.

The per unit investment cost is of vital importance for the decision makers, the only way to battle this is by increasing the number of units installed annually, in this case the 6.000 units in Oslo is a good start.

To really boost the market, there is still quite a long list of obstacles to overcome, but there has also been quite good progress in this field. New standards from CIE will recommend adaptive lighting and hopefully later be adopted by CEN. New financing mechanism has been demonstrated within the E-street framework, and will in the future help streetholders with limited budgetary means to realise their projects.

A strong will within the European community to save energy, hence introducing new legislation to reach their ambitious goals, gives a strong support for further development of the intelligent streetlight. The saving potential is substantial, 38% TWh annually, and relatively easy to reach due to the relatively few decision makers within the market.