CIRED 2020 Berlin Workshop (CIRED 2020)

22-23 September 2020

Theme 3: Flexibility Platforms and the Role of future DSO's

Development trends and construction

strategies of smart city and the ubiquitous
power Internet of Things with smart ISSN 2515-0855
doi: 10.1049/oap-cired.2021.0190
www.ietdl.org
streetlight pole as carrier
Fengqing Du 1, Xingde Huang 2, Aiqiang Pan 1 ✉, Xiaoman Qi 1,
Zhiya Niu 1
1
State Grid Shanghai Electrical Power Research Institute, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
2
State Grid Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China
✉ E-mail: pastangel@163.com

Abstract: Along with the rapid development of the smart city and the ubiquitous power Internet of Things (UPIoT), the
demand for various types of sensing equipment in urban infrastructure has increased dramatically, while the urban
space is limited. Therefore, the smart streetlight poles integrating lighting, monitoring, security, environmental
protection, communication and other functions have emerged and quickly became a research hotspot. Combined with
the characteristics of the smart streetlight pole, this study discusses its important role in smart cities and the UPIoT
construction. Firstly, this study describes the three stages of the development of the smart streetlight pole, then
analyses the policy – technology – business driving factors, and put forward the streetlight management mode of the
three largest cities in China (Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin). Finally, combined with the actual situation in Shanghai,
this study put forward more efficient and flexible strategies and suggestions for Shanghai Electric Power Company to
give full play to the important role of smart streetlight pole in smart city and the UPIoT construction.

1 Introduction (GPRS)/code division multiple access (CDMA) communication

In 2008, IBM proposed the concept of Smart Planet, which inspired
the concept of Smart City with broad application prospects. In 2019,
the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC) stated clearly to
build the UPIoT with comprehensive state perception, efficient
information processing, and convenient and flexible applications.
Along with the rapid development of the smart city and the
UPIoT, the demand for various types of sensing equipment in
urban infrastructure has increased dramatically. In the meanwhile,
the standalone pole is still widely used in urban infrastructures to
act as lamppost, communication base or hold surveillance cameras
[1]. Those standalone poles are single-function, separately
managed and have negative impacts on the city appearance. It has
become an urgent subject to city planners that how to minimise
duplicate construction and beautify the city by integrating those
standalone poles into one multi-function pole. Because of its wide
distribution in the city and convenient access to electricity,
streetlight poles have become the best choice for ‘multi-function
poles integration’. Therefore, the smart streetlight poles integrating
lighting, monitoring, security, environmental protection,
communication and other functions can become the nerve ending
of the Internet of Things (IoT), and it can also be an excellent
carrier for smart cities and the UPIoT [2, 3].
2 Development stages of smart streetlight pole
Since its birth, the smart streetlight pole has gone through three
stages of development.
2.1 ‘Single, intelligent’ smart streetlight 1.0
It has a single function of intelligent lighting management. By
applying power line carrier and wireless general packet radio service
technology, it can realise remote centralised control and
management of streetlights such as on/off, dimming, and lighting
strategy, and achieve the goal of green and energy-saving lighting.
Most streetlights in China are still at this stage.
2.2 ‘Integrated and refined’ smart streetlight pole 2.0
‘Integrated’ is a fusion of functions. It can integrate a variety of
intelligent functions and is equipped with various sensors and
sensing devices other than lighting. At present, there are six major
modules such as lighting, monitoring, security, environmental
protection and communication [4] (Fig. 1). Traffic instructions,
environmental awareness, wireless network base stations, car
charging piles, urban broadcast systems, alarms, vehicle collision
monitoring, parking tolls and other functions. ‘Refinement’ lies in
intensive resources. As one of the most extensive urban
infrastructures, streetlights have the advantages of indispensable,
regular distribution and convenient access to electricity. It is the
best carrier of ‘multi-pole integration’, which can solve problems
such as waste of resources, decentralised management, impact on
city appearance [5] and avoiding repeated construction for urban
infrastructure.
At present, a number of smart streetlight pole projects that are
being piloted or launched globally are mostly in the 2.0 stage, and
generally have three major characteristics of energy-saving
refinement, diversified functions and management visualisation.
There are two types of construction methods: full pole replacement
and upgrading. Due to the high replacement cost of the whole
pole, the current large-scale construction is mainly based on
upgrading. The pilot projects use the whole pole replacement
method, such as the traditional lamp pole transformation in Los
Angeles and Berlin, Germany Project [6], a small number of smart
streetlight pole pilot projects in Beijing, Shanghai [7], Hangzhou,
Guangzhou, China (Fig. 2).

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Fig. 1 Integrated rod function panorama
Fig. 2 Comparison before and after ‘multi-function poles integration’ in
one intersection of Shanghai
2.3 ‘Hub, platform’ smart streetlight pole 3.0
The ‘hub type’ is manifested as the coupling of urban networks. It is
the intersection of road networks, power grids, information networks
and the IoT [8]. It forms the nerve endings of the city’s operational
perception layer. As the main information resource acquisition unit,
it becomes an important pillar of the smart city [9] and the UPIoT.
Realise the interconnection, comprehensive perception, intelligent
collaboration and resource sharing of all kinds of urban operation
networks. ‘Platformisation’ is a breakthrough of ‘island
phenomenon’ and ‘data chimney’. Smart streetlight poles are no
longer traditional street streetlight poles but have evolved to the
collection end of the city’s IoT sensing network. The carrier of
outdoor convenience measures has become an important part of
data collection and monitoring for smart city construction.
At present, a small number of 3.0 era smart streetlight pole
projects have been implemented in China and abroad. The smart
streetlight construction in the 3.0 era will implement hardware
transformation and platform construction simultaneously to break
the information island and strengthen information fusion and
sharing, widely apply the IoT technology, and pay attention to the
platform’s perception of people’s information and needs.
Chicago Power Corporation of America regards wireless
intelligent measurement network and streetlight network as the
basic platform for smart cities. Build a smart grid around a
‘livable, workable, sustainable’ smart city framework (Fig. 3). By
integrating Wi-Fi, cameras, air sensors etc. on smart streetlights, it
forms the basic building block of a smart city and provides basic
data and platforms for the development of various smart
application services in the city.
Tianjin Electric Power Corporation incorporated the construction
of smart streetlights into the UPIoT demonstration project. On
May 2019, the Smart Streetlight System was commissioned and
upgraded the traditional light poles to realise the awareness of the
status of 10 major types of facilities and the expansion of 17
social livelihood services. The development and pilot application
of the smart streetlight perception sharing platform were also
launched to build a ubiquitous IoT sensing system.
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Fig. 3 Smart Grid project group under the smart city framework
3 Driving factors analysis
3.1 Policy-driven analysis
At present, China’s reforms in key infrastructure areas are ‘pipelined’
and ‘shared’ to avoid duplication of construction, promote joint
construction and sharing, and maximise overall benefits. Such as
the establishment of iron tower companies, the independence of oil
and gas pipeline companies, railway power and other ‘separation
of network and transportation’ reforms. This trend is also reflected
in the integration and sharing of streetlights. In 2019, national
ministries and commissions, provincial governments and
municipalities have issued >30 related policies on smart pole
towers [10], guided the city’s various pole towers to ‘multiple
poles in one’, promoted the construction of ‘one pole with
multiple uses’, and encouraged intensive use tower resources to
deploy 5G and reserve 5G site resources.
3.2 Technology-driven analysis
3.2.1 Construction of smart cities promotes the continuous
growth of demand for smart streetlight poles: The concept
of a smart city is to form a huge IoT through the universal perception
of various facilities in urban life, and then use data fusion and mining
for various information through cloud computing, and then provide
intelligent and high-quality services to urban residents. To make city
management and services more predictable, creative and
collaborative. Building a huge sensory IoT is the key to building a
smart city. Streetlights have the characteristics of following the
distribution of urban roads and streets, covering the body of the
city like blood vessels and nerves. The construction of smart
streetlight poles is the first breakthrough in the construction of
smart cities. By the end of 2018, >1000 smart cities under
construction worldwide had been launched, and more than half of
them came from China.
3.2.2 5G construction boom will drive >100 billion smart
streetlight pole markets: On the one hand, smart streetlight
poles can meet the needs of 5G ultra-dense networking sites. The
ultra-dense heterogeneous network technology, one of the 5G core
technologies, requires a reduction in the transmission radius and
an increase in the number of low-power nodes to ensure that the
future 5G network can support 1000 times the traffic growth. The
distance between 5G micro-site sites is required to be within
200 m, and the distance between street lamp poles is generally
between 20 and 30 m, which can meet the needs of the three
major operators to build stations. On the other hand, smart
streetlight poles can be perfectly integrated with 5G micro-stations,
and its power supply system can solve the problem of laying
external electrical cables in 5G micro-stations. It is predicted that
by 2021, the number of 5G micro-stations will reach 11.67 million
sets. The micro-station is not expensive, but the installation cost of
the site is high due to the lease of the site. The cost of installing
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the base station on the smart streetlight pole will be greatly reduced.
The initial installation fee is carefully estimated to be RMB14,000.
3.2.3 Smart streetlight poles help the ubiquitous
concept of the UPIoT: Conceptually, the UPIoT is around all
aspects of the power system, fully using modern information
technology and advanced communication technologies, such as
mobile interconnection and artificial intelligence to achieve
interconnection of all things and human–computer interaction in
all links of the power system. The intelligent service system with
efficient information processing and convenient and flexible
features include a four-layer architecture of perception layer,
network layer, platform layer and application layer. Device
interconnection and information perception are the foundation of
the UPIoT. Smart light poles equipped with a variety of sensing
devices will become important information collection entrances for
the ubiquitous electric IoT. In addition, its 5G communication
facilities will bring convenient conditions for the UPIoT
information transmission. At present, many power supply
companies under the State Grid Corporation, such as Tianjin
Electric Power Company and Xiong’an Power Supply Company,
have adopted smart streetlights as an important project for the
UPIoT demonstration construction.
3.3 Business-driven analysis
Urban infrastructure construction and operation mainly includes the
following six modes:
(i) Construction and operation of wholly-owned government
investment.
(ii) The government leads and invests, entrusting operators to build
and operate.
(iii) The government leads and partially invests, and social capital
invests in construction and operation.
(iv) Government-led, BOT (build-operate-transfer) model.
(v) Operator-owned construction operation (BOO).
(vi) Joint construction and operation.
The main factors affecting the construction and operation mode of
the road smart streetlight pole project are project attributes,
investment scale, professional span, sharing and confidentiality.
More and more smart city project construction models have
gradually shifted from a single model led by the government to a
pluralistic model of common participation and joint construction
and operation of society. For specific projects, when selecting
construction and operation modes, the following principles are
generally followed: first, public welfare, government affairs and
confidential projects require government leadership and
investment, and the first four models are preferred; projects with
large professional spans, high sharing requirements and multiple
professional design categories are suitable for joint construction
mode, not suitable for government investment and construction
operations and third-party independent construction and operation
of operators.
4 Proposals for Shanghai Electric
Power Company
Beijing Urban Lighting Management Center is affiliated with the
State Grid Beijing Electric Power Company. State Grid Tianjin
Electric Power Company was entrusted by the City Appearance
and Gardens Commission to be responsible for the operation,
maintenance and management of street lighting facilities.
By comparison, the operation mode of street lamps in Beijing and
Tianjin is the government-authorised power company franchise
model, while Shanghai has retreated from the power company
franchise model to the government construction and operation
model. In general, the technical barriers to the construction and
maintenance of ordinary streetlights are not high, but smart light
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poles are currently generally demonstration projects with high
construction costs, large investment, lack of unified standards,
more departments involved and higher technical content in
operation and maintenance. The street lamp management models
in Beijing and Tianjin can effectively give play to the professional
advantages of the State Grid Corporation of China, and the
professionalism and intensive performance of street lamp
management are better reflected.
Based on the actual situation in Shanghai, Shanghai Electric
Power Company can rely on conventional streetlight operation and
maintenance and power supply services to carry out the
construction of the streetlight IoT platform, build a comprehensive
demonstration of the ubiquitous electric power IoT based on smart
streetlight poles, and provide a complete construction and
operation solution.
Firstly, considering that the current economic benefits of smart
streetlight poles are not obvious, taking street lamp franchise
operations and power supply services as a guaranteed service,
actively connecting with relevant government departments, and
striving to launch pilots of smart street lamp operations in
high-light areas such as Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, and create a
smart street lamp management platform Strive for more favourable
construction and subsidy policies, and promote the common
development of upstream and downstream enterprises to build
smart cities and ubiquitous electric power IoT construction
demonstration projects [11].
Secondly, the combination of urban lighting based on smart
streetlight poles, security scenes, road-based vehicle-road
collaboration systems, and underground sensing networks based on
manhole covers will be used to build a typical model of the
three-dimensional urban ubiquitous electric power IoT construction.
Finally, the deep integration of the infrastructure of ‘electric poles,
iron towers, streetlight poles and manholes’ covers forms a business
model of a ‘pole tower’ sharing economy under the smart city
approach. Make overall planning for sharing and value mining of
power grid infrastructure, carry out advertising, leasing, and
sharing services, with the goal of smart city construction, and
promote the cross-industry co-construction and sharing of social
resources in telecommunications, transportation and towers.
5 Conclusion
Smart streetlight poles can provide a wide range of information
collection entrances for the interconnection of all things and
comprehensive perception. It is an important carrier for smart
cities [12] and the UPIoT, which helps to improve the level of
refined management of cities and power grids. Driven by
policy-technology-commercial three-dimensional driving, smart
streetlight poles have a broad space for development, but they also
face promotion problems such as high prices and numerous
departments involved. At present, demonstration projects are still
the main. Shanghai Electric Power Company can enrich its role,
lead the infrastructure construction and sharing across industries,
create a flexible platform, step up the rapid development of smart
streetlight poles, and create an unlimited future for smart cities and
the UPIoT.
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