Press Releases

Vodafone and Lourinhã Municipal Council have revolutionised street lighting in the Western Region. From today, the historic centre of Lourinhã will have an intelligent lighting system, making the town the first municipality in Lisbon District to monitor and optimise its energy consumption.

The Lourinhã Lights On project, Lights Off project is a partnership between Vodafone, Lourinhã Municipal Council and Lightenjin. It consists of replacing 35 sodium vapour lamps with LED technology, coupled with a control system. In practice, the solution is based on the premise of “monitoring, controlling, optimising” street lighting through the use of an intuitive platform that provides a reliable, high quality service.

The platform monitors energy consumption in real time; sets timetables or schedules timing profiles; manages each street light individually or controls groups of lights; and regulates the light intensity during the night without losing performance or convenience, according to the municipality’s requirements.

The municipal services also have access to a wide range of information including, for example, the possibility of receiving alerts in the event of malfunction or damage, so reducing maintenance costs, as well as having all the lighting fixtures georeferenced and logged.

As it is highly efficient, the solution represents a total estimated saving of between 70% and 80%. The replacement of sodium vapour lamps by LED technology will reduce the municipality’s electricity bill by about 60%. Using the integrated management system developed by Vodafone allows additional savings of 30% on the new consumption figure after changing the lamps.

At the same time it is modular and other intelligent management components of the town can be added. For example, the addition of sensors makes it possible to collect information on air quality or the occupancy rate of parking spaces, while motion sensors make it possible to regulate the brightness of the street lighting depending the presence of passers-by, something that is very useful near street crossings.

“Vodafone is committed to contributing to the revitalisation and modernisation of the cities, towns and villages of Portugal, working closely with strategic partners all over the country. Following the first Smart Mountain Village and the first Smart Rock City, this project attests to Vodafone’s ability of offer a broad portfolio of solutions for Smart Cities, depending on the needs of each region”,said Vodafone director João Mendes Dias.

“Street lighting accounts for 3% of energy consumption, which is very costly for municipalities and makes it essential to define convergent solutions that combine technology and energy efficiency. Innovation at the service of cities is in fact a response to the need to manage the sustainable growth of cities and make services more efficient in an increasingly urbanised world”,said João Anastácio de Carvalho, Mayor of Lourinhã.

More than just an technologically innovative lighting solution which increases energy efficiency while improving the environmental and economic sustainability of the municipality, this project marks the first step in an ambitious plan that will make Lourinhã the first Smart Town in the Western Region.

In the next stages of the project, Lourinhã Municipal Council plans to extend LED technology to cover the entire historic area of the town.