Intelligent management system for streetlight: Case study Rwanda Energy Group

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to assess the importance of using an automated streetlight management and monitoring system. This research seeks to contribute in REG’s management and monitoring of streetlight. The information obtained through the research will assist different organizations in energy sector, policy makers and project stakeholders in the improvement of streetlight management and operations. This study will seek to examine how the current streetlight should improve. Streetlight as one of the main indicator of smart cities, here in Rwanda it has been observed that it needs some more improvement, as it is still one of the largest energy expenses for a city. With the current situation, here in our country street light management and monitoring system faces some challenges, which lead to poor management. Based the document from REG/EUCL entitled “street lighting guidelines in Rwanda” (EUCL, 2016). The results from this study indicated that in order to save more energy and to facilitate the maintenance, intelligent management system for streetlight is needed to improve the current street light management and monitoring. This will improve the power saving; it will also facilitate the detection of defected bulbs and their maintenance. First, in terms of energy saving, this study indicated that the proposed system saves more energy through reducing the light or brightness of the bulbs when there is no movement in the street means that during the night the movement of the people and congestion of the cars are reduced in the road. Secondly, in terms of maintenance process, this study showed that the proposed system has ability to indicate the location of each bulb and its status whether it is healthy or defected. This is will facilitate the street light maintenance engineers to quickly localize the defected bulb compared to the current situation. The thesis has academic implications. It provides a deep understanding of smart street light management, which has not been given important attention in the academic literature in Rwanda as most studies focused to other countries (USA, Europe and Asia). The thesis will contribute to practice as well. Findings from this study will help the streetlight management team and operators to enhance maintenance of defected bulbs or other components, reduce the time taken to find the defected streetlight and reducing the power consumption as well.