This week’s Smart City roundup features fresh funding for a smart lighting system used in offices, a city that’s looking become carbon neutral by 2025, and one company’s vision for the future of streetlights.

Enlighted raises another $20M, gets new CEO

Enlighted Inc., the commercial-grade energy efficiency solutions provider, has secured $20 million in Series D funding from its current investors, namely Draper Nexus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, RockPort Capital Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Intel Capital.

Aside from the cash infusion, Enlighted also has a newly appointed Chairman and CEO, Joe Costello, who was the former CEO of Cadence Design Systems, Inc.

Enlighted delivers solutions that not only saves energy in commercial environments but also increase the comfort of occupants by adapting to individual and ambient lighting conditions.  The people-smart lighting system securely and anonymously collects data onto the Enlighted platform to report on occupancy, environment and activity within a space, according to the company website.  As the company grows, Enlighted plans to add HVAC, security and other applications to its current lighting sensor functionality.

Copenhagen goes carbon neutral with smart street lights

Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital and most populated city, recently announced a plan to become carbon neutral by 2025. To make this happen, Copenhagen needs to drastically change parts of its city, starting with street lights.

According to NewScientist, street lights emit six percent of global greenhouse emissions, citing as an example the City of Los Angeles, which spent around $15 million and pumped out 111,000 tonnes of carbon to light up its streets in 2009.

In preparation to be carbon neutral, Copenhagen has set up the Danish Outdoor Lighting Lab (DOLL) in 9.2 kilometers of road in the suburb of Albertslund which will open to the public on September 18, 2014.  DOLL will enable engineers, officials and curious residents to check and test a range of different lighting options, from those that automatically adjust brightness based on movements sensed, to lamps that use a combination of wind and solar energy, and others that do double duty, fitted with sensors that track traffic, air quality, noise, weather conditions, UV radiation and other environmental factors.

So far, 25 companies have signed up for this massive experiment and there’s a possibility that one of these smart streetlight options will be chosen to transform Copenhagen.  Each lighting solution will be provided with its own IP address for close monitoring.

Silver Spring unveils the future of street lights

At the Australian Smart Lighting Summit, Silver Spring Networks, Inc. unveiled its vision for the future of smart cities and smart energy infrastructures in Australia.  During his presentation, “Street Lighting Controls: Why They’re Ready Today, Important for Tomorrow and Critical in Australia,” CJ Boguszewski, Global Commercial Lead for Smart City Applications for Silver Spring, emphasized the opportunities presented by the Internet of Things on modernizing Australia’s ageing infrastructures as well as reducing cost of operation.

“By establishing an open, standards-based IP network underpinning multiple applications, from energy to public lighting to traffic light systems to disaster sensors, cities can leverage network economics to cost-effectively deploy new smart infrastructure services to their citizenry over time,” said Boguszewski. “With our smart energy networks deployed in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, the market has made strides in proving out the critical role technology plays in helping modernize its energy and municipal infrastructure. The next step is advancing to more sophisticated IoT applications, and intelligent street lights are often the onramp to smarter cities.”

Silver Spring’s Smart City Solution, which is comprised of IPv6 wireless networking platform and management and control software optimized for smart city devices, when combined with LEDs for lighting solutions, can help save up to 60 percent in energy savings compared to high-pressure sodium street lights and can also help reduce maintenance cost by up to 35 percent.

photo credit: WarzauWynn via photopin cc