With the advancement of smart city construction, many cities across China have launched "multi-pole integration" pilot projects, making streetlights headlines in the lighting industry and a focal point for public attention. Over the past decade, streetlights, having witnessed a significant development in China's modern lighting history, have undergone tremendous changes in form, function, and the resulting socioeconomic benefits. Below, Xisheng's editors review the decade-long evolution of China's streetlights and explore the technological value they have brought to the innovative development of China's lighting industry.
Historically, high-pressure sodium lamps, owing to their high power and brightness, have served as the primary light source for streetlights. However, due to their high energy consumption and short lifespan, these lamps impose significant management burdens on municipalities. Furthermore, their poor light energy utilization and low luminous efficiency have become increasingly prominent, directly impacting the visual experience of road users.
By the end of the 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s, driven by national policies such as "Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction," "One Thousand Miles, Ten Thousand Miles," and "One Hundred Million Lights for Ten Thousand Households," a wave of LED light source replacements arrived. Streetlights, long considered high-power lamps, naturally became a key component of this trend.
Statistics show that compared to streetlights using high-pressure sodium lamps of the same power, LED streetlights can save 40%-80% of energy. In terms of light color and road lighting performance, the color rendering index of cool-temperature LED streetlights is 45-55 higher than that of warm-temperature traditional sodium lamps. Furthermore, LED light sources are more effective in generating effective light, allowing road users to see road conditions more clearly. In terms of light source lifespan, LED light sources can last for over 10 years, compared to 1-2 years for high-pressure sodium lamps, making them a viable alternative to high-pressure sodium lamps in road lighting.
However, while the potential of LED streetlights seems limitless, many municipal contractors were hesitant to purchase them when they were first introduced. The reason was simple: at the time, a set of high-pressure sodium lamps cost approximately 1,200 to 1,500 yuan, while a set of LED streetlights cost around 2,000 to 5,000 yuan.
Faced with this application bottleneck, a collaborative model called Energy Management Contracting (EMC) became popular in LED streetlight procurement. This model, based on the principle that the longer the LED lighting lasts, the greater the energy savings and the greater the return on investment, is adopted. With government guarantees, LED streetlight manufacturers benefit from the energy savings, while energy users and energy-saving service companies share the savings according to an agreed-upon ratio. Municipal contractors can invest little or nothing in this model, thus reducing the direct financial burden of purchasing LED streetlights.
Furthermore, LED street light manufacturers, such as Qinshang Optoelectronics, have flexibly integrated the EMC model with other business models. Manufacturers act not only as product and service providers but also as bridges between financial institutions and their clients. This allows manufacturers, users, and financial institutions to maximize profits and minimize risks in LED street light installation and replacement projects, creating a win-win situation for all three parties.
After resolving a series of application bottlenecks, such as pricing and energy efficiency sharing, LED street light installations progressed rapidly across China in the first half of the 2010s. Existing high-pressure sodium lamps in domestic streetlights were completely replaced, and LED light sources enhanced the functional value of streetlights on roads.
In the second half of the 2010s, with the advent of the "smart city" construction boom, urban infrastructure across the country also underwent intelligent upgrades. As a crucial component of urban infrastructure, streetlights naturally integrated into this intelligent trend and acquired a new name: smart streetlights.
In terms of lighting, smart streetlights connect city streetlights by utilizing urban sensors, power line carrier/ZIGBEE communication technologies, and wireless GPRS/CDMA communication technologies. This creates an Internet of Things (IoT), enabling remote, centralized control and management of streetlights. These lights can automatically adjust brightness based on traffic volume, time of day, weather conditions, and other factors, enabling remote lighting control and making urban road lighting "smart." Compared to conventional LED streetlights, which rely solely on the light source within the lamphead to achieve fixed energy savings, smart streetlights leverage the energy savings of LED light sources and offer flexible energy management through intelligent lighting control.
In terms of the functionality of light poles, traditional light poles primarily served as lamp supports and concealed wiring. Smart light poles, in addition to these basic functions, can also accommodate convenient components such as communication base stations, information display screens, vehicle charging stations, and video surveillance systems. These poles can intelligently respond to and support decisions related to public welfare, the environment, and public safety.
Unlike conventional LED streetlights, which rely on government-led initiatives, such as EMC, to drive manufacturers, energy users, and energy-saving service companies into action, smart streetlights have been widely embraced since their introduction. This is because, as the fulcrum connecting smart cities, they are the primary vehicle for governments, streetlight manufacturers, telecommunications operators, and other stakeholders to realize their own value.
For example, in 2018, the Tongshan District of Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, partnered with China Mobile to implement smart streetlight retrofits, benefiting 200,000 local residents and enhancing their sense of belonging and well-being. In 2017, Signify introduced its Interact City intelligent connected road lighting system to smart streetlight retrofits across China, further strengthening its presence in the Chinese market for innovative lighting technology. Streetlight manufacturers such as Shanghai Sansi, Huati Technology, and Mingshuo Technology, integrators like Huawei and Zhilian Communication, and large high-tech companies and groups like the 50th Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation are all investing in various technological areas of smart streetlights.
With intelligent lighting features, light poles serving multiple urban needs, and the focus of government departments and numerous lighting and communications companies, smart streetlights will shoulder the historical responsibility of technological innovation and become a key benchmark in the era of lighting informatization.
From "multiple poles" to "multiple poles in one": Streetlights continue their transformation and upgrade in the 5G era.
For a long time, various poles have occupied land resources on and around urban roads across China, not only impacting the city's image but also increasing the difficulty of maintenance and management for urban management departments, negatively impacting vehicle traffic and public transportation. In recent years, with the widespread adoption of 5G technology in smart city communications development in China, smart streetlights, which offer both lighting and communications functions, and intelligent light poles that offer "multiple functions per pole," have naturally become the primary focus for integrating redundant poles on urban roads.
In response to this trend, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Joint Construction and Sharing of Telecommunications Infrastructure in 2018" (MIIT Liantong Communication [2018] No. 82) last year, actively promoting the two-way sharing of communication towers with other poles for streetlights, surveillance cameras, traffic signs, and other applications, and promoting the "multiple towers in one" and "multiple poles in one" model. Driven by these implementation guidelines, numerous roads in cities across China, including Fuzhou, Shenyang, Zhuhai, Changsha, and Chongqing, have undergone "multi-pole integration" renovations, optimizing urban road resources.
Under this "multi-pole integration" trend, smart streetlight poles are not only equipped with basic equipment such as communication micro base stations, surveillance cameras, LED screens, and car charging stations, but also integrate hardware such as traffic lights, road signs, and bus signs. This creates a shared and centralized urban pole network, and an operational platform that enables refined management and facilitates operations. This will gradually transform urban lighting management departments into integrated technical management departments based on an integrated pole system, and the streetlight management and operation model will also shift towards a comprehensive operation and supervision model.
With the growing popularity of the "multi-pole integration" market in China, major lighting companies are embracing this technological revolution. At the second China International Import Expo, Signify, a company with a deep understanding of China's smart streetlight application trends, launched a new smart streetlight pole solution. This solution integrates lighting and other smart city application information functions on a single pole, transforming lighting assets into a smart city infrastructure network. This further upgrades the city's streetlight network and enhances smart urban management.
In addition, Signify has already achieved technological innovation in China: a pilot program for wireless optical communication technology (LiFi), boasting speeds of up to 150 Mbps. Once this technology is implemented on smart streetlight poles, it will provide innovative support for the refined lighting management of smart streetlights and other smart city infrastructure.
With the "multi-pole integration" trend, no matter how smart streetlight poles integrate communication hardware and software, or city management resources, they must serve the primary function of smart streetlights: lighting. Looking ahead, with the resource and technological integration enabled by "multi-pole integration," streetlights will bring even more innovative value to the intelligent integration and upgrade of lighting and communications in the 5G era.
Conclusion: From simple functional road lighting fixtures to the fusion of lighting and communications in smart cities, and finally to crucial multifunctional urban infrastructure in the 5G era, over the past decade, streetlights have transformed from a relatively obscure player to a focal point in the current era of smart city development. This demonstrates that the development of lighting technology has expanded beyond light source technology to encompass information and communications technologies, with streetlights becoming the intersection of these two technologies.
Driven by the development of streetlights, more lighting fixtures are expected to capitalize on these cross-disciplinary applications, bringing the universal value of technological integration to China's urban development and improving people's quality of life. The exciting developments in streetlight technology over the next decade are worth anticipating, both within the lighting industry and across society.
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