Silver Spring’s Smart City play

You’ve heard about the Smart Grid, and Smart Meters.

The next big thing is the “Smart City” – the idea that municipal infrastructure, from street lights to traffic signals, can all be networked to make cities more efficient and more liveable.

Silver Spring Networks of Redwood City sees this as a huge growth opportunity. On Wednesday, it launched a new “Network-as-a-Service” offering at the Smart City expo in Barcelona. SSNI could network various devices for city governments, build and manage the platform on which it operates and watch it evolve and expand over time.

“The payback time for smart public lighting is legitimately in the no-brainer category,” said Eric Dresselhuys, SSNI’s globe-trotting Executive Vice President, in an interview from Barcelona. “Right now, street lights and traffic lights are managed with the kind of timer that you use when you go on vacation. Cities are eager to make themselves more liveable: they want to get more companies and people to live there. You’re seeing early pilots of smart parking meters, public lighting, traffic signals, and environmental monitoring like CO2 sensors.”

Silver Spring recently announced it has been chosen to network 20,000 street lights in Copenhagen. And Silver Spring is already working in Paris on an advanced streetlight and traffic signal project designed to reduce public lighting energy consumption by 30 percent over the next 10 years.

Mayors from San Francisco to Chicago, New York and Miami are paying attention to the Smart City idea. Amsterdam, Barcelona and San Francisco are collaborating to launch a smart-city software platform for collecting and visualizing data.

“A lot of cities want to implement this,” said Dresselhuys, who could see California going first.  “Los Angeles and San Francisco both have high energy costs, lots of traffic, and a favorable regulatory environment that rewards energy efficiency.”

Graphic courtesy of Silver Spring Networks

 

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