Bengaluru’s streetlight network is being placed under an Internet of Things-based monitoring system that will automatically detect faults and alert maintenance teams, reducing the need for residents to report every non-functional light. The Greater Bengaluru Authority is rolling out the Centralised Control and Monitoring System across 5,00,381 LED streetlights in the city.
The first of five dedicated control rooms was inaugurated in Jayanagar on Friday by Bengaluru development minister Krishna Byre Gowda and Jayanagar MLA CK Ramamurthy. The control rooms will monitor streetlight performance, electricity consumption and fault alerts through digital dashboards.
The system will compare the expected electricity consumption of connected streetlights with their actual consumption after the lights are switched on. An abnormal fall in power use can indicate that one or more lights in a group are not functioning. The system will then generate an alert on the central dashboard, while GPS-based tracking will help maintenance teams identify the affected location.
The project covers 3,02,919 newly installed LED lights and 1,97,432 existing LED lights that are being integrated with the monitoring system. A total of 24,677 CCMS units are being deployed. Each unit typically controls a group of around 40 streetlights, allowing faults to be identified at the group level rather than waiting for an individual complaint.
The Greater Bengaluru Authority expects the system to achieve energy savings of more than 54%. Gowda said the city currently incurs an annual operation and maintenance cost of around Rs 500 crore for streetlights and expects to save approximately Rs 100-150 crore annually once the system is installed across Bengaluru.
In the Bengaluru south city corporation limits, the project covers 1,25,947 streetlights. This includes 75,729 newly installed LED lights and 50,218 existing LED lights being integrated with CCMS. The corporation has installed 5,223 CCMS units through three concessionaires.
Streetlight faults have consistently been among the most common civic complaints received by the city’s authorities. Under the new arrangement, maintenance teams will be able to receive alerts based on electricity-use deviations and use location data to begin repairs without waiting for a complaint from residents.
The remaining control rooms will monitor the network as the system is extended across the city. The project’s stated savings and response benefits will depend on the completion of the rollout and the ability of maintenance teams to act on alerts generated by the dashboards.
