Swiss municipality in Ticino canton, Chiasso counts about 7,5 thousand inhabitants. The city is strongly committed to sustainability and innovation, and was awarded with the «Energy City» label for its forward-looking energy efficiency policies. Together with AGE SA, the local utility managing electricity, water, and gas distribution in the area, Chiasso is always looking for new ways to achieve higher green targets.

Challenges

In 2013, Chiasso started to redesign its street lighting infrastructure to reduce energy consumption, pilot future proof technologies and improve quality of service. The Smart Lighting project was kicked off by replacing existing lamps with LED devices and AGE decided to implement a wireless network to connect the new streetlights and manage them remotely. The utility favored a flexible, interoperable network to allow the integration of additional devices and applications over time.

Our solution

Our Smart Urban Network was implemented and currently covers most of the city, including the town center, the ring road, some municipal buildings, and sports facilities. Smart CMS operates as remote monitoring and control platform, connecting and managing about 2,100 smart streetlights and 100 Smart Parking sensors in a popular facility in the town center.

Results

Benefits of the Smart Lighting transition were immediate. Thanks to LED technology and the possibility to calibrate each streetlight from remote, AGE measured relevant power savings: in Via Dante Alighieri, a prominent arterial road in the town center, daily energy consumption was cut by 70%. As for service quality, the municipality can now ensure every street, crossroad and crossover is properly lighted, using the light intensity which is indeed needed. Management and maintenance costs were reduced too.

Smart investments are paying relevant benefits back to citizens and businesses, as well as to local government and AGE itself.