California based Silver Spring Networks has agreed to acquire Streetlight.Vision, a French provider of control and management software for street lighting. The Parisian company currently has ongoing projects throughout Asia and Europe, and will provide Silver Spring with an expanded geographic reach for its networked lighting systems.
Smart lighting is a big deal in smart city discussions. Public lighting provides safe roads, inviting public areas and enhanced security, but Streetlight.Vision points out that the systems can account for 40% of a city’s electricity bill plus the expense of changing failed bulbs with fleets of employees and vehicles dedicated to the task.
The company addresses these issues with a platform that monitors and configures the lighting network through power line or radio wave communication. The Central Management Software (CMS) provides a dashboard for coordinating the different proprietary communication methods that the streetlights might use, allowing a city to schedule, configure and analyze the lights in real time.
Other systems can be integrated into the CMS, including streetlight cabinets, smart meters, electrical vehicle charging stations, pollution sensors and traffic sensors. The CMS can form the basis for a smart city system, hosted on dedicated servers or run in the Streetlight.Vision cloud.
Silver Spring Networks is a public company that did $44 million last quarter, $326 million last year, and has $140 million in the bank.
‘The Streetlight.Vision team has developed a world-class Smart City platform. As Silver Spring’s networking technology continues to connect an increasing volume of devices and critical infrastructure, it’s imperative that we provide sophisticated management control of these complex networks for our customers,’ said Silver Spring CEO Scott Lang.
The two companies have worked together before, on a smart city project in Paris where they demonstrated a networked street lighting system. Silver Spring has also deployed lighting systems in Copenhagen and Miami, and has delivered more than 18.5 million IPv6 devices for smart grid networks on five continents. Silver Spring’s main focus has been smart metering and building connected utility grid systems.
In other energy news, energy system management provider Tendril has partnered with utility Seattle City Light to deliver personalized engagement for 50,000 electric heat customers. Seattle, the 10th largest utility in the US, will use the Tendril platform to analyze and identify customers who would benefit from insights and recommendations on their usage monitored by smart meters and thermostats.
Tendril’s Energy Services Management (ESM) platform is built upon the technology it acquired through buying startup Grounded Power and also Recurve Software. The system compiles publicly available data to model a house using just a name and an address. The physical description of the house that this information provides forms a background against which the smart meter readings can be understood and analyzed. Other data such as billing, demographics and weather can be added to further flesh out the analytics.
The customers will receive information and tips on how best to use their heating in a gamified experience that encourages users to be more efficient by charting a home’s usage in comparison to similar properties and setting challenges with ranks. An online portal and email alerts should help customers save money by wasting less electricity, and Seattle City Light to reduce the costs associated with supplying energy that is wasted. It may also net them some good PR in the process too but gamification has been proven to be an effective strategy in promoting a desired behavior.
Seattle City Light’s senior planning and development specialist Lars Henrikson said that ‘we are committed to energy efficiency and conservation and selected Tendril to deliver highly personalized messages that increase energy savings.’ The company has also been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005 and says it was the first electric utility to do so. Evidently, they have identified the savings that can be made through smart metering.