The Jamaica Public Service company (JPS) has extended its relationship with Silver Spring Networks to add 110,000 street lights to its multi-application IPv6 platform.
The country-wide smart street light control program will connect up to 110,000 smart LED street lights in population centers around the island including Kingston, Spanish Town, Negril, and Falmouth serving more than 600,000 customers.
Silver Spring’s Streetlight.Vision central management system (CMS) will also be deployed for JPS through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model to control and manage the networked street lights.
“We are undertaking a major transformation that is redefining lighting and energy service delivery by modernising Jamaica’s infrastructure, and we are pleased with how Silver Spring Networks’ technology is facilitating this change,” said Gary Barrow, chief technology officer, JPS.
“We see Silver Spring as a crucial provider for not only smart grid innovation but also as a platform for new smart city applications, that will bring new and relevant applications quickly to the cities of Jamaica.”
According to Silver Spring, its smart street light controls will help drive additional energy efficiency, which is crucial for high-cost, petroleum-based island energy grids like those found in Jamaica. Smart street light controls can help increase citizen safety by alerting a utility to light failures and allowing for speedier repair.
Furthermore, smart street light controls can help increase safety and energy efficiency through adaptive dimming and brightening capabilities based on pedestrian and vehicular traffic. JPS’ three-year program to upgrade the lighting infrastructure with new LED street lights and smart controls will begin this summer.
“We are excited by how rapidly JPS was able to realize the value of our platform to connect multiple services,” added Don Reeves, CTO, Silver Spring Networks. “We believe our success with JPS demonstrates how effective our technology is in not only meeting a customer’s initial deployment objective, but how we can set them up for success in the future.”
Silver Spring said it works with some of the largest utilities in the US for networked street light deployments, including Florida Power & Light Company for what is thought to be the largest connected street lighting project in the world consisting of 500,000 networked street lights across Miami.
South Florida, and Oklahoma Gas & Electric boosts the tally up to 250,000 networked street lights across its service territory. In addition, Silver Spring connects smart street lights in other locations around the globe such as in Bristol, Copenhagen, Halifax, Glasgow, London, Paris and in Providence.
