Making brighter cities

Blog

Opinions, think-pieces, articles and observations around smart cities and the future of urban living.

5 March 2024

Solidaridad's Smart Shift: Advanced Streetlighting control system for a Greener, Safer Community.

Customer Challenge

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15 February 2023

Energy efficiency is no longer a 'nice-to-have', but a 'can't-do-without'

Switching to LED lighting can have a major impact and the time to act is now

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15 February 2022

Community Service

This article was first published in the ILP's Lighting Journal. Offering CMS, or lighting control, as a managed service could be one way for local authorities to reconnect with their tenant businesses and smaller villages, as well as potentially providing valuable revenue in a challenging economic environment.

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21 June 2021

Ahead in the cloud

Smart lighting is making a huge difference to the energy budget of local authorities. Dr Jon Lewis sets out the next set of cloud-based applications which will have an equally positive impact on city operations. This article was first published in the ILP's Lighting Journal.

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6 May 2021

Locally responsive: a review of CMS in the past decade

This article was first published in the ILP's Lighting Journal. In the first of a two-part series about smart streetlights and CMS, David Orchard looks back over the past decade of CMS in the UK and what can be learnt from this about changing attitudes and adoption strategies by local authorities

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13 April 2021

Streetlight tariffs: the light at the end of the tunnel

With suitable utility tariffs those organisations doing the right thing by adopting greener streetlight technologies would be rewarded with lower energy bills.

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27 October 2020

Where have we got to in the Smart City maturity model?

We have all got a view of what the smart city of the future looks like, with integrated multi-modal transport, predictive intervention to issues before they occur and happy citizens satisfied with the way their local authorities use their taxes.

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27 May 2020

3 different approaches to metering streetlight energy consumption

Smart streetlights create numerous benefits: enabling users to audit progress in their switch to LED lighting, reduce energy usage, reduce carbon footprint, remotely diagnose faults, better maintenance efficiency and many more. The initial up-front cost of smart street lighting requires a rapid return-on-investment (ROI) to justify the capital expense. The good news is, smart streetlight ROI is fast if users are able to financially benefit from the energy reduction achieved using the enhanced dimming and trimming profiles that these systems provide.

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6 May 2020

Telensa celebrates major production milestone

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17 April 2020

Infographic: Top 10 smart city influencers

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31 March 2020

Infographic: 5 ways horizontal data sharing can benefit your smart city

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28 February 2020

Ten smart city events to visit in 2020

In recent years innovation in the smart city tech landscape has enabled cities to deploy established pilots. But these pilots have stayed just that, pilots, as the cost and complexity of having numerous vertically integrated applications has hindered cash-strapped local authorities. As such, AI-driven solutions have evolved to enable data collection on a whole new level. This year's hot topic goes beyond data collection to the realms of data ownership and data trust. How can cities use data collected from smart city sensors to become more sustainable, all while retaining transparency with citizens? Here is our list of ten events to look out for, touching on the latest in technology developments and policy-making.

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10 February 2020

Building data-driven cities on smart streetlight infrastructure: Telensa at the Abu Dhabi Municipal Lighting Conference

Last week at the Abu Dhabi Municipal Lighting conference, Telensa co-founder Will Gibson presented on the potential for wireless outdoor lighting controls to act as the foundation for a range of smart city applications.

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16 January 2020

3 steps to build trust in data sharing

Writing in Forbes, Yung Wu reports that Sidewalk Labs’ initial plans for a smart city development in Toronto received significant push-back due to issues including data privacy and community engagement.

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14 January 2020

Distributech 2020: Telensa and Microsoft demonstrate how utilities can build on the business case for smart street lighting

Telensa PLANet smart street lighting is one of the few smart city applications deployed at mass scale. At Distributech, we’ll be at the Microsoft booth #837 showcasing how electric utilities and electricity providers can build on the business case for smart street lighting, using a platform approach to add other smart city applications and AI-driven data insights.

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6 January 2020

3 ways smart city business models have changed

Dr Jon Lewis is our Chief Strategy Officer. His background spans technology innovation and product delivery across a wide set of industries from mobile communications to healthcare. At Telensa Jon has pioneered several smart city applications, including smart parking and smart waste management. More recently he has led the Urban Data Project - a new approach to the collection and responsible use of data by cities, transforming trust and privacy using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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18 December 2019

Is open technology the answer for smart city progression?

We think so! That’s why we’ve launched Urban IQ.

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17 December 2019

Infographic: an alliance to unlock all the benefits of LED conversions

This infographic covers the main benefits of Telensa and Eaton Lighting alliance to utilities, cities, and Departments of Transport across North America.

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4 December 2019

How can North American LED street lighting conversions benefit from Telensa’s alliance with Eaton Lighting?

Telensa and Eaton Lighting have worked together for a decade in projects covering hundreds of thousands of streetlights. Last month we made our alliance official by signing an agreement in September at the IES Street and Area Lighting Conference in San Diego. The purpose of the alliance is to work more closely together to deliver connected solutions for outdoor LED lighting and related smart city applications - to utilities, cities and Departments of Transport across North America.

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28 November 2019

Telensa and Microsoft at Smart City Expo 2019: innovation now for the smart city of tomorrow

At Smart City Expo this year, Telensa and Microsoft demonstrated the power of a platform approach to smart city applications and data insights.

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15 November 2019

Telensa and Microsoft demonstrate the practical future of smart city applications in Barcelona

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15 November 2019

Event: Telensa Smart City Forums

Over the past couple of months Telensa has been hosting Smart City Forums, inviting local authorities and others in the smart lighting industry to discuss the evolution and future of smart cities. It’s been a pleasure to see new and familiar faces and we’re thankful to all those that contributed and participated. Below is a recap of the forum held at Sony’s UK Tech Centre in Pencoed, Wales, where all Telensa products are made:

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8 November 2019

[Kainos + Telensa] x Aston University Design Week

Telensa recently supported key partner Kainos in its design week programme with Aston University. The theme this year was about exploring new solutions made possible by a connected, intelligent urban environment.

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5 November 2019

What is a smart city and how have smart cities evolved?

Dr Jon Lewis is our Chief Strategy Officer. His background spans technology innovation and product delivery across a wide set of industries from mobile communications to healthcare. At Telensa Jon has pioneered several smart city applications, including smart parking and smart waste management. More recently he has led the Urban Data Project - a new approach to the collection and responsible use of data by cities, transforming trust and privacy using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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28 October 2019

Infographic: how to implement a mass-scale smart street lighting deployment

The infographic below contains the three biggest takeaways for a successful smart street lighting update from Navigant's case study 'The Utility Case for Smart Street Lighting'. Read more about benefits of centrally controlled street lights for utilities.

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21 October 2019

Let’s kill big brother

How cities can act to turn the fear of smart technologies into hope for a better future

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14 October 2019

10 tips for a successful smart city project

The road to becoming a smart city requires cities to pick up new skills. Cities need to develop new infrastructure and new policies for gathering and utilising data.

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7 October 2019

Three key insights for utilities for a smart street lighting roll-out

A third of world’s roads are still lit with 1960s technology, and the energy consumption of old street lights can amount to 40% of city’s energy consumption. The wave of affordable LED technology has helped the energy reduction and many cities have taken the savings to the next level with networked lights and central management system (CMS).

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27 September 2019

Infographic: Using Your Connected Streetlight Central Management System to Meter Energy Consumption

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27 September 2019

Using Your Connected Streetlight Central Management System to Meter Energy Consumption

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13 September 2019

3 Top Takeaways from Power & Utilities Australia Conference 2019

Hear from Keith Henry at Power & Utilities Australia.

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12 June 2019

Webinar: How to become a data-driven city

Data has the potential to transform how cities operate, enabling more informed decision making to operate more efficiently and provide better services.

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21 March 2019

Funding smart city applications: why connected street lighting is different

Most smart city applications are never deployed across whole cities and regions. Instead they stay as perennial small-scale pilots. Why?

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20 February 2019

Telensa Top 50 Smart City Influencers

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8 January 2019

Smart street lighting is the seedbed for a smart city…

Finding how to close the digital gap and move towards the reality of a smart city can be tough. Let’s discuss how this journey can be started with connected street lighting.

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13 November 2018

Infographic: Traffic Adaptive Street Lighting

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26 July 2018

10 smart city events you need to go to and why

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8 June 2018

Traffic Adaptive Street Lighting: What is it and how does it work?

The future of street lighting is here

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31 May 2018

9 smart city applications that will benefit citizens

All this talk of smart cities. Will they actually benefit urban citizens? The answer is yes. In fact a recent study by Juniper Research estimates that smart cities have the potential to save their citizens 125 hours per year. Here are nine smart city applications that could make a difference.

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17 May 2018

Smart cities: a glossary of terms

The topic of smart cities is filling increasing column inches across tech media. But some of the terminology can be complex. To appropriately understand the urban environments of tomorrow, it’s necessary to grasp the lexicon that comes with them.

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25 April 2018

Smart Cities: What about smart suburbs and the villages of tomorrow?

It’s not just the city that can benefit from smart, connected technologies. A number of applications are being rolled out that could transform the way we perceive the rural and suburban environment.

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11 April 2018

Smart cities: think cost savings, not technology touting

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1 March 2018

Telensa Interview at Mobile World Congress Barcelona

Our Marketing VP, Keith Day was recently interviewed by CNN Create at Mobile World Congress. Find out what Keith had to say about Telensa and Smart cities during the event.

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20 February 2018

Spreadsheet, not datasheet - network choices for the smart city

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13 February 2018

Smart street lighting is driving smart city projects

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25 October 2017

Improve your city air quality by using hyper-local data collected from smart sensors

[Excerpt from a Smart Cities Dive article at www.smartcitiesdive.com]

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15 June 2017

Smart suburbs - the new smart cities?

Writing in the Washington Post, Tara Bahrampour reports that in the US, population growth in cities has fallen behind the suburban growth for the first time in six years.

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2 February 2017

Smart Cities and the rise of the Chief Data Officer

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