Australia and NZ cities accelerate smart lighting

More than 95 per cent of streetlights in Oceania will have been converted to LEDs, while 70 per cent will be networked to become “smart”, leading to cumulative investment of $780m over the next decade, a new study finds.

According to the Oceania LED and Smart Street Lighting: Market Forecast (2018-2027), published by Northeast Group, regulations are helping accelerate deployments of LED and smart street lighting market across Australia and New Zealand.

Smart infrastructure

In Australia, the move to develop smart city infrastructure has been a key driver. Streetlights are primarily owned by utilities in Australia, but as smart city plans increase, smart street lighting will provide a critical foundational layer.

In New Zealand, smart street lighting growth is already accelerating due to government funding, but cities will be looking to layer additional smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) applications upon their existing networks.

“Oceania had previously been a slow mover in smart street lighting, held back by higher prices, technical hurdles, and streetlight ownership challenges,” said Ben Gardner, president of Northeast Group.

“But the New Zealand government is now funding 85 per cent of the cost of streetlight projects and Australian states have come up with new financing mechanisms and lighting codes that are encouraging deployments. New Zealand already has over 25 per cent of its streetlights networked.”

“Oceania had previously been a slow mover in smart street lighting, held back by higher prices, technical hurdles, and streetlight ownership challenges”

The leading vendors so far in the region are Telematics Wireless, Telensa, Itron, Sylvania Connected Solutions, and SELC. Many of these vendors have an early lead in the quickly developing New Zealand market, but the Australian market is expected to be more competitive.

There are already smaller projects underway using LoRa and NB-IoT communications, implying a wide variety of vendors could participate. Other leading vendors with a presence in the region include Cisco, DimOnOff, GE, Eaton, Flashnet, Harvard Engineering, Landis+Gyr, LED Roadway, Schréder, Sensity, and Signify (formerly Philips Lighting).

Northeast Group is a Washington DC-based smart infrastructure market intelligence firm.

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