Harvard lights up Surrey
Harvard has announced that Surrey County Council has recently started to install the company’s revolutionary wireless street lighting solution LeafNut, across its 89,000 street lights.
The project, which is due to take five years to complete, will help Surrey County Council to reduce its carbon emissions to comply with the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency (CRCEE) scheme. The CRCEE states that councils need to reduce their carbon emissions by 34% by 2020, based on 1990 levels, or they will have to pay tax credits to central government. The LeafNut system helps to reduce carbon emissions by 100kg of carbon per year, for every street light, which will ensure councils are well placed to meet targets.
There has been much adverse publicity recently about Local Authorities deciding to switch off street lights to due expenditure cutbacks, particularly following last October’s Chancellor’s Spending Review. LeafNut allows Local Authorities to manage street lighting without having to controversially switch off street lights.
The innovative solution allows Authorities to dim street lights instead of switching them off. Each individual street light can now, for the first time ever, be securely managed over the Internet and appropriate lighting levels set for specific times of day. However, should lighting levels need to be raised, this can be done in an instant. This is done through the use of the solution’s Central Management System (CMS) WiMAC, which remotely and pro-actively manages the output of each individual street light.
Surrey County Council leader, Dr. Andrew Povey, said: “This will be the largest scale introduction of this type of street lighting technology in Britain.” Surrey County Council Cabinet Member for Transport, Ian Lake, also commented, “The new technology is a lot more energy efficient than our current street lights, leading to both financial and energy savings, which are good for the pocket and the environment.”
Michael McDonnell, Sales & Marketing Director at Harvard, commented, “We are extremely proud that LeafNut has been chosen for another large scale project. The system will help Surrey Council to reduce its carbon emissions, which will in turn help it to meet its carbon reduction targets, as part of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme.”
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