Bridging the Smart City Gap: Bristol’s Path to Energy Savings
Schréder 360 is a series where we hear from project owners and managers, end users and our own engineers about the genesis of innovative solutions. In this edition, we look at the complete transformation of street lighting in Bristol, UK, which was achieved by connecting all their assets to the Schréder EXEDRA platform. Optimised lighting is already saving the city energy, time and money while also providing a foundation for future smart applications.
Bristol, one of the UK’s biggest cities, is home to nearly 500,000 people. An engineering powerhouse, it is home to Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge, a major Airbus facility and two renowned universities. It has also won numerous environmental prizes, including becoming the UK’s first cycling city, and is constantly working to improve residents’ quality of life and reduce carbon emissions.
In 2019, Bristol set out the first iteration of its One City Plan. It aims for a 2050 Bristol that is a ‘fair, healthy and sustainable city, a city of hope and aspiration, where everyone can share in its success.’ That includes working towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Updating the city’s lighting had already played a significant part in achieving these goals. When they came to Urbis Schréder, they wanted to take this to the next level and open up the potential of smart, connected, applications. Together, we built a system where we can support them in future expansion - and which saved £1.4 million in energy costs in its first year of operation.
Bristol did not want or need to replace or upgrade its entire street lighting estate. With around 35,000 luminaires from a range of suppliers, their asset base includes everything from heritage lanterns on College Green, to a vast fleet of Urbis Schréder AXIA 3 lanterns across residential and traffic streets.
Over the last ten years, they had installed around 20,000 LED lanterns. Their goals were to increase energy savings, improve street lighting for residents and lay the groundwork for future smart technologies. We helped them to achieve all of these goals by installing Schréder EXEDRA, an open and adaptable Central Management System (CMS).
A CMS can reduce energy use and carbon emissions by controlling street lighting remotely, via nodes attached to the luminaire. Owners can manage a portfolio of assets and get unprecedented access to operating data. This enables them to detect faulty equipment in real time and save energy by optimising light levels.
What sets Schréder apart is that the CMS is just the beginning - everything from sensors to EV charging can be connected. Bristol needed to connect lanterns from a range of suppliers, not just Schréder, and was looking for a long-term partner to support it through the journey set out in the One City Plan.
Following an extensive tendering process that brought together all stakeholders, including IT staff, maintenance contractors, and environmental experts, and set out requirements for generating revenue and ensuring stringent cybersecurity, Bristol opted to work with Urbis Schréder.
There are a lot of benefits from this investment, which will basically be paid for through the energy savings from the project. This was all internally funded by BCC, not funded by the UK government or anything like that, based on an invest-to-save strategy.
With a clear business case to deliver a project worth £11.9 million in total, the investment “would help us as a city to understand our assets and glean a load of information about them, which would help us manage the street lighting network into the future as well,” Taylor adds.
Becoming a Team, Together
Bristol’s first move was an internal one, with Taylor selecting Steve Thomas as Highway Electrical Asset Manager to oversee the project.
We wanted to develop a smart city out of the CMS. We had specific requirements regarding commissioning, making the system easier to commission, and making it much easier for our contractors and staff to work with. There were lots of systems out there that did quite similar things, but they were a little bit clunky.
Bristol held a contractor engagement day to assess ease of installation and asset information upload, as well as to gauge potential partnerships. While Schréder EXEDRA was new to the market, Bristol saw an opportunity to work together and tailor the platform to their requirements. For Urbis Schréder, it was a question of recognising their strengths and complementing them. Over the course of the project, we have also discovered new capabilities of Schréder EXEDRA.
“We understood what they wanted… they had a good team in place, and they were resourcing it properly,” says Clare Thomas, Head of Applications & Solutions at Urbis Schréder. “Instead of lighting just being an engineering thing, they understood that it’s a service.” The first stage was to deliver significant energy savings, and the next is supporting Bristol in whatever path they choose. As a provider of truly smart solutions, whatever assets, sensors or system they choose can connect to the CMS: we will support them on their path to net zero.
Even when there were challenges due to the speed of the rollout, challenges around hardware, communication, process, firmware or uncovering previously unknown issues with existing infrastructure, the teamwork was there. “It was a bit of a testing time,” recalls Bristol’s Steve Thomas. “But I was really pleased with the joint working… and the honesty.” Keeping communications open and clear was at the heart of the project’s success. “Those honest open conversations are absolutely key when you’re working on such a big project that is moving at such speed,” he adds.
Speed is of the Essence
With only five weeks from the award of the tender to initial deployment, the teams had to quickly agree on the process and responsibilities, as well as how Bristol would measure success. An initial meeting ensured everyone at every level was present – Bristol City Council, the contractor Centregreat, Urbis Schréder and other stakeholders.
The actual deployment was even faster. With around 35,000 lanterns in scope, Bristol’s street lights needed to be fitted with smart nodes to connect to Schréder EXEDRA. For 80% of them, Bristol opted to fit new Zhaga mounted Urbis lanterns. The other 20% were a mix of lanterns from other manufacturers and repurposed existing LED lanterns connected via the NEMA socket. The difference between NEMA and Zhaga nodes is fascinating; to learn more about different connectivity options, read this.
“We were actually on-site installing equipment by spring, it really was very tight from the point of award to procurement, delivering and installing - it was all about getting those savings,” says Bristol’s Steve Thomas. “A lot of people told us that we wouldn't manage it in that time, but we really pulled together and managed to get the kit out and installed.” By summer it was up and running.
A huge factor in this was automated deployment. Activating the nodes is the work of a minute; the installer scans the RFID label on the node and links it to the relevant column on the map to update Schreder EXEDRA. The ‘smart’ element was to automate the commissioning process and update Bristol City Councils asset management system in real time to enable the promised energy savings to be realised almost immediately. This auto-commissioning and auto-inventory process saves both time, money and hassle for both the contractor and provides confidence in the data accuracy for the end user and asset owner.
Once the lanterns were connected, the reliability stats have been incredible. Bristol report that consistently, over 99% of assets are self-reporting, and connectivity rates are high and reliable. The dashboard says it all:
Saving Time, Energy and Money
After one year in place, the project has already led to a 58% reduction in carbon emissions, saving around £1.4 million and 1,400 tonnes of carbon annually – the equivalent of planting around 44,700 trees. The council has received comments from people saying that the lighting has improved, as well as a few saying it is too bright – something that can be adjusted with the CMS, rather than changing the LED luminaire. Schréder EXEDRA has also enabled BCC to control the lighting in areas of ecological importance, such as bat habitats.
One of the main benefits for me is that, thanks to the system, we actually know when there's a fault with our street lighting before members of the public even complain about it. Every morning, we run a report that tells us where there are faults in the system, and we can tell our maintenance contractor to go and investigate those street lights before a member of the public reports them.
Another advantage is energy trading, a key requirement for any CMS, but BCC wanted more. Like a scaled-up home smart meter, the city of Bristol only wanted to pay for the energy it uses. With smart nodes installed, every lighting asset gives half-hourly reports on its activity, including energy use. Bristol is the first council in the country not to pay for energy it wasn’t using for lighting supply.
“Now, we have the evidence showing that it wasn't using energy so we shouldn't be paying,” explains Shaun Thomas. “We’re one of only a few councils in the country that don't pay for lights that aren't actually on.”
Keep it Simple
Bristol’s original plan to upgrade their lighting was based on 70 different types of lantern, each with multiple calendars for turning on and dimming. After discussions, we decided to opt for a simplified palette of lanterns to minimise stockholding and the potential for lanterns to be installed in the wrong place.
We worked closely with Bristol to put the complexity into the digital side, in Schréder EXEDRA. We pre-loaded the calendars in as part of the deployment process, they just took a photo of the QR code on the node, and then everything else was automated. The data is uploaded that day, so if they declare their inventory, they could potentially benefit from entity saving within 24 hours.
By working together with Bristol and combining our lighting expertise, we refined Bristol’s proposed lighting assets to just ten functional types and five decorative types, while retaining three existing lantern types. There are also 38 calendar variations, including park-and-ride sites. This required pre-installation planning and the digital application of data to the CMS. However, once implemented, the designs can be adapted endlessly to meet the city’s evolving needs.
Open to Suggestion
One of Bristol’s priorities was that the system needed to be open and interoperable. With a wide range of lanterns, TALQ compliance was a basic requirement. And with ambitious plans for the future, the city wanted to know that we could support their future smart journey with the integration of third-party hardware and software.
We created Schréder EXEDRA to be modular, which for us that means that existing lighting and control assets can be seamlessly integrated with new acquisitions and Schréder EXEDRA itself. We have already deployed the first devices to manage and monitor electrical loads or where a standard node can’t be fitted within a lantern; Bristol is exploring the possibility of working with sensors for traffic management, which will easily integrate into the system that we built together.
“You've got to be open: as soon as you connect something, you're transparent and you've got to embrace that transparency,” says Urbis Schréder’s Thomas. “That is quite a scary concept, but what it helps drive is a truly collaborative approach that enables you to work collectively with the customer as part of one team to find and deliver solutions that provide the best value for everyone across the project’.
Exceeding Expectations, Rethinking Futures
Having achieved a 58% reduction in carbon emissions, Bristol is considering what to do next. Taylor and Thomas’ team are currently trialling AI sensors that can monitor traffic flows, weather conditions and other systems. One possibility could be adaptive lighting for certain traffic routes.
“We've got this whole mesh across the city now which can bring back data to Bristol City Council,” says Steve Thomas. With vast potential for additional benefits, Bristol’s team are thinking about what the future holds.
Whichever paths they choose to take, Urbis Schréder is ready to support their journey.