Montevideo lights up: Smart street lighting for a more sustainable city

In recent years, Montevideo’s local government has turned to technology to make life better for its people. Their focus is on keeping things inclusive and sustainable - using smart solutions to protect the environment, encourage citizen participation in initiatives and to improve public services across the city.

Montevideo is the capital and largest city in Uruguay, and home to over 1.7million people.

The city realised early on in it's technology journey that a commitment to generate and use data as a basis for decision making would help them take on numerous challenges. One of these was the cities lighting network, and how to upgrade streetlights across the city.

In 2022, NNNCo (a Neura founding partner) and Wellness TechGroup began the deployment of 70,000 new streetlights (connected to 70 LoRaWAN gateway nodes) to the City of Montevideo. The new street light system covers 200 square kms and leverages LED technology combined with a powerful interoperable remote management system. The benefits have been huge.

• The change in technology and remote operability reduced carbon emissions by ~80%
• Moving from halogen to LED represents a 40% cost saving due to reduced energy use, and the fact that LED’s last significantly longer so require less change outs.
• Data insights identified when and where remote dimming of the streetlight network could be performed, saving additional costs of 30-40%.

There is also a public safety benefit, as more streetlights are on for greater lengths of time in what were previously unlit streets or isolated walkways. This allows the community to comfortably access more of the city after dark.

The success of the smart street lighting project was largely down to the combination of a wireless LoRaWAN network and application management software that delivers data back to the city to use for decision making. 

As Montevideo lights up its streets with smart technology, the city not only enhances public safety and energy efficiency but also sets the stage for a brighter, more sustainable future, ready to embrace further smart city innovations.

If you'd like to get more information on how your town or city becomes smart please get in touch, we'd love to help.