Smart Lighting sets Standard for Smart Cities

Starting in 2012, the TALQ Consortium developed a global interface standard to connect and manage heterogeneous outdoor lighting systems from many different hardware and software vendors. Now the first four products have passed the rigorous Certification procedures successfully and have been proven worthy of carrying the TALQ symbol. All certified products not only demonstrated the failure-free integration of the TALQ interface as analyzed by the Test Suite but also confirmed full interoperability against other systems in a plug fest held in Valencia, Spain, in October 2017.

The TALQ protocol is implemented by both software and hardware developers to enable multi-vendor solutions managing Smart City systems such as Smart Outdoor Lighting, Waste Management, Traffic Management etc. Vendors can use robust development tools to develop and validate compliance, and then apply for formal TALQ Certification through the TALQ Consortium. Certification is free of charge for all Regular TALQ members; Associate TALQ members can pay a Certification fee per product.

Trend-setters in Smart Lighting
For now the TALQ Consortium has granted TALQ compliance to three Central Management Systems (CMS) and one TALQ Bridge hardware component.

MUSE is a software platform, developed by Citégestion – a subsidiary of Citelum group EDF – to manage all urban domains of a city. Indoor and outdoor domains (street lighting, video-protection, traffic light system, air quality sensors, …) may be referenced in the solution, including networks that connect them. MUSE controls standard operation and maintenance tasks, but also manages work processes, energy and other KPI management/monitoring, as well as powerful data mining functions.

StreetLight.Vision (SLV), Silver Spring Networks’ Central Management System provides the means for a city to leverage a smart streetlight network and transform it into a true smart city platform. By enabling remote command and control, along with real-time monitoring, the efficient management of streetlights, and an expanding range of smart city assets, is made possible. With improved asset and inventory management, work order management, advanced analytics, and simplified integration with existing business process, SLV pushes the capabilities of outdoor lighting control and extend it to many other smart city applications, providing more benefits and accelerating innovation for customers while providing application partners with new routes to market and revenue opportunities.

Smart FireFly (SFF) is UVAX’s dedicated CMS software for controlling outdoor lighting systems. It features all necessary tools to remotely oversee all streetlights of a municipality or city, supervise their performance, such as power consumption or luminaire efficiency, and all of these by means of an intuitive and user friendly interface. SFF is also able to control other devices such as power meters, EV charging stations, information panels, public address systems, pollution sensors, weather stations and most sensors found in smart city applications.
To integrate the hardware components UVAX solution connects OLNs (Outdoor Lighting Networks) in high speed communication channels using ‘Broadband Powerline Communication’. The large bandwidth of up to 200Mb/s allows an unprecedented number of sensors and other subsystems to be integrated in the same network and thereby detect information and changes and send the information through the CA-13 TB (TALQ Bridge) to the CMS.

All of these TALQ compliant solutions can support cities, utilities, energy service companies and contractors in lowering their energy consumption, reducing maintenance costs, and improving lighting reliability and public safety.