Smart City starts in Altkötzschenbroda

The illuminated village green in Altkötzschenbroda is well known to everyone in Radebeul and certainly to many visitors to the wine festival or Christmas market.

After more than 25 years of operation, the existing lighting needed to be modernised while retaining its character and natural cosiness. The existing luminaires with conventional light sources (sodium vapour) were upgraded to the latest LED technology between March and May 2022. A light colour of 2,200 K was chosen to illuminate the village green in order to emphasise the charm of the village centre. This conversion of around 110 street lights will save around 25,000 kWh per year, which corresponds to a CO2 saving of 7.32 tonnes. Over the last 10 years, LED technology has been further developed to such an extent that efficiency and cost-effectiveness have increased enormously. A "intelligent interface" was prepared for this area with the company Schréder GmbH from Stuttgart, which subsequently makes the luminaires "smart" without any major effort. This makes it possible to dim individual street lights by a defined output as required. This provides a flexible system that can respond to the interests and needs of residents, event organisers and artists. Due to this year's enormous increase in electricity prices and the annual events, the open investment for a "Smart City" was brought forward in cooperation with the Department of Culture.

A significant added value is that the new intelligent system has laid the first foundation stone for a small "smart city". To date, the public lighting has been switched on and off using a light sensor or a stored calorific value calendar. In future, it will be possible to access the system with a certain degree of flexibility in order to further reduce electricity consumption. These measures will considerably increase the service life of the equipment. Together with the company Schréder GmbH, a manufacturer-independent system has been developed for Altkötzschenbroda and the town of Radebeul.

This system is part of the intelligent and future-orientated city of tomorrow, also known as "Smart City". It is based on the newly developed "LoRAWAN" system and an additionally constructed "mesh network". In the future, it will be possible to develop this system further, e.g. traffic-dependent lighting, traffic counting and control, and the collection of environmental data such as temperature and CO². Various pilot projects are currently being tested throughout the country. This means that Radebeul and Altkötzschenbroda are equipped for the future.

The system was presented last Wednesday.