The city government of Puerto Princesa, together with its partner companies Meralco Energy, Inc. (MServ) and Signify Philippines, inaugurated the country’s first smart city-enabled street lighting system installed in Brgy. San Manuel and Brgy. San Pedro, Puerto Princesa City.
“The street lighting project, this is actually the country’s first smart city enabled by connected LED street lighting system that provides insight into activity patterns,” said MServ Chief Operating Officer Ronaldo Torres.
“You can have a real time monitoring kung ilang konsumo na ‘yung ating LED street light and in addition, you have reduced your consumption by half. Before, you used to use 120 watts but right now, this is 60 watts LED, lowering the consumption but giving exactly the same illumination,” he mentioned.
Out of the 740 bulbs installed in some of the streets of Brgys. San Manuel and San Pedro, 688 are smart lights while the rest are ordinary light bulbs. According to Torres, they will gradually convert most of the street lights of Puerto Princesa into smart lights.
The difference of these smart lights compared to an ordinary bulb is that the smart light offers world class illumination and it can easily be controlled using the dashboard. It has a unique feature that tells you everything you need to know about the street lights and it is saving the city a lot of money.
“Every single street pole in Puerto Princesa is sending relevant data to the cloud, every night it’s getting downloaded, and the next day it’s on the dashboard,” said Jagan Srinivasan, country leader of Signify Philippines; which is formerly known as Philips Lighting.
“The City Engineer now has everything at his fingertips sitting behind his laptop… he knows what’s going on with respect to the lighting infrastructure,” he added.
He also said that this project is in strict compliance with the Department of Energy.
Vice Mayor Nancy Socrates also placed emphasis on the importance of lighting. “Katulad po ng food, shelter and clothing, light is now a basic necessity especially in our modern society and especially in a tourist city like Puerto Princesa. We need light for safety, we need light for peace and order but most of all, we need light for the convenience of our residence and our visitors,” she stated.
For the next three years, the city government aims to provide smart lighting in all the public streets and public thoroughfares starting from Brgy. Irawan and Brgy. Sta Lourdes down to the city poblacion. According to Mayor Lucilo Bayron, “We will crush the time, and ang target natin is pagbaba natin sa 2022, mula sa Irawan hanggang Sta. Lourdes, lightened up na ‘yung lahat ng ating public thoroughfares.”
“This is only the first step at malayo pa ‘yung pupuntahan natin, pero with you, supporting us, alam ko kaya natin ito,” he added.