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With Smart LED Street Lights, a Brighter Future Is Just the Beginning

What if the street lights in your neighborhood could be modernized to improve your quality of life? What if they were brighter, but cost less to power? What if they could tell your city’s environmental department the air quality outside your home? What if they could provide you with real-time traffic updates at busy intersections in your community? What if they could help keep your neighborhood safer by helping to direct police and other first responders during emergency calls?

These are the questions we discussed with the City of Wilmington as we planned ConnectWilmington, a smart city initiative to explore ways to modernize city neighborhoods with new LED street lights and smart city technology.

At Delmarva Power, we are constantly evaluating new technologies and services that can use our advanced infrastructure to benefit our customers and the communities we serve. When Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki approached us about his vision for a brighter, safer and cleaner City, it sparked a conversation about working together to explore how smart street lights and new sensor-based technology could further this vision.

The first step in this endeavor is the ConnectWilmington demonstration project, which includes converting 215 street lights in West Center City, and along stretches of North Market Street, Washington Street and Baynard Boulevard, to LED street lights, which are brighter and more energy efficient. It also includes activating 50 smart sensors and various smart city technologies that will improve the reliability and quality of lighting service and deliver new community services for air quality testing, enhanced public safety and traffic monitoring.

Smart city technology and smart street lighting present a tremendous opportunity for us to collaborate with municipal partners to transform community services and improve quality of life. We see ConnectWilmington as a launching pad for new smart city initiatives across the region. This demonstration project will provide us with feedback about deploying these new technologies and gives us the ability to test their functionality, operations, and potential value for Wilmington and other communities we serve.

Across our service area, we manage more than 74,000 street lights and nearly 14,000 miles of energy infrastructure. This advanced infrastructure provides a reliable common platform with incredible potential to further connect our communities and support a variety of clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy services and choices. From electric vehicles to community solar projects to air quality monitoring, new technologies are providing a myriad of opportunities to create more vibrant, livable and sustainable communities. ConnectWilmington is just the beginning, and we are excited to sit down with your community to find solutions that will deliver a cleaner and brighter future for you.