Riyadh is the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia in West Asia. It is a typical oasis city with a population of over 6 million. The city needed a smart street lighting system to reduce the energy consumption of the existing 61,000 HPS street lamps and make the maintenance simple and cost-effective. By installing a remote lighting control system, it delivered energy savings of 25% for lighting and reducing maintenance costs by 30%.
Power line communication (PLC) is the natural choice for automating street lighting networks. It enables companies and municipalities to reduce operational costs and improve safety. FONDA system is a new PLC system designed for grid automation that dramatically extends the range, data rate, and performance of power line communications.
FONDA PLC System promises benefits to the environment and to operators. The system provides a simple solution for adding communication to networks of street lights. This two-way communication enables advanced automation, including:
- Light ON/OFF based on location, the astrological calendar, and weather conditions.
- Power-saving dimming during dawn/dusk and deep night
- Lamp failure notification
- Lamp maintenance notification based on temperature, current, PF, or operational hours
- Emergency on/off/intensity control
- Real-time monitoring of energy consumption
PLC delivers a range of advantages over wireless communication systems. Like wireless, no new cables are required. But with PLC, communication is maintained even underground, through walls, and around corners. The communication channel is owned by the operator or utility, so the risks of sharing bandwidth are eliminated. PLC has no line-of-sight limitation and is not affected by the weather. Additionally, since PLC uses the power line, it can detect when there is a line break and its approximate location.
The customized functions were developed for this project. Fault notification of compensation capacitor is user-defined, this is a particular function of our system which is different from others in the industry.
