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SAN JOSE - 04/10/06 - The Norwegian capital of Oslo will be utilizing technology and solutions for controls, smart metering, and energy conservation developed by the California-based Echelon Corp. to remotely control and monitor its 55,000 streetlights. 

The outdoor lighting system is the first large scale implementation of a control network in a street lighting application in a city in Europe, and is expected to reduce energy usage by 50%, improve roadway safety, and minimize maintenance costs, the company said.

The project calls for the installation over the next three years of so-called "intelligent" street light ballasts that communicate over existing power lines using Echelon's power line technology.

The first 6,500 light poles have already been installed.

In addition to using Echelon's power line technology in the ballasts, the light poles communicate with the company's 100 Internet servers acting as segment controllers, which in turn communicate with the City of Oslo control center over a wireless wide-area network.

The City of Oslo project has reportedly generated significant interest from other cities in Europe, and is the basis for the recent E-Street initiative, a research group focused on solutions for reducing energy usage in outdoor lighting systems throughout the European Union (EU).

For a typical European city, the energy used by the outdoor lighting system can consume up to as much as 38% of the total energy demand for lighting.

The Norwegian electric utility, Hafslund, is the main contractor for the system and is also operating and maintaining the street lighting system in the City of Oslo as a full service provider. The new system may in the future be used as a blueprint for the other systems that Hafslund operates, totaling more than 100,000 streetlights under their ownership.

Hafslund also supplies the energy for more than 250,000 streetlights in their grid that could also make use of the infrastructure being built today.

Echelon is based in San Jose with offices in China, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

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