Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has tied-up with a Tata Group firm to develop a digitised and centralised error-free smart city street lighting system.
According to the KMC lighting department member, mayor-in-council Sandip Ranjan Bakshi, the civic body roped in Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to develop a system that will keep watch over the functioning of the street lights from four centralised lighting zones in the city. A control room will be set up for the KMC lighting department officials to monitor the functioning of the street lights.
"Electrical department staff will be alerted as soon as street lights malfunctioning in a particular neighbourhood. This will lead to more prompt action to address the issue. Currently, we get information from citizens of the affected areas much later," said Bakshi.
TCS provides intelligent, IoT-enabled street lighting solutions through its Intelligent Urban Exchange (IUX) platform, aimed at reducing energy costs by up to 27%.
These smart solutions feature automated scheduling, intelligent dimming, and centralized control to manage urban lighting infrastructure efficiently.
According to Bakshi, if everything goes well, the KMC, in association with TCS, will take up a pilot project at Alipore and Kalighat.
The new digitised system will be developed in these two areas. "Depending on the results of the pilot project, we will decide to roll out the system for the rest of the city," said the MMiC. "Our partner agency successfully installed such a system in Chandigarh and Noida," he added.
According to a KMC electrical department source, out of 3 lakh street light poles, around 15,000 malfunction at any given point of time, forcing some neighbourhoods to plunge into darkness.
"It is true that currently we fail to take corrective measures in certain areas on time, where frequent malfunctioning of street lamps lead to dark zones," said the civic official.
According to a KMC official, several dark zones still exist across the city, including Ballygunge-Picnic Garden area, port zone, Dum Dum-Cossipore zone, Sealdah, areas in BBD Bagh zone, and some stretches on EM Bypass, among others.
According to the sources in the KMC, the centralised street light monitoring cell will be set up in four zones: north-central, south, east, and west. "Once we decide to go ahead with the project, we will need to install sophisticated gadgets that will help us identify the problems in the street lighting system," said a KMC official.