Smart City Street Light Control: Industrial PC Enable Precision Energy-Saving Strategies for Individual Lamps via DALI Protocol, Lighting Up a Green Urban Future

In the wave of smart city construction, street lights, as a vital part of urban infrastructure, are not only key to enhancing the city's image but also crucial breakthroughs in energy conservation, emission reduction, and reducing operation and maintenance costs. However, traditional street light control systems are plagued by issues such as high energy consumption, extensive management, and slow fault responses, causing urban managers to have numerous concerns when pursuing intelligent transformation. This article will delve into these pain points and explore how the deep integration of industrial PC and the DALI protocol can achieve precise energy-saving control for individual lamps, providing a practical and high-return solution for urban lighting management.

1. The Three Persistent Problems of Traditional Street Light Control: Urban Managers' Hidden Worries

1.1 Severe Energy Waste: High Lighting Costs

Traditional street lights mostly operate in an "all-night lighting" mode, maintaining a fixed power regardless of changes in traffic and pedestrian flows. According to statistics, in a first-tier city, the traffic volume between 2 and 5 a.m. at night is only 37% of the peak period, but the illumination requirements for street lights have not been adjusted accordingly, resulting in 30% to 40% of electrical energy being wasted. Additionally, issues such as aging power lines and low power factors in the power supply system (generally below 0.85) further exacerbate energy waste, with line losses reaching as high as 15% to 20%.
Insight into Customer Psychology:
"Street lights account for a large portion of municipal electricity consumption, but energy-saving renovations require significant investment and have long payback periods. What if the results don't meet expectations?" This is a real concern for many urban managers when making decisions.

1.2 Inefficient Operation and Maintenance: Delayed Fault Responses

Traditional street light systems lack real-time monitoring capabilities, relying on manual inspections for fault detection, with an average response cycle of up to 72 hours. According to the annual report of a provincial lighting group, due to the lack of unified inspection standards, the average maintenance cost per lamp exceeds 300 yuan, which is 2.17 times that of intelligent systems. More challenging is the prominent issue of data silos, with 83% of urban lighting systems not connected to energy monitoring platforms, making it impossible to achieve dynamic control by time and zone.
Insight into Customer Psychology:
"Intelligent systems sound promising, but will they truly reduce manual inspections after installation? Can the issue of data silos be resolved?" Skepticism from the operation and maintenance team about the effectiveness of new technology implementation is another major obstacle to intelligent transformation.

1.3 Extensive Management: Inability to Adapt to Dynamic Urban Needs

Variables such as urban traffic flow, weather conditions, and special events (e.g., concerts, exhibitions) have a dynamic impact on the illumination requirements of street lights. However, traditional systems are mostly single-point controls, lacking intelligent algorithms based on multi-dimensional data (e.g., traffic flow, meteorological data), resulting in an energy-saving rate of only 12%, far below the theoretical potential.
Insight into Customer Psychology:
"Can intelligent systems think like a 'brain' and automatically adjust lighting strategies according to real-time needs?" Customers' expectations for the level of intelligence of the system are the core driving force for technological upgrades.

2. The DALI Protocol: A Precision Scalpel for Energy Saving in Individual Lamps

2.1 The DALI Protocol: The "International Language" of Lighting Control

The DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) is an internationally recognized standard protocol for lighting control, enabling bidirectional communication between devices through two signal lines (a data transmission line and a ground wire). Its core advantages include:

• Individual Lamp Addressing: Supports independent control of up to 64 devices, with each lamp assigned a unique address, enabling "one lamp, one policy."
• Bidirectional Communication and Status Feedback: The controller can obtain real-time energy consumption and fault status (e.g., filament damage, power supply abnormalities) of lamps, supporting remote diagnosis.
• Strong Compatibility: Seamlessly integrates with building automation systems such as KNX and BACnet and can be extended to the IoT ecosystem through gateways.
• Dynamic Dimming: Supports stepless dimming from 0.1% to 100% and 256-level color temperature adjustment, which, combined with ambient light sensing and personnel presence detection, can reduce energy consumption by 30% to 50%.
  Case Support:
  In tests at Zhoushan Port, the TSN network (based on the DALI protocol) stabilized the end-to-end latency of PLC control instructions at less than 500 microseconds, with latency fluctuations ≤ 50 microseconds, fully meeting the precision requirements for quayside crane operations. This case demonstrates the high reliability of the DALI protocol in industrial scenarios.

2.2 Industrial PC + DALI: From "Extensive Management" to "Precision Policy Implementation"

As the "brain" of the smart street light system, an industrial PC, by integrating the DALI protocol, can achieve the following functions:

• Individual Lamp Energy Monitoring: Real-time collection of current, voltage, power, and other data from each lamp, generating energy consumption reports to provide a basis for optimizing energy-saving strategies.
• Dynamic Dimming Control: Automatically adjust lighting strategies based on variables such as time (e.g., reducing power by 30% to 50% at night), space (e.g., focusing illumination at intersections), and weather (e.g., increasing illumination on rainy days).
• Fault Warning and Location: Detect potential faults in advance through lamp status feedback and quickly locate problematic lamp poles using GIS maps to shorten maintenance time.
• Integration with the Urban Brain: Access data from traffic, meteorology, security, and other systems to achieve cross-domain collaborative control (e.g., adjusting street light brightness according to traffic flow).
  Technical Implementation Path:
• Hardware Layer: The industrial PC connects to individual lamp controllers through DALI interfaces, supporting addressing for up to 64 devices.
• Network Layer: Adopts industrial fiber optic ring networks (with dual-link redundancy) or NB-IoT/LoRa wireless networks to ensure communication stability.
• Platform Layer: Deploys device management, data analysis, and operation and maintenance management modules, supporting access for over 100,000 nodes and providing functions such as energy consumption statistics and fault prediction.
• Application Layer: Develop mobile apps and web-based management interfaces, supporting remote control and scene mode switching (e.g., conference mode, cinema mode).

EG628

Linux OSFlexibly ExpandRich Interface

3. The USR-EG628 Industrial PC: The "All-in-One Steward" for Smart Street Lights

In smart street light systems, the performance of an industrial PC directly affects control precision and response speed. The USR-EG628, a comprehensive and expandable ARM industrial computer, with its integrated design of "edge computing + PLC programming + local configuration," serves as an ideal carrier for energy-saving strategies for individual lamps:

• Powerful Performance: Equipped with a 4-core 64-bit ARM architecture CPU with a main frequency of 2.0 GHz and integrated with 1.0 TOPS NPU computing power, it supports local operation of AI algorithms (e.g., fault prediction, video anomaly detection).
• Rich Interfaces: Features 2 RS-485 ports, 1 RS-232 port, 1 CAN port, 2 Ethernet ports, and 2 USB ports, supporting multi-protocol conversion such as DALI, Modbus, and KNX.
• Flexible Expansion: With a modular structure, it supports high-speed expansion of IO modules to meet the needs of street light projects of different scales.
• Industrial-Grade Reliability: Operates in a wide temperature range (-40°C to 85°C), adapts to hot and humid coastal environments, supports dual power redundancy input, and switches between primary and backup power supplies in ≤ 10 milliseconds.
  Example Application Scenario:
  In a smart park project, the USR-EG628 connected 200 LED street lights via the DALI protocol, combined with light sensors and human presence detectors, to achieve intelligent control of "lights on when people are present, lights off when people leave." After the system went live, the park's street light energy consumption decreased by 42%, saving over 200,000 yuan in electricity costs annually, while also reducing manual inspection costs by 60%.

4. From "Energy Saving" to "Value Creation": The Future Landscape of Smart Street Lights

The upgrade of smart street lights is not just an iteration of energy-saving technology but also an innovation in urban operation models. Through the deep integration of industrial PCs and the DALI protocol, street light systems can further expand their value in the following ways:

• Environmental Monitoring: Integrate PM2.5 and noise sensors to report real-time environmental data, aiding in urban air quality management.
• Emergency Response: Automatically turn on emergency lighting in emergencies (e.g., fires, earthquakes) and coordinate with security systems to guide evacuation.
• 5G Micro-Base Station Carrier: Street light poles can be equipped with 5G micro-base stations to solve signal coverage blind spots in cities while reducing deployment costs through shared power.
• Charging Station Integration: Install electric vehicle charging stations on street light poles to create a "15-minute charging circle" and promote green travel.

5. Lighting Up the City, and Even More, the Future

The construction of smart cities is a revolution focused on efficiency and sustainability. The combination of industrial PCs and the DALI protocol provides a "precise, intelligent, and efficient" solution for street light control, not only addressing pain points such as energy waste and inefficient operation and maintenance in traditional systems but also opening a new window for urban managers to "reduce costs and increase efficiency" through data-driven management models.
As night falls, street lights are no longer just silent lighting tools but have become the "nerve endings" of urban intelligence. They sense the environment, respond to needs, and transmit data, jointly weaving a green, safe, and efficient urban light network. And this is precisely the most captivating image of a smart city.