Qualcomm touts smart streetlights, water meters and other smart cities tech

Kaleb Hilton

September 20, 2019

San Diego cellular provider is counting on growth from Internet of Things, including connected smart cities infrastructure

Like many municipalities, the city of Carlsbad has deployed connected water meters to reduce costs of sending crews out to read meters manually.

But these smart meters provide something perhaps more valuable than operational savings. They generate digital data on water use.

The Carlsbad Municipal Water District began running analytics software on that data to spot spikes and anomalies in consumption. For a time, a staffer would call residents to let them know their usage had surged.

The result was 16 million gallons of water saved in just six months, said David Graham, Carlsbad’s chief innovation officer, at Qualcomm’s Smart Cities Accelerate 2019 conference this week.

“That doesn’t exactly drive revenue for the city. We get more revenue the more water people use,” said Graham. “But it drives a better customer experience, and ultimately in California we want to reduce water usage across the board.”

The benefits and challenges of smart cities technologies were the focus of Qualcomm’s Smart Cities event, where more than 550 people, including representatives from 400 companies that make smart cities technologies, attended at the company’s Sorrento Mesa campus.

For Qualcomm, smart cities technology is part of its strategy to bring the wireless connectivity not only to smartphones but also to many other things including roads, energy and water grids and smart streetlights.

Faster, more flexible 5G networks, which have begun rolling out globally, have been tailored to eventually connect as many as one million devices per square kilometer — paving the way for a vast expansion of connected sensors, cameras and infrastructure.

For cities, connecting and analyzing data from connected street lights, water meters, energy grids and environmental sensors has the potential to improve safety, ease traffic jams and preserve scarce resources.

“At an intersection, which is really one of the most dangerous parts of driving, you can actually manage it with a combination of cars communicating with cars, cars communicating with the infrastructure and the infrastructure, with video, having the ability to understand exactly what is going on,” said Jim Thompson, chief technology officer of Qualcomm.

Along with water and energy meters, smart streetlights are among the early pieces of infrastructure to get smart cities connectivity — largely because wirelessly controlled LED lamps cut energy costs.

But they aren’t without controversy. Because they’re connected and vertical, smart streetlights form a digital canopy that can support an array of sensors, as well as cameras.

This week, a coalition of local community groups raised privacy concerns over the city of San Diego’s retrofit of 4,200 smart streetlights to include cameras, microphones and other sensors.

The cameras have been used in 164 law enforcement investigations since August 2018. San Diego police are working with city departments and other stakeholders to develop policies about how the data should be used.

Smart cities technologies face additional hurdlers — strained municipal budgets, the lack of standardized technologies that work together, data silos within government departments and long sales cycles.

Still, rapid urbanization is expected to drive demand for smart cities technologies and data analytics that help manage traffic and preserve natural resources, especially with the increasing focus on environmental sustainability.

The city of San Diego recently began analyzing origin and destination data from scooter companies operating downtown — coupling the information with existing bicycle, pedestrian and vehicle data from cameras and other sources.

The goal is to improve transportation planning in the city’s core.

“The old way of doing it was the Field of Dreams approach — you build infrastructure and hope people use it in the way you expect,” said Erik Caldwell, San Diego’s deputy chief operating officer. “Now we are starting to go back and let the data drive decisions on where should we put in dedicated bike lanes? Where should we take roads out? Where should we change speeds of travel?”

In Carlsbad, letting residents know that their water use had increased not only resulted in preservation, it also helped those residents save a combined $200,000 on their water bills, said Graham.

“People now see that this meter technology, which was just supposed to help us reduce the cost of running the system, is a benefit to residents,” he said. “It is changing behavior because we have this closer connection to customers.”

Read the article here: Qualcomm touts smart streetlights, water meters and other smart cities tech


'Smarter, greener lives': Five-year plan aims to boost smart meter innovation

Kaleb Hilton

August 5, 2019

Smart DCC, which runs UK’s smart meter infrastructure, sets out vision for harnessing technology to boost EV and smart grid uptake

Smart DCC, the company which runs the UK’s smart meter infrastructure, has today unveiled a five-year plan to better support the UK’s shift to smart grids and electric vehicles through smart meter technology, while also easing the process of switching between domestic energy suppliers.

Setting out Smart DCC’s purpose to “make Britain more connected so that everyone can lead smarter, greener lives”, the Business and Development Plan promises to deliver a host of improvements for smart meter users, energy suppliers and distribution network operators.

These include proposals to boost innovation in energy networks by enabling data to be gathered safely from smart meters. This will help support the shift to EVs, smart grids and other low carbon technologies, it said.

And, to aid smart meter research and development, Smart DCC plans to soon open its new test lab facility in Manchester, which will feature areas to work with customers on future innovation.

Smart DCC also plans to improve connections for smart meters in blocks of flats or homes with thicker walls, and the enrolment of first-generation meters onto Smart DCC’s centralised network in order to tackle the issue of meters losing functionality when consumers switch energy supplier.

The firm – otherwise known as the Data Communications Company – said its aim was to deliver faster and more reliable switching services to help energy consumers switch seamlessly switch supplier within one working day.

But Smart DCC, which is owned by outsourcing giant Capita, stressed that the rollout of smart meters was still its “immediate priority”, and stressed that installations were now occurring at a rate of 20 every minute, every day.

It comes as the UK faces a race against time to hit its own target of offering every home and business a smart meter by the end of 2020, in a project estimated to cost over £11bn in total.

“Delivering the smart meter roll-out remains our commitment and the number one priority for the passionate, hard-working team in the DCC and its contractors and service providers,” insisted Smart DCC’s chairman Richard McCarthy. “Together we are digitising Britain’s analogue energy network and making a critical contribution to decarbonisation in the UK.”

Advocates of smart meters argue they are key to helping consumers and business better manage their energy use, which can save money on bills as well as boost energy productivity in order to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The technology also opens up potential business opportunities from using energy data to digitally connect green technologies such as battery storage and EVs.

However, to date only between 12 and 13 million smart meters have been installed in the UK. That leaves just under 40 million to be fitted before the end of next year, which the National Audit Office has said will prove an almost impossible target.

Earlier this year the government unveiled new proposals to promote the technology to small businesses and other non-domestic sites in a bid to get the smart meter rollout back on track.

But Smart DCC CEO Angus Flett claimed the company had “made some impressive progress” over the past year, having delivered 1.6 million second-generation smart meters.

“This five-year plan sets out how working with our customers we will bring cost savings and innovation to this platform for good,” he added. “This work reaffirms the DCC’s purpose of making Britain more connected so we can all live smarter, greener lives.”

Read the article here: ‘Smarter, greener lives’: Five-year plan aims to boost smart meter innovation