Whakatane District Council selects Telensa for smart street lighting project

Connected street lighting and Smart City applications company Telensa has announced that it has been selected by Whakatane District Council to deploy its PLANet intelligent streetlighting system. The project, part of a New Zealand Transport Agency programme to convert existing road lighting to LED, will involve replacing Whakatane's 2,500 streetlights with wirelessly managed LEDs. The project is due for completion in June 2018. Telensa PLANet is an end-to-end intelligent street lighting system, consisting of wireless nodes connecting individual lights, a dedicated wireless network owned by the city, and a central management application.

The system pays for itself in reduced energy and maintenance costs, improves quality of service through automatic fault reporting, and turns streetlight poles into hubs for smart city sensors. With more than 1.5 million lights connected, Telensa PLANet is the world's most popular connected streetlight system. "Telensa PLANet will help Whakatane District Council reduce costs whilst improving our streetlighting service," said Council transportation manager Martin Taylor. "This project is a significant step forward in intelligent infrastructure and will deliver a safer, smarter, and more efficient service environment for District residents." "Following our recent announcement with Wellington, we are delighted to be working with Whakatane to deliver a more efficient streetlighting service, one that can respond to the District's changing needs," says founder and chief commercial officer at Telensa Will Gibson. "We are also excited about the potential for low-cost smart city applications, enabled by the new lighting network.