Light is the essence of all life. Not only is it the essence of existence, it also determines the quality of life. Thus, besides natural light, we also use artificial lighting. Under the term artificial lighting most of us imagine their homes. But few people come to realize that street lighting forms an integral part of their everyday life.
Street lighting is one of the most important public services. As a significant part of our environment it partakes in ensuring citizens’ and traffic safety, but also in protection of public and private property. If built in high quality and properly maintained street and festive lighting enables the city population as well as visitors to have good orientation in the city and it accentuates architectural values which constitute the wealth of the city.
The street lighting falls under public welfare services and their quality as well as their operational status are prescribed by technical standards and also by standards of the City of Brno. Technical Networks Brno, plc provides for the City of Brno, in the form of delegated administration, all the administrative, operative, control and planning activities, investment activities focused on development and also complex maintenance of street lighting network.
Our company operates (as of December 31, 2016) the total of 40,858 public light points in the City of Brno; out of this number 40,494 light points are our own and 364 are in delegated administration.
At the same time, we are operating and servicing 524 light points of festive lighting illuminating chosen important buildings of the City of Brno.
There are 458 power-on switchboards (electric meter) installed in the City of Brno to operate its street and festive lighting. 29 switchboards are operated by means of time switches, 429 switchboards are operated by means of remote control via a radio-data network. Out of this number, 100 switchboards have voltage regulators which results in approximately 26% electric energy savings in the given area.
The street lighting operation time is 4,084 hours per year, the total energy consumption is ca.15 ,67 MWh/year, the total number of luminaires ca. 42,000 and an average input power 92 W / 1 point of light, which places the City of Brno among the most energy efficient cities in the Czech Republic.
In 2016, the average rate of non-luminosity in the City of Brno was ca. 0.47% which is well above the common standards; in other comparable cities the average rate of non-luminosity ranges between 3% and 4%.
We must also mention our successful implementation of an 8-year project of renovation of the City of Brno street lighting. Investments of approximately 50–60 million CZK per year have already manifested themselves in the savings of electricity consumption, significantly improved technical condition of street lighting, higher quality of provided service – a lower failure rate of street lighting, higher safety of traffic and last but not least better appearance of the renovated parts of street lighting.
At present our company is preparing a reconstruction of the oldest parts of the City of Brno street lighting and the replacement of obsolete lighting fixtures for LED lighting – the exchange of poles and cabling.
