Smart street lights: It’s hard to know but hard to do, but there’s hope for the future

At the opening ceremony of the ongoing 20th National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered a report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on behalf of the 19th Central Committee. He said, "Insist on focusing the development of the economy on the real economy, promote new industrialization, and accelerate the construction of a manufacturing power, a quality power, an aerospace power, a transportation power, a network power, and a digital China."

Among them, "transportation power" is China's development vision. From the 19th to the 20th National Congress, the country has continued to pay more attention to the strategy of a transportation power, and the pace of innovative development is also accelerating. As an important part of a transportation power, smart street lights are thriving with the joint efforts of the government and enterprises.

Government-enterprise collaboration leads to explosive development of smart street lamps

The development of smart street lamps is the result of joint promotion by the government and enterprises.

For the government, street lights are the city's infrastructure and the "nerve endings" of the city. Upgrading street lights to smart street lights that integrate smart lighting, base station mounting, smart monitoring, emergency help, environmental monitoring, information interaction and other functions will contribute to urban beautification, urban management, service innovation, environmental protection, multi-industry coordination, data openness, resource sharing, etc., thereby promoting urban development and improving the quality of life of residents, and will greatly promote the construction of smart cities.

Therefore, supporting policies for smart street lights are emerging one after another. For example, the Ministry of Transport issued the "Notice on Further Improving the Pilot Work in Building a Powerful Transportation Country" issued in October 2021. In terms of smart transportation, it is necessary to establish a smart highway system that integrates smart sensing, smart management, and smart service functions. Smart light poles are widely used to provide systematic solutions for road lighting control, public security, traffic management, municipal management and operation and maintenance, and emergency incident preprocessing.

Various regions have also introduced policies to guide and support the development of smart street lights. At present, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Fujian, Anhui, Jiangxi, Sichuan and other places have introduced relevant policies to guide and promote the development of smart street lights. For example, Shenzhen issued the "Shenzhen Action Plan for Promoting New Information Infrastructure Construction (2022-2025)" in March this year, proposing to promote the construction of multi-functional smart poles and build 45,000 multi-functional smart poles by the end of 2025; Shandong Province released the "14th Five-Year Plan" and 2035 long-term goals in May 2021, mentioning the need to accelerate the construction of major digital infrastructure projects, including the Qingdao 5G smart street light project.

For enterprises, smart street lamps are "highly specialized talents" in street lamps, and they "wear many jobs" and have cross-border attributes. On the one hand, they can enhance the value space of street lamps, help enterprises break through growth difficulties, and become a major driving force for corporate performance growth; on the other hand, they can also help enterprises deeply integrate into smart cities, achieve cross-industry integrated development, and grow together.

It is precisely because of the cross-border attributes of LED smart street lights that operators, Internet giants, digital integration service providers, AI security leaders, LED manufacturers, etc. are all competitors on this track, such as Huawei, ZTE, Inspur, Hikvision, Alibaba, Tencent, and Hua, SenseTime, Megvii, Lenovo, Haier and other technology companies have all come to an end; as for LED companies, Huati Technology, Aika, Tailong, Mingjiahui, Unilumin Technology, Spacetime Technology, Foshan Lighting, etc. all have strong professional capabilities in the field of smart light poles.

In terms of corporate news, Songsheng Technology and Huati Technology both announced fundraising plans related to smart street lights this year, and their fundraising applications have been approved. Among them, Songsheng Co., Ltd. plans to raise 294 million yuan to build the Songsheng headquarters industrial innovation R&D center construction project to vigorously deploy cutting-edge power product technologies in emerging application fields such as LED plant lighting and smart city 5G smart pole lighting; Huati Technology plans to raise no more than 300 million yuan, all of which will be used for smart street lamp intelligent manufacturing projects.

In October 2021, Zhenyou Technology used its own funds of 5.1 million yuan to increase capital in Shenzhen Zhenyou Zhilian Technology Co., Ltd. (formerly "Shenzhen Rongyuan Technology Co., Ltd.") and obtained 50.50% of the latter's equity. Since then, Zhenyou Technology has added smart street light business. Currently, its smart light poles have been used in smart security construction in Nanshan District, Shenzhen.

Cooperation is also essential for the development of smart street lights. Among them, Huati Technology has reached cooperation with Lenovo Group, Algon Ray, Inspur Group, etc.; Songsheng Co., Ltd. has jointly established the "Smart City Intelligent Control Joint Research Laboratory" with the Shenzhen Branch of Osram Enterprise Management Co., Ltd.; Huawei has also teamed up with partners such as Philips, China Micro Optoelectronics, and Taihua Smart to deploy smart street lights.

Image source: Paixin.com genuine gallery

“It’s hard to know but hard to do” smart street lights

Before 2019, smart street lights were still in their infancy and pilot stage; after 2020, with the gradual maturity of emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data that are highly related to smart street lights, the development speed of smart street lights has gradually accelerated, and smart street lights have also gradually moved from urban roads in the initial stage to scenic spots, municipal roads, highways, parks, residential areas and other areas.

The construction of smart street lights is progressing rapidly, and a smart network covering various life scenarios is gradually taking shape. However, the integrated concept of "multiple poles in one" of smart street lights is destined to be "difficult to know" and "difficult to implement".

As mentioned above, a smart street light has a very rich set of functions, which requires not only the cooperation of many companies, but also the coordination of different government departments such as meteorology, transportation, and urban construction.

Of course, after years of exploration, smart street lamps have finally made a breakthrough: In March this year, the first national standard for smart lamp poles - "Smart City Smart Multi-Function Pole Service Functions and Operation Management Specifications" was officially implemented, and the development of smart lamp poles finally has a standard to follow. However, the establishment of the standard system cannot be completed in one step. In practical applications, issues such as the determination of the leading department, construction department and operating department; the rights and responsibilities of construction, operation, maintenance and even the distribution of later benefits still need to be continuously improved.

In addition, the high cost of smart street lamps has also affected the speed of its popularity - Huati Technology stated on the investor interaction platform in June this year that the company's smart lamp poles cost an average of about 20,000 yuan per set due to manufacturing processes and loading of smart modules. The high unit price has increased the amount of investment, and the investment in smart street lights in various cities is pointing to the scale of billions:

Guangzhou plans to build about 80,000 smart light poles by 2025, with a total project investment of 3.2 billion;

The Henan Xuchang Smart City Infrastructure Construction and Operation Project will build about 12,000 sets of smart light poles, with a total investment estimated at 1.1 billion yuan;

Beijing Yizhuang invested approximately 1.5 billion to upgrade traditional street lights to smart street lights within an area of 60 square kilometers.

The huge financial expenditure makes people wonder whether the construction of smart street lights is necessary. Indeed, if smart street lights are simply positioned as an upgrade to urban lighting, then in the face of such huge costs, smart street lights will be difficult to implement. However, smart street lights have the characteristics of "build once and benefit in the long term". They are the infrastructure of smart cities, "new infrastructure" equipment, and an important part of "transportation power", with a bright future.

But precisely because of the relationship between smart street lights and smart cities, their construction and development are deeply related to the development level of smart cities. They can neither be too much higher than smart cities, nor too far behind smart cities. The system of smart cities is more ambitious, which means that the development of smart street lights will advance slowly along with smart cities.

But only thin water can flow for a long time. It’s good to go slower and more steadily, isn’t it?

According to estimates from LEDinside, the optoelectronics research division of TrendForce, the global LED lighting market will grow slightly to US$64.96 billion in 2022 (+0.5% YoY); in comparison, LED smart street lights have the opportunity to grow by 7% to US$840 million. At the same time, a new round of installation will begin in 2023, and the penetration rate of LED smart street lights will continue to increase. Its compound annual growth rate is expected to reach 15.5% between 2021 and 2026.

This also means that under the guidance of the "Transportation Power" strategy and under the wave of "Smart City", smart street lights will be in a stable blue ocean period for a long time, and will promote the growth of related corporate performance for a long time.