Yu Weizeng: Empower lighting with AI and use technology to outline a new picture of urban energy conservation

With the continuous advancement of urbanization, urban high-pole street lights have become indispensable infrastructure for public spaces such as roads, squares, and parking lots. They not only protect the safety of travel at night, but also shape the city's nighttime style. However, for a long time, the inherent shortcomings of traditional high-pole street light systems have always restricted the development of the industry: in terms of energy consumption, traditional street lights mostly adopt a fixed power operation mode and cannot adjust the brightness according to dynamic changes in ambient lighting and traffic flow, resulting in a large amount of waste of power resources. Urban lighting energy consumption accounts for a high proportion of the city's total electricity consumption, and the energy consumption of high-pole street lamps is particularly prominent. At the management level, the traditional model that relies on manual inspections not only has high investment costs, but also has problems such as untimely troubleshooting and delayed maintenance responses, making it difficult to meet the refined and efficient management requirements of modern cities. Faced with these industry pain points and technological upgrade needs, Yu Weizeng, a lighting appliance engineer, relied on his keen grasp of industry trends to take the lead in carrying out the research project "Research on Intelligent Dimming and Energy Saving Optimization of Urban High Pole Street Lamps Integrating AI Algorithms", using technological innovation as a breakthrough point to build a set of intelligent urban lighting solutions that take into account energy saving, efficiency and practicality.

Since joining the lighting industry in 2013, Yu Weizeng has taken charge of many outdoor lighting companies such as Wuhan Luzhiguang Technology Co., Ltd. and Wuhan Xingliang Lighting Electrical Technology Co., Ltd. As general manager, he has always been deeply involved in the front line and faced the core problems of the industry such as high energy consumption of traditional street lights, inefficient management, and lagging operation and maintenance. He not only took the lead in promoting product research and development upgrades, but also established a complete systematic management system. These cross-enterprise and cross-regional practical experiences have not only allowed him to develop strong resource integration capabilities, but also built a bridge of efficient collaboration between technology research and development, manufacturing and market applications. It was during this process that he gradually developed a full-chain industry understanding covering product design, process realization and scene implementation. This accumulation of practical experience rooted in the industry not only helped him accurately identify the real needs and long-term development bottlenecks in the field of outdoor lighting, but also further strengthened his pragmatic philosophy of driving industrial applications through technological innovation, laying a solid foundation for subsequent research on smart dimming and energy-saving optimization topics.

It is precisely based on this practical accumulation and conceptual guidance that Yu Weizeng led the team to successfully develop an intelligent dimming system that truly makes urban street lights "alive". In Yu Weizeng's view, the biggest problem with traditional street lights is the lack of environmental perception and dynamic response capabilities. No matter whether the surrounding environment is busy with traffic or quiet and no one is around, they maintain the same brightness, which wastes electricity and is difficult to meet actual lighting needs. To this end, he and his team installed "eyes" and "brains" on street lamps: through sensors deployed on street lamps, the system can sense light changes in the surrounding environment, traffic flow, and even weather conditions in real time, and then transmit this information to the cloud platform through the wireless network for analysis and processing. Here, the AI ​​algorithm is like a "smart dispatcher" that can independently decide the optimal brightness of each street light according to the actual situation, achieving "lighting on demand."

This innovation not only significantly improves energy efficiency, but also makes urban lighting management more intelligent and efficient. After the system is put into use, the response time for street light failures is shortened to less than 2 hours. Operation and maintenance personnel can detect problems immediately and handle them remotely, which greatly improves management efficiency. This intelligent dimming method not only ensures the safety and comfort of citizens traveling at night, but also achieves tangible results in energy saving and consumption reduction. As Yu Weizeng said: "What we do is not a simple technological upgrade, but to make the urban lighting system truly understand and respond to people's needs, and find the best balance between energy conservation and safety."

What is more noteworthy is that this intelligent dimming system has also delivered an outstanding report card in practical applications. In the Hefei High-tech Zone, after a period of operation testing, the system helped the pilot road section achieve an electricity saving effect of about 35%, saving about 7 million yuan in electricity bills every year, which is equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of 4,000 households. In a commercial district in Jinzhong, Shanxi, since the installation of this system, the rate of nighttime traffic accidents has dropped by a quarter, making citizens safer and more secure when traveling at night. Behind these practical results are the results of the team’s continuous research on multiple technical levels. For example, in terms of algorithm design, the system can automatically adjust the brightness strategy according to weather changes. Even in complex environments such as the rainy season, the dimming error can be controlled within 3%. In terms of equipment compatibility, the universal communication protocol developed by the team allows lamps produced by different manufacturers to be smoothly connected to the same management system. In response to the problem of uneven light and shade on the road caused by trees blocking the road, the team also innovatively combined asymmetric light distribution technology and intelligent angle adjustment functions to effectively eliminate lighting blind spots. Actual measurement data shows that the entire process from sensing the environment to completing dimming only takes 0.2 seconds. , the brightness adjustment accuracy reaches ±2%, and it is compatible with 98% of mainstream street lighting equipment on the market. These solid technical indicators have laid a solid foundation for the promotion and application of the system in more cities.