Monitoring and remote control of billboards lighting
JCDecaux
Context
Previously, the maintenance of the lighting system of the publicity signs was carried out by making periodic tours of areas and visually inspecting the lighting of the signs and acting in case of detecting problems.
The mobile phone that performed the maintenance rounds could have passed and not detected any inconvenience in the lighting at that time, but the lights may fail immediately afterwards, and the problem would not be detected until the next maintenance round, being affected in this way the quality of the service offered.
This traditional maintenance has several limitations and drawbacks. The first and perhaps most important is the image of the company in front of the client who contracted the advertising service on the poster, in case of lighting failure, since the product for which you are paying would be affected. The second in importance would be that, if any of the luminaires has a problem and consumes more than necessary, it would only be detected in the rate increase of the following month. The third could occur in the case of power theft and would also be detected later in time.
Maintenance carried out in this way entails large expenses: vehicle maintenance, higher payment of the hours of the operators in charge of maintenance since generally the rounds are carried out at night, fuel for the rounds, etc.
In some cases it is necessary to change the time for switching on and / or off the advertising signs and the only way to do this is to go to the site and reprogram the on timer adjusting it to the new time.
Solution
To solve these problems, a remote monitoring and control service of the poster lights was provided. Now they can know in real time the operating conditions of the luminaires, as well as automate and remotely control their operation; in addition to identifying faults, sending alarms in real time and reducing the response time to correct critical states of the facilities.
The solution provided by Nettra consists of the installation of measurement and data transmission equipment within the same power and control panel of the luminaires. The following equipment was installed at each point: 12V source to power the equipment, energy measurement module and RTU + for the collection and transmission of information.
The information collected by the RTU + on each dashboard is transmitted in real time to the Telemetry + system, where the data is stored and displayed on a personalized dashboard. The following are some of the functionalities that JCDecaux has with our solution:
• Real-time visualization of the information collected through a web interface accessible from a PC or mobile device with cartography, panels and graphics.• Ability to know the exact number of lights that are on at each point, and therefore the ability to determine if any lights are defective.
• Exact historical information of the time of day in which the lights are turned on and off, allowing to verify if the timing is working correctly.
• Online reports with graphs and in real time on the monitored electrical system.
• Notifications by email or SMS when an abnormal situation is detected.
The immediate advantage after having deployed this solution is to have a better idea about the quality of the service that is being offered, thus being able to stand out from the competition.
Maintenance costs are lower since having real-time information on the lighting status of the signs gives the option of diagramming an optimal maintenance route, saving fuel and hours of travel.
Monitoring not only improves the gain by optimizing the routes. Once the benefits of monitoring are consolidated, companies will see that their fleet will have plenty of time to serve their existing customer base. This extra time can be used to add new customers and serve them without the need to expand their fleet.
By having real-time information on the electrical parameters and being able to generate alarms when a measured parameter goes out of range, possible energy theft or consumption problems in the luminaires can be detected, saving the company on electricity bills.
