Led street lighting, less pollution and more savings for the city

Anyone who takes a plane that arrives or leaves Buenos Aires can see a postcard unpublished: the city is perfectly bounded by the color of its lights. And the difference between LED street lighting, which is already 100% in the district of Buenos Aires, and the traditional lighting that still exists in the province, marks a perfect map. Gray on one side, orange on the other, air is a live geography lesson.

According to the Ombudsman of the City, street lighting is the best qualified service by the porteños, at least recently. A survey conducted by the agency at the end of last year indicated that most citizens thought the streets in their neighborhoods were well lit. With the number of traffic lights, these are the best marks attributed by neighbors to the local government.

The municipalities in which public lighting is the most efficient are 3, including Balvanera and San Cristóbal, and 9, the Abattoirs, Liniers and Avellaneda Park. In this municipality, Ariel Torreta works in a real estate agency of Emilio Castro Avenue at 7,000. "The avenue is super-illuminated and since the gastronomic hub was launched, the area has grown a lot, can -being a side street could be a little improved, but the lighting is not lacking in this neighborhood that has worse reputation than anything else, "he says.

Beyond the greater general perception of security that neighbors feel with more light, the 35,000 new projectors were designed to enhance the visibility of security cameras.

"The peaks of the city have improved a lot and you can see that they are investing in the light all the time, but in some cases they are lacking maintenance," says Maximiliano Santurio, professor of photography. Physical education and professional coach who teaches every day in Rosedal. According to reports, four months ago, people who stole LED plates from this trip have not been replaced properly. "They put bombs that look like candles, they do not illuminate anything, the night is dangerous because the motorcycles pbad by and we see nothing," he says.

For Emilse Carreras, a neighbor of Belgrano, the general lighting of the city is satisfactory, but it could be better in its neighborhood. "Around the Norwegian square and the Belgrano market, the lights are missing and there is an area of ​​Lago de Regatas, where I run to Palermo, which is completely black," he says.

The municipality 13, which corresponds entirely to Palermo, is in fact one of the municipalities where are recorded the worst performance of public lighting. There are only six out of ten neighbors who accept it. The negative ranking is at the top of commune 2, Recoleta, where only 50.7% of people approve this public service.

5000 other luminaires

It is expected that some 5,000 fixtures will be added to those already existing in the city, ie 160,000, by the end of the year. Nearly half of them are on the street, 49%. 21% are located in avenues and 21% more in pedestrians. The remaining 9% is green space. When the replacement program started, in 2013 it was 125,000.

According to Eduardo Macchiaveli, Minister of the Environment and Public Spaces, the city of Buenos Aires is the first in Latin America to have 100% public lighting. "With the replacement of conventional lighting with new technology, we have saved more than 50% of electricity consumption and reduced gas emissions, which brings us closer to our goal of a greener city." more sustainable, "he said.

According to the calculations of this ministry, today we save 85,000 MW per year, the equivalent of the annual energy consumption of 25,300 households. The impact on the environment is also positive: thanks to the energy savings achieved, 44,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) will not be emitted each year.

Today, public lighting works in real time with remote management technology: a centralized control panel makes it possible to manage all the lighting fixtures in the city. From there, you can monitor each light individually, decrease or increase the intensity of projectors, detect faults, schedule replacements and maintenance tasks. The ignition and extinction are defined on the basis of a schedule that varies according to the times of sunrise and sunset.

This real-time inventory significantly reduced repair times, resulting in complaints from neighbors about malfunctions: they decreased by 40%.