February 24, 2009

Cellphones can be used for lighting street lamps

by anoop

Municipalities around the world are facing a tight crunch in their budgets and in order to save money and electricity, they have resorted to switching off the lights at night. Great savings but what if you want to walk your dog at 3 in the morning? Well there are few towns in Germany that have come up with a solution. They have modified their grids using a system called Dial4Light, so that local residents can use their cellphones to selectively turn on their lights street by street. After 15 minutes, a timer will set the lights back to off mode. The towns that have implemented this have noticed a 25% savings in their street lighting bill.

It’s a great idea when you come to think of the saving electricity. But why use a cellphone and increase your mobile bill unless it’s a toll free number. What happened to motion sensors on the street lights? Wouldn’t that be little more efficient?
[Dvice]