The situation
Grand Rapids is Michigan’s second-largest city: roughly 188,000 residents across about 45 square miles. Its streetlights were being converted to LED, which fixes the energy bill but not the blind spot behind it. A converted fixture still has no way to say it has failed. The city learns about a dark pole when a resident calls it in, or when a crew happens to drive past it after dark — and it learns nothing at all about the fixtures nobody happens to look at.
Converting without adding control also spends the truck roll twice. A crew is already at every pole, with the fixture open. That is the cheapest moment in the asset’s life to add anything to it, and it does not come around again for fifteen years.
What was deployed
Every streetlight in the conversion received a wireless smart control node: 18,037 of them, forming a connected network reporting into the Dimonoff | SCMS urban asset management platform.
The platform is where the network is now operated from. City staff configure, monitor and meter each fixture from one place, set output remotely instead of dispatching to change it, and receive alarms and notifications when a fixture fails rather than waiting for a report. That last part is what changes the maintenance economics: crews are routed to poles the system has already identified, instead of driving a route to find out.
The contractor ran at about 1,000 fixtures a month, weather permitting, and the city projected $350,000 a year in electricity savings once the network was fully operational. The rollout is finished: all 18,037 nodes are installed, and Grand Rapids runs the network from the platform today.
Why it matters for your network
Grand Rapids is the case for adding control during the LED conversion rather than after it. The node goes on while the crew is already at the pole and the fixture is already open — one truck roll doing two jobs.
The alternative is what most cities discover a few years later: a fully converted LED network that still cannot report an outage, and a second capital project to retrofit control onto fixtures nobody wants to touch again. If your LED conversion is funded and not yet built, this is the deployment to look at, because the window for doing it this way closes when the last fixture is closed up.
We are thrilled to be part of this landmark project in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The implementation of our smart street lighting solution represents a significant step towards building a more intelligent and eco-friendly urban landscape.