The research outcome "Modeling the control system of public lighting to save energy in Thai Binh" realistically applied in Thai Binh city has helped save energy, protect the environment and reduce costs of operation, management, and maintenance of the system.

Dr. Pham Duy Phong, Electric and Telecommunications Technologies Corporation JSC (ETECO), the Research Team leader, said that during the study, the authors came up with many solutions to assess the efficiency of power saving features, including control solutions using general control panel which can adjust flexibly, accurately and in accordance with current demand in Thai Binh. Then, the authors carried out the design and manufacture of automated equipment control systems of public lighting.

Public street lighting system in Thai Binh city

For general control cabinet, this  device uses a real-time microcontroller IC, with the ability to adjust the capacity according to pre-set time. The current lighting systems are mainly fed by 220V input at different power capacity. However, the current electricity grid in the Thai Binh as well as nationwide network is 3-phased  380 V power, thus the control cabinet is duly designed to be able to adjust the voltage in accordance with the lighting system. 

General control cabinet is capable of switching on/off the voltage on all 3 phases and each phase with a total capacity of 30 kVA or greater. The on/off switching for 3-phases and each phase is done by electromagnetic contactors. In each phase, there is a metered value of voltage and amperage. AC voltage at the input within the range of 260 V - 430 V, the output voltage will be adjusted at 160 V - 248 V. In the incident of overload or over-voltage, three-phase Aptomat disconnects the power supply to protect the equipment and the lighting systems. 

Equipment was installed on Chu Van An road, Thai Binh city for testing.  After one month commissioning with 21 lamps with a capacity of 250 W, the results showed that the use of electricity saving device had saved 35% of power consumption.

In view of the above efficiency, if this model is replicated across the entire public lighting system of  Thai Binh city, it would save millions of kWh annually, equivalent to billions of VND. At the same time, the introduction of this equipment into use would contribute a large part in the environment protection, reduction of the cost of operation, management, and maintenance, and improvement of capacity in management of urban lighting system.

Talking about further development of the projected research, Dr. Pham Duy Phong says that given the positive results of the research, ETECO is doing further research into upgrading the public lighting system control of  Thai Binh city, so that it could be centrally controlled with Web Server and mobile network, an important basis for building a Control Center for public lighting control in Thai Binh city.

Do Trong Tan