A Critique Paper on 2S19 ECE 525a - Industrial Electronics

Danah Mae G. Narsolis

University of Southeastern Philippines, Davao City

Title: Smart Street Lighting System with Light Intensity Control using Power Electronics
Author: Omkar Rudrawar, Siddharth Daga, Janak Raj Chadha, P.S. Kulkarni
Department of Electrical Engineering, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur,
India
Link: https://bit.ly/2T6g9Zj

Past Studies. Street Lighting System plays a major role in the development of the industrial sector of the
country. Street lights are constructed to either two states, on or off. Overlighted streets, waste energy
generate high Carbon Dioxide emission and costly operational cost. Some urban areas in the world still
stick to the manual control of street light systems. This system is inefficient and hassle. It has consumed
a large amount of power in the industry, thus, indirectly affecting the environment. In China, light
control systems are backboned by different controls including time and optical. However, this method is
disadvantageous due to the backward lighting, having bad precision. This situation led Wu, Y., Shi, C.,
Zhang, X., & Yang, W. to develop a new street light control system. Their paper entitled Design of New
Intelligent Street Light Control System developed a street controller system that works by timing control
and automatic photoelectric control.

Present Studies. The project is consisting of four main components namely a Wifi Module (NodeMCU),
a circuit for controlling the light intensity, an Arduino microcontroller and an ultrasonic sensor. First, the
system will retrieve information from the internet. The information contains the sunrise or sunset data.
After that, it will get the current time t. If the current time matches the sunset data, the street lights will
be automatically turned on through the intensity circuit controller. The intensity controller has TRIAC as
its main component. A TRIAC is a thyristor-device that is mostly used in AC control for its bidirectional
characteristic. However, it is necessary to trigger a TRIAC through its gate before it functions. The project
utilizes the Wi-Fi module Node MCU as the triggering device for the trial. The triac is triggered according
to the data retrieved; it is varied by prolonging the firing delay angle which results in a decrease in output
voltage.

Thus, controlling the intensity. The process went on and on until the time t equates the sunrise time
retrieved from the internet. It will then give the signal to the controller to stop the lights. The Arduino
microcontroller will then retrieve the sensor data and send it to a cloud server. The cloud server will
analyze the data and generate the required intensity percentage.

On the other hand, ultrasonic sensors are also used for car detection. When a car is detected by the
sensor, it will produce an output of greater than one thus increasing the vehicle count by one. The
sunrise/sunset data and the sensor data are being passed to the Controller through the tool Internet of
Things simultaneously. The study proved the efficiency in power consumption since the total annual
savings computed from 150 street lights with a 60 wattage each amounted to Rs 72,000. The project used
PSim in the simulation process as well as the analysis of data.

Future Studies. Smart Street Lighting System that uses nature as an inspiration. The street lights
must utilize prisms that reflects light from the vehicles that pass by; thus there is no energy and
no light pollution manifested. Also, Bioluminescent algae, very small creatures that glow in the
dark, can be intensively experimented to prospect as an alternative to public lights.
Critique

Relevance and Timeliness. The research paper is very relevant since the energy-saving system is one
of the most important factors considered in industrial applications today. Most automated and smart
systems are also costly, but this project is not that costly.

Technical Content. The research paper provided solutions and analytical designs on improving the
street light system nowadays; however, some subjects were vague and not clearly explained.

Novelty and Originality. The paper is an innovation to many proposed smart system for street lighting;
however, what makes the study unique is the integration of the traffic sensor and sunset/sunlight sensor
with the advent of the Internet of Things.

Quality of Presentation. Some terms were not defined such as the Zero Crossing Detector and
optocoupler IC.

Strengths: The proposed research project is very efficient and is not only constricted to street lights
because it also works on different types of lighting material such as Halogen bulbs, Light Emitting Diodes
and many more. The system does not also need a large installation cost since it can be implemented on
the current street light system with a little addition on small circuits only. Retrofitting. No Rewiring. A
device is only added in series at the terminals of the source hence there is no need for rewiring. It saves
a significant amount of money and saves a huge amount of work. The problem of dark spot is also
eliminated in the system, and it is open for technological integration like real-time traffic control.

Weaknesses: The paper did not clearly state the effect of hourly traffic on the control of the intensity
of light on the street lighting system. It is also questionable why it is based on traffic.

Overall Recommendation. 7/10

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