OREANDA-NEWS. August 12, 2015. An innovative PFI project in Hampshire – the largest of its kind in the world – has delivered massive savings for the local authority.

Since 2010 it has reduced the local authority’s street lighting energy consumption by 21GW/hr per annum. This equates to a reduction of 41% - or enough electricity to power 3,500 homes for a year.

Mayflower’s innovative Complete Lighting Control Central Management System (CMS) allows individual street lights, signs and bollards to be monitored and controlled remotely by having a smart node on each installation. The company, which is part of SSE Enterprise Contracting, has installed nearly 150,000 nodes across the Hampshire County Council area, making it the world’s largest single CMS network. 

Mayflower has now installed 250,000 CMS nodes across the UK with the milestone being celebrated in the Hampshire city of Winchester. 

Mayflower offers clients a cloud-based back office system to manage their lighting. This includes flagging of faults, inventory management and variable lighting control with the capability to predict and model energy savings.

Patrick Mitchell, Managing Director of Mayflower, said: “It is fitting that the 250,000th Mayflower unit to be installed in the UK is in Hampshire given the project is Mayflower’s largest system deployment. We have worked closely and in a partnership approach with the local authority and SSE Enterprise, its service delivery partner. To have played a key role in the development and deployment of the largest CMS network in the world, which is generating significant energy savings for Hampshire County Council, is a great achievement of which the Mayflower team and I are extremely proud.”

Hampshire County Council’s Executive Member for Economy, Transport and Environment, Councillor Se?n Woodward, said: “The installation of the latest technology will give us greater flexibility in how we manage street lights, giving improved visibility in areas that need it and the ability to dim lighting in other areas that don’t, all in all having a positive effect on the amount we spend on carbon tax.”

Councillor Frank Pearson, Winchester City Council’s Portfolio Holder for Environment, Health and Wellbeing, said: “Winchester is a city rich in history that has often been at the forefront of change. This attractive lighting, which the County Council maintains on behalf of the City Council in Abbey Gardens, shows how state-of-the-art technology can sit happily in the most historic of settings and provide benefits for residents, visitors and council taxpayers.”

Mayflower has been at the forefront of the development of the ‘smart city’ concept, and recently picked up a second successive innovation award from IDTechEx, a consultancy which offers research and insight into emerging technologies. A smart city is one which uses digital or information and communication technology to enhance the quality and performance of its urban services in order to reduce costs and resource consumption.

Dr Harry Zervos, Principal Analyst for IDTechEx, said: “IDTechEx wishes to congratulate Mayflower and Hampshire County Council on the significance of developing and deploying the largest street lighting CMS in the world. It's applications like this one that demonstrate that the ‘Internet of Things’ is real, and that it is becoming part of the fabric of everyday life.” 

Patrick Mitchell added: “Mayflower continues to deliver innovative and tangible solutions for our clients and is now entering a very exciting period in which we will continue to develop solutions for town and city managers. Further applications to collect and utilise data via the Mayflower lighting network continue, further demonstrating our ambition to remain and grow as a major contributor in the Smart City space.”