Protecting the natural habitat was key in this smart lighting upgrade

City of Bialowieza

Poland

With an upgrade to LED street lighting and adoption of Interact City software, Bialowieza can now cater to both its world-famous forest and its residents and visitors by improving safety and reducing energy consumption. At the same time it can reduce light pollution to protect animals. Białowieża is now a smart lighting pioneer.

When planning this investment, we had to constantly bear in mind that Białowieża is not just an urban community, it is also a common natural heritage, recognized by UNESCO.”

- Grzegorz Kasprowicz, Białowieża Commune Head

Customer challenge

Owing to its magnificent primeval forest—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—Białowieża municipality is a major tourist attraction. As a result, authorities must balance economic and technological development with the preservation of this natural heritage. The upgrade of Białowieża’s street lighting is a perfect example of balancing these two priorities.

City officials had three objectives: preserve a certain amount of dark sky at night to accommodate the forest animals’ circadian rhythms, illuminate roads and open spaces at night to create a greater sense of safety and cater to residents’ needs and tourist traffic, and generate substantial long-term energy savings.

An open and scalable approach

Białowieża financed its public lighting renewal project with help from Poland’s SOWA plan—a large scale green investment program that aims to improve the energy efficiency of city street lighting systems.

The municipal authorities upgraded much of the public street lighting to connected LED and adopted Interact City Scene management software across the entire municipality, which comprises seven villages. Officials prioritized roads most used by residents and tourists throughout the year.

With Interact City Scene management, officials can switch luminaires on and off remotely using an intuitive user interface, and set up lighting schedules for individual luminaires or groups. The entire lighting network can be controlled centrally from an operator’s computer. Interact City makes it easy to monitor and manage the lighting infrastructure, helping to reduce response time for lighiting failures to ensure minimum disrutpion and downtime.

Web-based applications allow city officials to analyze performance data in order to plan maintenance and maintain workflow, reducing operational costs.

As a result of its upgrade to LED controlled by Interact City, Bialowieza has been able to reduce energy consumption by 77%, save €34,000 in energy expenditure per year, and reduce annual CO2 emissions by 280 metric tons.

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