Improvement of energy efficiency and quality of street lighting in South Italy as an action of Sustainable Energy Action Plans. The case study of Comiso (RG).

Abstract

Existing street lighting systems in most of Sicilian cities are often inappropriate due to the obsolescence of light sources and luminaires and of unsuitable light control systems unable to provide efficient on-off and dimming strategies. Improvement of energy efficiency in street lighting systems can be one of the key actions adopted by Public Administration in developing Sustainable Energy Action Plan in the framework of the “Covenant of Majors” activities. As a task of FACTOR 20 project a set of planning options have been analysed and proposed for Sicilian cities. Particularly, street lighting efficiency projects have been studied for representative case studies. A detailed survey of the public lighting systems in the city of Comiso (RG) allowed to know and represents current and design performance figures such us installed power, luminance and illuminance levels in roads categories, electricity consumption, switching and dimming schedules. To do this many lighting simulations have been performed. Several scenarios have been proposed. The results obtained show that high improvements of the lighting quality are foreseeable together with large energy and economic saving. The proposed methodological approach can be applied in most of Sicilian and South Italy cities.