Street lightings Market: Heading Towards a Smart Tomorrow

The global street lightings market is a dynamically growing marketplace, and is constantly driven by innovative new technologies in the field of energy production and sourcing. It is fueled by technological innovations and a city’s ability to spend money on outdoor infrastructure development and maintenance activities.

Street lightings are chiefly used across the world for accentuating design and ensuring on-road safety. In many instances, street lightings are not only meant for illuminating streets, but also for blending with the surroundings by enhancing architectural details of any outdoor setting. 

Important parameters taken into consideration while choosing the appropriate street lighting system include environmental compatibility, economic efficiency and durability. While the major use of streetlights can be seen on highways and roadways, city planners and architects are becoming more conscious about the necessity of making cities’ and towns’ interiors more attractive for the inhabitants and visitors, and posing increased demands for street lighting systems.

The market is rapidly making a shift from legacy lighting systems to more cost and energy effective options like LED lights. While LED streetlights are already considered an economically viable solution to high energy costs in developing countries, their high upfront costs limit their adoption to certain levels. However in the next four to five years, LED streetlights are expected to reach a phase of cost parity with legacy systems, making their adoption even more aggressive in the future. 

At this point of time, LED street lightings make sense for replacement in almost all countries. With many emerging countries urbanizing at a rapid pace, the need of improved city infrastructure presents huge growth potential for the global streetlights market, and the segment of LED streetlights in particular.

Global Streetlights Market: a Brief Overview

There are currently more than 280 million streetlights across the globe. This number is expected to grow to 340 million by 2025. A wide array of street lightings, including solar light, induction light, high pressure sodium light, light-emitting diode (LED) lights, mercury vapor light, fluorescent light, metal halide light, and incandescent light are employed across the world. 

However, the market is in a phase of change these days and a substantial volume of legacy streetlights is being replaced by new and more efficient solid-state lighting technologies or LEDs. Taking the LED technology further, many streetlights are being connected together through some form of communication medium to develop a network of “smart” streetlights. 

Analysts state that LED streetlights will help in transforming cities and municipalities to smart living spaces over the next decade. LED lights offer lower energy consumption, longer lifetimes and reduced maintenance expenses as compared to legacy light systems.     

Global Streetlights Market: Providing “Smart” Benefits

Networked smart street lightings help municipalities in reducing costs through reduced maintenance expenditure and off-peak dimming of lights. In developed countries, networked street lightings will help achieve the larger smart city concepts, where modes of communication can be linked to parking meters, traffic lights, water and power meters and streetlights. Networked streetlights can also help in improving safety of a city by reducing the down time of streetlights. In developing countries, such smart street lightings can help in managing rising street crime in metropolises. 

Global Streetlights Market Analysis by Key Players

The global market for street lightings is flooded by a number of national and multinational companies. It features companies such as Honeywell, Philips, GE Lighting, Acuity Brands, Inc., Encelium Technologies, Inc., Digital Lumens, Inc., Legrand S.A., Lutron Elecronics, Co., Bridgelux, Cree, Osram Light AG, Siemens, Bajaj Electricals, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Streetlight.Vision, etc.

Many global brands offer customized products with emphasis on latest technology, energy efficiency, innovation, value and quality combined with efficient after-sales services. Growing investment in the field of research and development on the wide variety of technologies in the market and novel technologies such as wireless, sensor based streetlights will allow future growth.