DEPARTMENTS: City of San Antonio Office of Innovation and Information and Technology Services Department; CPS Energy Grid Transformation & Engineering and Business & Economic Development
DEPARTMENT HEADS: Brian Dillard, CIO and Craig Hopkins, CIO
Richard Medina, VP Grid Transformation & Engineering
Jonathan Tijerina, Sr. Director Business & Economic Development
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: Innovation Zones located in Brooks, Medical Center and Downtown San Antonio
SUBJECT:
SmartSA Streetlight Pilot Program
SUMMARY:
The purpose of this item is to provide the Innovation and Technology Committee with an update on the progress with the SmartSA Streetlight Pilot Program in partnership with CPS Energy.
BACKGROUND:
As part of normal and ongoing services, CPS Energy operates and maintains more than 128,000 streetlights throughout the City of San Antonio. Managing and responding to streetlight outages is an intensive process that relies on streetlight patrols, customers, and staff reporting streetlight issues.
Enabling smart streetlight sensors can provide near real-time operational performance of the lighting assets while enhancing service levels for our community and customers. This technology provides CPS Energy with the capabilities to ensure the streetlights are operating as designed, alerts if the devices are not operating as expected, advance notification of preventative maintenance, GPS location, advanced features for dimming/brightening schedules and the ability to operate streetlights in a way that enhances public perception and safety.
Value added benefits beyond streetlight controls can be achieved by leveraging the communication platform for other types of smart sensors. With this in mind, CPS Energy and the City of San Antonio Office of Innovation Smart Cities (OISC) collaborated on this SmartSA Streetlight Pilot program. CPS Energy and the City of San Antonio have a long history of working together to provide the citizens of San Antonio with safe, affordable and reliable energy services. For purposes of this pilot, the OISC wanted to emphasize San Antonio’s Smart City Vision; to build a connected, resilient, and inclusive community. The OISC developed five Smart City use cases through community input and City Department needs. The five Smart City technology use cases are: air quality sensing, acoustic noise detection, temperature sensing, automated parking solutions, and automated water level detection.
Nine companies responded to the initial SmartSA Streetlight Request for Proposal (RFP) issued by CPS Energy. A collaborative evaluation team made up of CPS Energy and City of San Antonio subject matter experts evaluated the nine proposals. The evaluation sought out best value proposals with emphasis on data/security, technology, pricing and Smart City roadmaps. Of the nine respondents, four vendors were identified for onsite interviews. Ultimately, the following vendors were selected to participate in the 6-month pilot of their technologies:
- AT&T
- Itron
These vendors will test their technology in the Innovation Zones (Brooks, the Medical Center and Downtown) as identified by the City of San Antonio for the exploration and testing of smart city technologies. During the pilot, CPS Energy and OISC will monitor the performance and operations of the technologies. Once the pilots are complete, a project evaluation will take place and CPS Energy, the City of San Antonio and the OISC will continue collaborative efforts to assess opportunities for city-wide deployment of the smart streetlight technologies, sensor technologies or a variation of both.
ISSUE:
Briefing on City of San Antonio’s and CPS Energy’s SmartSA Streetlight Pilot Program.
ALTERNATIVES:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
FISCAL IMPACT:
This item is for briefing purposes only.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
This item is for briefing purposes only.