Streetlights Are Getting Smarter: Integrating an Intelligent Communications and Control System to the Current Infrastructure

While there are many solutions to existing issues with power distribution, an emerging solution that is gaining traction with utilities and consumers is the smart grid. Adding communications to existing grid infrastructure and increasing the capability of grid devices, to manage changing situations that affect the grid, greatly increases the capability of our aging electrical infrastructure. Unfortunately, these increases are not without setbacks as additional network infrastructure can add to the vulnerability of an aging grid and be susceptible to storms and other events. The Center for Smart Grid Applications Research and Technology(CSMART) at the Illinois Institute of Technology(IIT) has installed the first networked light-emitting diode (LED) streetlights in the city of Chicago to improve the reliability and economics of its main campus, 2.5 mi south of downtown Chicago. Research shows that these networked LED streetlights greatly reduce a city's rising energy costs, but the CSMART project team has set out to prove the benefits of integrating an intelligent communications and control system with an existing smart grid infrastructure, such as an existing network and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. In addition to assessing the economic and environmental drivers for the intelligent streetlight solution, the project team is dedicated to assessing the potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities of such a system and working to mitigate or eliminate them. We believe that the benefits of integration with the existing infrastructure in a secure manner will bring customers and utilities into a brighter and safer future, and we seek to maximize the adoption of such a system by improving reliability, resilience, and economics through our research and applications on intelligent streetlights in IIT's microgrid.