The concept of a smart city is to use tools including the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing to effectively interact with facilities and systems such as transportation, waterways, power facilities, and buildings in the city. Ultimately, these interactions will enhance the effectiveness of the government and improve the quality of life for the city's residents (Note 1). With rapid technical advancements, the progress of developing a smart city has also become a key indicator of an international city's competitiveness. How to build the infrastructure of a smart city, and to connect various devices and systems and to form a platform that facilitates urban planning, decision-making, monitoring, and management, all present challenges to the planning units' integrative skills.
Smart streetlights have always been crucial to developing a smart city. Starting from LED lighting products a decade ago, Delta slowly but surely developed LED smart streetlight projects and simultaneously built project management team, connected the lights with Delta's other projects (e.g., charters and video cameras), and integrated the lights with external resources such as software platform and regional maintenance to build a strong ecosystem. On top of providing lighting and surveillance management services for specific sites for public and private sectors, we can also customize city-specific smart streetlight solutions. Going from products, systems, to developing solutions, this process also mirrors Delta's evolution from OEM, ODM, to proving comprehensive, total solutions.
From 2012 to 2018, Delta's LED streetlight products have gradually been adopted in 16 counties and cities throughout Taiwan, even including offshore islands including Penghu, Kinmen, and Mazu. Delivery, installation, and warranty for more than 300,000 streetlights have been conducted, creating more than NT$2.2 billion in revenue.
With the emergence of the smart city topic, cities are planning to replace LED streetlights with LED smart streetlights (controlled through telecommunications protocols such as NBIoT) one by one. Additionally, they are also planning to integrate traffic signals and roadside surveillance systems with street light poles. The creation of smart street light poles has become the best carrier of information connectivity and transmission in a smart city. By seizing this trend, Delta has acquired the urban and streetlight optimization projects for Kaohsiung, New Taipei City, and Tainan since 2020 through utilizing solid product strengths. Cumulatively, Delta has installed 228,000 LED smart streetlights/smart street light poles, thereby building the first phase of an intricate smart city infrastructure and network.
"From replacing traditional streetlights with LED streetlights in the early days, to planning smart streetlight management platform and developing smart streetlight solutions that can be integrated with various detection, sign, display, and warning devices, these are the results that Delta's project teams have built after diligently developing this vertical market for many years," said Senior Manager Jay Su from Building Automation BU with confidence.
Traffic signs, street lights, surveillance cameras and traffic flow detectors have been integrated into smart streetlights on Zhongxiao East Road in Taipei City, and a management platform has been planned to provide diverse smart services
By integrating air quality and environmental surveillance, traffic flow identification and video conferencing technologies with smart streetlights in the area, the Danhai Light Rail has successfully upgraded the smart city management at Tamshui
"From nobody to somebody." On top of smart streetlights, Delta's teams have also worked toward developing various smart city applications. In particular, Delta was awarded turnkey contracts for New Taipei City (6-year in Phase 1 and 10-year in Phase 2) and an 8-year Private Finance Initiative contract for Kaohsiung City cumulatively valued at NT$3.25 billion in recent years. "These results indicate that we have evolved to a stage of utilizing the know-how for solutions to create management value, thus achieving the three-stage (production-construction-maintenance) value optimization in vertical integration. This allows customers (government finance), city landscape, and users (pedestrian safety) to achieve maximized benefits."
What are Delta's secrets that allow its lean management to be entrusted with so many large-scale projects, and to win the favors of customers and judges in tender cases? Upon careful observations, here are its tricks of the trade:
Practical project management: different from other listed companies that outsource their tender cases to contractors using simple project management tools, Delta's teams appoint dedicated, experienced Project Managers (PJM) to be truly engaged in project executions. The PJM directly communicate with customers and the public while simultaneously undertaking proper contractor management. Though the process is daunting, but it also enabled Delta to rapidly accumulate hands-on experiences and to accomplish all projects on time.
Control core technologies: To provide the latest and most suitable solutions to customers and to satisfy the customers' requirements for product continuation and device extensions in the long-run (8 years or more), all Delta product solutions and software management platforms are developed and integrated in-house.
Solid contractor network: since the teams are highly engaged in the projects, they are also fully aware of the local vendors' execution skills; therefore, Delta's teams always source for local quality partners when undertaking new projects to achieve co-prosperity and growth. Besides ensuring the quality in project executions, this also demonstrates the solid service network that Delta's teams are gradually building in its ecosystem.
Professional reputation: From illumination simulations, onsite project management, device connectivity, to software platform design, Delta's teams have accumulated years of experience and positive, professional reputation from collaborating with customers and local partners. Hence, not only do customers see Delta as a contractor, but Delta has also gradually become their most trusted consultant. From designing project specifications, planning operations and maintenance, to interface management, Delta provides optimized and the most reliable advice to customers.
For the New Taipei City PFI project, streetlights were used as carriers for flood detectors to achieve real-time surveillance on regional flood status. Information is integrated into the smart flood prevention platform, and timely warnings are issued for flooding hotspots to protect the people's safety. For the Shuinan Economic and Trade Park, chargers and weather station functions are also added to the street light poles, which are also installed with traffic signal lights and guided push notifications. Besides achieving positive performance throughout Taiwan, Delta's smart streetlight solutions have also penetrated the Southeast Asian market (e.g. smart streetlights in Jakarta and Bangkok). Going forward, Delta will continue to work diligently to realize the ideal of smart city concept for the world.
Founded on the concept of "ecological industrial park", the Shuinan Economic and Trade Park in Taichung has realized a low carbon, innovative and smart lifestyle and became a benchmark for smart city throughout Taiwan
Delta's smart streetlight brand has reached the international community and facilitated Jakarta to plan its smart city roadmap
Note 1: Source: IBM Smarter Planet
Note 2: Refers to services funded, constructed and operated by the private sector, of which the government has committed to long-term purchases
New Taipei City: replacement, operation & maintenance of 92,000 lights Kaohsiung: replacement of 100,000 lights and operation & maintenance of 120,000 lights Tainan: replacement, operation & maintenance of 26,000 lights
