Manzano E.

, Considerations about quality management for urban lighting

CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT QUALITY MANAGEMENT FOR

URBAN LIGHTING
Manzano E. , Deco F. , Gagliardi I.

Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, FACET, Dpto. Luminotecnia, Luz y Visin

Direccin General de Alumbrado Pblico, Rosario, Argentina
ABSTRACT
Three studies where carried out in order to propose the use of lighting quality service performance
indicators in municipalities of South America:
a) Survey of lighting maintenance common practice used in 12 cities under different contract
systems
b) Analysis and survey of lighting outages to be used as a service quality parameter from a 3
million inhabitant city and 78.000 street light units of South America.
c) Lighting monitoring system, to evaluate illuminance evolution and maintenance operation
performance regarding relamping and/or lantern cleaning procedures, technical design and
data gathering methodology.
The results obtained in these studies will be proposed to be included in maintenance contracts
to provide tools for the municipality lighting managers to control lighting quality service.
Keywords: Urban Lighting, performance indicators, lighting monitoring

1. INTRODUCTION
Urban lighting systems should provide proper lighting conditions which are based on standards. The
design process should consider that the lighting system will work and must last for a long period of
about 25 years. Good quality components, appropriate luminaire mechanical characteristics
according to the outdoor environment pollution and maintenance operations, are necessary to
assure a high performance. Moreover, if lighting is considered as a service, topics as running time,
energy consumption, power factor, minimum environmental impact, among others, become
relevant. Care should be taken and done in an efficient, economic, and continuous way. But how
could a maintenance policy be implemented in a municipality of about 80.000 light points where old
and new installations coexists?. Moreover, more than 100 different types of luminaire, lamps
powers and types can be found in a city. Periodical maintenance operation can be planed and
carried on by the municipality staff or by external contractors but in any case, supervision and
control by lighting managers is necessary. To check and follow up how well operations are done,
sample controls, not announced over planed maintenance procedures can be carried out. In this
case the number of staff required can be important.
Lighting service, quality performance indicators, can be adopted in order to give tools for the
municipal managers to evaluate the lighting maintenance performed by their own crew or by an
external contractor such as the energy co. or independent companies. This is not a simple task
because it requires a previous study about lighting installations features like performance and
aging; about external contractors and municipal staff like technical and economical possibilities.

1. QUALITY SERVICE PERFOMANCE INDICATORS

Twelve cities from different countries were studied in order to obtain information about street
lighting maintenance strategy and performance indicators used to check quality service. Table 1
summarized the most important information collected in a survey requested to lighting managers
and from information publish by the local governments (municipalities). All have a maintenance
strategy, from only spot lamp replacement up to group replacement (GLR) and luminaire cleaning
(GLC). When lighting quality service is evaluated, in spite of geographical situation weather and
economics, can differ from one country to another some criteria are shared. Two performance
indicators were found to be important for lighting managers and were analyzed with some detail:
a) The % of streetlights not working as planed or average fault planed, commonly defined as the
ratio of the number of faults (frequently as lamp outages from several causes) that can be
found during a night inspection, to the total number of lamps (or luminaries) installed.
b) Illuminance levels measurements in urban sites.

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Manzano E., Considerations about quality management for urban lighting

Table 1: Survey summary of service characteristics over 12 cities.

Street
City GLR GLC Service characteristics
lights
Reporting faults: residents phone call/online report
Fault inspections cycle: 14 days (d)
1 UK 76.260 no Inspecting electrical and structural components
Repair response time: simple faults within 4 days
Average fault <2%
Reporting faults: residents phone call/online report & inspection
team
2 UK 17.000 Night-time fault inspections cycle: 10 d
Repair response time: within 3 days
Average fault planed <2,5% - achieved 1,78%
Reporting faults: residents phone call/online report
Night-time fault inspections cycle: winter 14 d, summer 28 d
24 2
3 UK 140.000 Repair response time: normal faults 5d, complex 10- 45d
years years
Electrical equipment test: each 6 years
Average fault achieved: 1,21%
Reporting faults: residents phone call/online report
3 3 Night-time inspections cycle: 25 days
4 UK 25.000
years years Electrical testing and visual structural inspection
Repair response time 7 days
Reporting faults: residents phone call/online report
4-5 Repair response time: simple repairs 7 days
5 US 55.000
years Night-time inspections all city cycle: 6 months
Average fault planed <5%

6 US 33.000 6y 6y Repair response time 1 days

Reporting faults: residents phone call

Night-time inspections all city cycle: 7 days
7 4 1 Day time inspections cycle: 90days
136.000
Spain years year Inspections mechanical and aesthetics, earthing resistance and
illuminance levels
Average fault planed < 1,3% achieved < 1%
Night-time inspections all city cycle: 3 days
On-off lights time schedule control each 6 month.
8 4-6 4-6
10.970 Inspections mechanical and aesthetics, earthing resistance and
Spain years years
illuminance levels
Average fault planed< 5%.
Reporting faults: residents phone call
3-4 Night-time inspections all city cycle:3 times/week (2,3days)
years Day time inspection all city: each 6 month
9 3-4
35.900 or on Inspections on-off lights time schedule daily, mechanical,
Spain years
reque aesthetics, earthing resistance, energy & electricity, illuminance
st levels on request.
Repair response time < 2 days
10 Reporting faults: residents phone call/online report
4 4
Austr 12.640 Night-time inspections cycle: 4 month
years years
alia Repair response time:<7 d. Contractor fine after 2nd day
Reporting faults: residents phone call & inspection team
11 6
Night & day time inspections all city cycle: 5 days
Argen 78.087 month
Testing lights onoff, mechanical and aesthetics, earthing
tine s
resistance. Average fault < 2 %
12 2 Reporting faults: residents phone call
100.000
Arg. years Repair response time: normal faults 2 days

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Manzano E., Considerations about quality management for urban lighting

2. PERCENTEGE OF OUTAGES AS A PERFOMANCE INDICATOR

It is more efficient when maintenance is done by an external contractor and the performance
control is done by the municipality lighting department. If that is the case, the % of streetlights not
working as planned or the % of outages (PO) is useful as a performance indicator. However a
single value for an important municipality of near 80.000 street lighting units must be previously
tested because even when the geographical area is the same, external factors and factors inherent
to installations can make some difference by areas in the values measured and therefore
difference in maintenance cost and conflicts with the external contractors. In order to measure the
PO is it necessary to have the appropriate organization and resources. The following items can be
considered in the organization stage:
a) test areas: it is convenient to divide the city or municipality in smaller areas where common
characteristics related to PO are shared, for instance:
age and performance of the installations
lamps, luminaire and column technical characteristics
vandalism risk
b) inventory: precise number of street lights in each area and if possible column identification
c) samples size: representative statistical samples in case of not cheeking the hole area
d) logistics: inspectors training, route planning and time schedule (or not if the intention is to do
unexpected inspections when there is an external contractor)
e) vehicles and drivers: own or provided by contractors.
f) hardware and software: to gather, process information and to prepare reports.

At the city of Rosario in Argentina, test were carried out in order to check if an average value of
op was enough or smaller areas were necessary to adopt [1]. This city, with more than 78.000
street lights (2006) distributed over 179 km2, has an administration divided into three main zones
whit different maintenance contractors (figure 1). Each zone was divided into several areas as
indicated by capital letters. The PO values obtained by night visual inspections for Zone 3 are
indicated in table 1. PO average value in Zone 3 was 0,98% but values vary from 0,17 to 2,5%
according to table 2. This wide variation was caused by electrical outages by trees branch during
storms in areas where a central hanging luminaries are install. This and other sources can be
identified and considered while evaluating the quality service. A single value of, for instance, 1%
could be recommended as average per mount but not as a limit at each night inspection.

Zona 1 Zona 2 Zona 3

A 3008 A 2168 A 2193

B 2882 B 1624 B 3641

C 1798 C 1015 C 4391

D 1231 D 1011 D 1763

E 1922 E 4868 E 3533

F 2099 F 5143 F 2420

I 3139 J 3181

K 2101
L 2058
M 2592

Figure 1: Rosario City Map with organization areas

for night inspection patrol and street light units
inventory

Table 2: PO values for Zone 3 obtained by night inspections in October

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 Manzano E., Considerations about quality management for urban lighting

3. LIGHTING MONITORING SYSTEM

Horizontal illuminance over road surface is used as design criteria in urban areas. Once the
installation is finish and operating, measurements are carried out to check design values. After that
no measurements are done unless maintenance factor or depreciation is likely to be controlled as a
quality performance lighting service indicator.

Two situations can be of interest:

a) If a maintenance policy of burn to fail lamps is used, the illuminance in streets of the entire city
could be measured periodically to trace evolution on time, for instance once a year. In this
case simple and fast measurements not involving traffic interruptions could be done in streets
in the slowest lane. The whole city could be measured in few nights.
b) Before an after bulk maintenance operations like group cleanings and/or lamp replacements,
measurements can be done at night in order to check the percentage of recovery of
illuminance levels as quality indicators.
With that objective a lighting monitoring system was design [2] using a vehicle where an
illuminance meter is placed over the roof, a distance meter was install on one of the car wheels
and both meters signals are connected to a analogue/digital converter in a laptop, A software is
used to process information on real time while the car is running with a speed limit of 40km/h.
Illuminance along distance is displayed as figure 2 and illuminance maps of the city can be built
once all the information is gathered and processed.
350
Godoy Cruz, GCBA

300

250
Iluminancia [lux]

200

150

100

50

0
500 550 600 650 700 750 800 850 900 950 1000
distancia recorrida [m]

Figure 2: Illuminance measurements over a street lane by the lighting monitoring system.

REFERENCES

[1] DECO F.,MANZANO E. Evaluacin de la calidad del servicio de alumbrado urbano mediante el
ndice de apagado. LUX Amrica 2006. Montevideo, Uruguay, October 2006.
[2] GAGLIARDI I, MANZANO E. Determinacin de la iluminancia media y depreciacin de
instalaciones de alumbrado urbano mediante registro mvil de datos. Luz 2004, 9 Jornadas
Argentinas de Luminotcnia. September 2004.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Authors wish to thank to the lighting managers from UK, USA, Australia, Spain and Argentina who
answer the survey whose names were kept in confidence. To the Municipality of Rosario, Lighting
Department, for collaborating in the tests and to the.Universidad Nacional de Tucumn and
CONICET for the financial support.
Authors:
Manzano E. , Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, emanzano@herrera.unt.edu.ar
Deco F. Direccin General de Alumbrado Pblico, Rosario, Argentina. ferdeco@gmail.com
Gagliardi I. Universidad Nacional de Tucumn, ignaciogagliardi@hotmail.com