Smart Street Lighting Detecting Vehicle and Pedestrian Movement Aiming for Sustainable Bhutan

Abstract

An energy crisis is global issue nowadays. Bhutan however, does not realize it being blessed with good geographical and demographical diversity. It is high time that Bhutan realize the need of energy conservation technique. The electrical energy is wasted unnecessarily which starts from keeping the mobile charger plugged in the socket when not in use to lamps keeping ON in streets throughout day and night. People don’t seem to care but monitoring it for better conservation benefit has become crucial in underdeveloped countries like Bhutan whose source of energy is limited to hydropower only. Wind and solar generations are feasible but the energy cost per unit would be very high due to high initial cost. A case study conducted within the college campus revealed tremendous savings a college can make just by replacing conventional compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) with light emitting diode (LED). Therefore, the best option for Bhutan and Bhutanese people is to take better care of the existing energy sources and use it judiciously. This paper proposes a method to monitor and control the street/compound lighting in a smarter way. The two types of sensors are employed. The light dependent resistor (LDR) is used to monitor the intensity or brightness of surrounding and passive infrared (PIR) sensor is employed for detecting infrared source. The sensor output is processed and monitored by the PIC16F877A microcontroller. Moreover, the incandescent lamp and the compact fluorescent lamp will be replaced by LED lamps. The project aims to reduce power consumption in Bhutan through proposer control of street/compound lighting so as to have better economy of the country by exporting more unit of energy to neighboring country.