Harvard have been awarded the Queen’s Award for their innovative wireless street light management system, LeafNut, which is helping local councils around the UK cut energy usage and reduce carbon emissions.
LeafNut allows Local Authorities to cleverly manage their street lights without having to controversially ‘switch off’. There has been much adverse publicity about Local Authorities deciding to switch off street lights due to expenditure cutbacks, particularly following last October’s Chancellor’s Spending Review. The system has proved to be a popular, sensible and safe option for councils trying to reduce their carbon footprint whilst ensuring there is adequate lighting on roads and public areas.
Each individual street light can now, for the first time ever, be securely managed over the Internet with appropriate lighting levels set for specific times of day. However, should lighting levels need to be increased, this can be done in an instant, through the use of the solution’s Central Management System (CMS), which remotely and pro-actively manages the output of each individual street light.
LeafNut will also help ensure Local Councils are well placed to meet government carbon reduction targets as the system will reduce carbon emissions by as much as 100kg of carbon per year, for every street light - the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency states that Councils need to reduce their carbon emissions by 34% by 2020, based on 1990 levels, or they will have to pay tax credits to central government.
The innovative system has already been deployed by over 40 Local Authorities worldwide, including most recently across Surrey County Council’s, which will deploy the solution across its entire stock of 89,000 street lights.
Surrey County Council leader, Dr. Andrew Povey, said, “This will be the largest scale introduction of this type of street lighting technology in Britain.” Surrey County Council Cabinet Member for Transport, Ian Lake, also commented, “The new technology is a lot more energy efficient than our current street lights, leading to both financial and energy savings, which are good for the pocket and the environment.”
The Queen’s Award marks a period of real growth and success at Harvard, who also develop innovative and efficient lighting solutions for commercial, retail and emergency applications. At a difficult economic time, Harvard’s success is a refreshing story of British Manufacturing at its best. With significant growth over the last two years, Harvard employee numbers have doubled from 100 to over 200. And despite the current recession, is anticipating growth to continue at an even faster pace in 2011.
John McDonnell, managing director Harvard Engineering commented, “We are extremely proud to have received such a prestigious award. It is a credit to the entire team and their dedication to developing, manufacturing and delivering an innovative market leading solution that will have a truly global impact.”
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