Hebei to Complete Urban Lighting Centralized Control System by Year-End

　　Carrying out the three-year urban lighting improvement initiative is an important measure to further promote the scientific development of urban lighting, improve public service levels, and promote energy conservation and emission reduction. Recently, the Hebei Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the "Notice on Promoting the Three-Year Urban Lighting Improvement Work," requiring all regions to adhere to the principles of "classified brightness for functional lighting, classified light use for landscape lighting, and unified management of centralized control," implement centralized management, centralized control, and time-based control models, and comprehensively improve the management level of urban lighting centralized control. All cities with districts shall complete the construction of urban lighting centralized control systems by the end of this year, improve the energy-saving technology functions of the systems, and ensure that the centralized control coverage rate of road lighting and government-invested public welfare landscape lighting reaches over 85%, and shall reach over 95% in 2013. County-level cities shall complete the construction of urban lighting centralized control systems by the end of 2012, and the centralized control coverage rate shall reach over 75% in 2013.

　　The "Notice" requires that all newly built urban road lighting projects shall fully adopt zoned, time-based, and graded lighting energy-saving control technologies, use high-efficiency light sources and high-efficiency lamps with conversion efficiency reaching over 80%, energy-saving ballasts and control electrical appliances, and advanced lighting control methods. The large-scale construction of decorative lamps with multiple light sources and lamps without light control devices (such as multi-source flower lamps, magnolia lamps, Chinese lamps, etc.) on urban main roads shall be stopped. The installation rate of functional lighting for newly built and renovated urban roads must reach 100%. Lighting facilities that do not meet the national energy efficiency standards shall undergo energy-saving renovation in phases, and the renovation task shall be fully completed within three years.

　　To effectively strengthen the supervision of lighting engineering construction, the design plans of urban landscape lighting projects in all regions must pass professional technical demonstration, strictly control the energy consumption of landscape lighting for public facilities and large buildings, strictly prohibit the construction of landscape lighting projects with excessive brightness and energy consumption, and strictly prohibit the use of high-brightness and high-energy-consumption light sources and lamps such as strong searchlights, laser lamps, high-power floodlights, large-area neon lamps, and Menne lamps in landscape lighting. For all government-invested lighting projects, testing institutions with detection capabilities shall be entrusted to conduct on-site testing and evaluation of energy-saving technology, average illuminance, power density values and other energy efficiency indicators during acceptance, and those that do not meet national standards shall not be accepted for delivery and use.

Gradually improve the urban lighting operation mechanism, unifying the construction and management of urban lighting under a single functional department for centralized management, thereby reducing management costs and improving management standards. Strengthen the management of operating maintenance funds and electricity fees for public welfare urban road and landscape lighting facilities provided by the government, ensuring that funds are used exclusively for their designated purposes, so as to guarantee the normal operation of urban lighting facilities. In order to strengthen the inspection and supervision of urban lighting construction and management, the province has incorporated urban lighting construction and management into the three-year urban construction assessment standards for upgrading across the province, with annual evaluations conducted.