In order to reduce power consumption, increase safety and security, and to enable the city to achieve operational savings, the Japanese government has picked ITOCHU Corporation, an Echelon distributor, to deliver an intelligent streetlight system to the city of Tsukuba, located in the Ibaraki Prefecture.

This project has been handed over to ITOCHU to install the Echelon and Streetlight.Vision energy control networking solution, the first system of its kind in Japan, to help reduce power consumption, increase safety and security, and to enable the City to achieve operational savings.

Japan has built up the new project known as Environment's “2011 Challenge 25 Regional Development Project” to bring down global warming and contribute to environmental conservation and now the adaption of the intelligent streetlight system is part of this new project.

In the first phase, the streetlights in Japan will use Echelon's proven Power Line Communications (PLC) technology, and communicate with segment controllers running over the established power line infrastructure. The segment controllers running Echelon's Control Operating System (COS) and the Streetlight.Vision Control, Command & Monitoring software will execute local streetlight control decisions at the edge of the grid.

Tomohito Arai, general manager of the Information Technology Business Department at ITOCHU said, “With our partners Echelon and Streetlight.Vision, we will not only help reduce power consumption in the City, we will also maintain proper safety and security, which is an issue in Japan due to reduced availability of street lighting after this past year's natural disasters.”

In addition, the system will monitor energy consumption, save energy by dimming individual light points, improve public safety by adjusting lighting schedules and intensity as required, and simplify maintenance and replacements by identifying failures and anomalies on the streetlight network. As a result, Japan will have its first foundation for building out the street lighting network as part of its smart city infrastructure.

Anders Axelsson, senior vice president of Commercial Markets at Echelon said that their collaborative efforts with ITOCHU and Streetlight.Vision will provide Japan with a proven, open standards, and multi-application energy control networking infrastructure for smart street lighting and other smart city applications in the future that further aid the Ministry of the Environment's campaigns.

In other news, N.E.W. Customer Service Companies, LLC (NEW), the leading global provider of extended service plans, buyer protection services and product support, and ITOCHU Corporation recently announced they have formed a partnership to expand product protection and customer service support to retailers of consumer electronics and appliances in Japan.