With the presence of authorities, leaderships and opinion makers, the meeting took place at Teatro Mário Covas on the night of March 21.

With the presence of authorities, leaderships and opinion makers, the meeting took place at Teatro Mário Covas on the night of March 21.

Caraguatatuba, located on the Northern coast of São Paulo, is an example for Brazil of a successful Public-Private partnership (PPP) for Street Lighting, having implemented 100% of the investments forecasted for the three first years of the agreement, a total of 20.8 thousand Led lamps installed in all neighborhoods around the city. During this time, the city also received almost 3 thousand new points of light.

In the next two years, the Caraguá Luz Consortium, which has Conasa as an investor partner,  through Urbeluz Energética and Fortnort Engenharia e Desenvolvimento Ambiental, will install more than 5 thousand LED lamps, at points not provided by the initial agreement,  helping the city reach 100% of its Lighting System with LED technology until 2021.

Until July 2019, a system of remote energy distribution will monitor and control all LED lamps, allowing the installation of new apps, thus turning the city into a smart city. 

”Caraguatatuba is breaking into a new era, which is leading the city into the future. LED lighting is the basis for the innovation and implementation of intelligent and interconnected systems in different areas such a mobility, safety, residues management, basic sanitation, among other services provided to guarantee quality of life to the population. Currently, Caraguatatuba stands out among Brazilian cities” states Mário Vieira Marcondes Neto, president of Grupo Conasa.

Mayor José Pereira de Aguilar Júnior stressed his challenge to turn Caraguatatuba into the first city with 100% of LED lighting. “I always wanted to turn the city into a smart city and we will be able to do it with the help of this partnership”. “The PPP agreement forecasted a reduction by 30% in energy consumption and we reached around 65%, showing the importance of the work we are developing”, he says.   

Caraguá Luz director, Pedro Iacovino, mentioned the use of LED lighting imported technology in Caraguatatuba, which brought more quality to street lighting. “We work with top notch technology, bringing to Caraguatatuba solutions recognized by the international market. We also conduct an important mapping work with geo-referencing of all light poles, which allows us to provide safety and intelligence services”, he stated.

The event also launched the pilot project of video monitoring through a partnership between Caraguá Luz and NEC Corporation, recognized worldwide.  According to the project, 10 high-resolution monitoring cameras will be installed in light poles at points of great concentration of people and vehicles. This is a pioneer initiative in Brazil in public safety monitoring through high -resolution cameras in light poles. The objective is to help public safety, the traffic, vehicles monitoring, facial recognition and the production of analytical data.

The meeting ended with a lecture of architect and urban planner Nabil Georges Bonduki, professor at Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (USP), with experience in the area of Housing, Urban and Regional Planning, Urban History and Environment, on “Illuminating the Future of Cities”. According to him, the future of humankind is in the cities. “We will go through a huge urbanization process around the world in the next years and decades. We need to develop a sustainability relation with this process due to the acceleration of population growth. Therefore, the challenge for those who are going to manage cities is great, and the PPPs can become an important instrument for all the necessary investments. However, we need to know what we want to achieve and monitor the actions, since it is the public interest that has to prevail”, he says.