A decision-making tool for energy efficiency optimization of street lighting

Abstract

This paper develops a multi-criteria decision making tool to support the public decision maker in optimizing energy retrofit interventions on existing public street lighting systems. The related literature analysis clearly highlights that, to date, only a few number of studies deal with the definition of optimal decision strategies complying with multiple and conflicting objectives in the planning of street lighting refurbishment. To fill this gap, we propose a decision making tool that allows deciding, in an integrated way, the optimal energy retrofit plan in order to simultaneously reduce energy consumption, maintain comfort, protect the environment, and optimize the distribution of actions in subsystems, while ensuring an efficient use of public funds. The presented tool is applied to a real street lighting system of a wide urban area in Bari, Italy. The obtained results highlight that the approach effectively supports the city energy manager in the refurbishment of the street lighting systems.