With the development of the economy, the traditional road lighting in the process of use of large energy consumption, a large waste of power resources, urban road lighting optimization and energy-saving transformation of the plan has been urgent, and with the evolution of "new infrastructure", the construction of "smart city" to accelerate the landing, as an indispensable part of the development of smart cities, but also to improve the quality of lighting, reduce energy consumption, avoid waste of resources, improve the appearance of the city of smart street lamps have also ushered in a broad space for development.
Driven by new needs and new technologies such as traditional energy-saving renovation and "new smart cities", AICA actively deploys smart integrated management and control platforms, smart IoT control, smart street lamps and other fields. Zhang Fengbin, President of AICA, pointed out in an interview with a reporter from Securities Times E Company that the future growth trend of the smart street lamp market is strong. In the short term, the stock demand for the upgrading and transformation of traditional street lamps is not small, and in the long term, the incremental demand for smart street lamps integrates a variety of functional facilities and is suitable for various innovative scenarios.
Light up the "future city" smart street lamp stands on a new outlet
In the eyes of industry insiders, the market demand for smart street lamps is clear, especially under the mainstream trend of achieving the "double carbon" goal and building smart cities, smart street lamps are regarded as an opportunity for the domestic traditional lighting industry to complete the transformation and upgrading.
In recent years, urban lighting energy-saving renovation projects have been implemented across the country, among which it is a common action to replace traditional high-pressure sodium lamps with LED street lamps that are more energy-saving and environmentally friendly and have a longer lifespan, and have become one of the stock markets with huge demand in the smart street lamp industry. At the same time, the new LED lamps that have been in use also have the need to improve quality and efficiency, which also shows the growth potential of the industry.
Zhang Fengbin, President of AICA Co., Ltd., also said in an interview with a reporter from Securities Times E Company that the future growth trend of the smart street lamp market is strong.
In the short term, the stock demand for the upgrading and transformation of traditional sodium lamps and street lamps is not small. According to the statistics of the mainland street lamp management department, at present, in China's road lighting application products, the mainstream products are still high-pressure sodium lamps, and LED lighting products are still less than one-third after years of substitution. Zhang Fengbin believes that since the beginning of this year, affected by the slowdown in macroeconomic growth, the overall growth rate of the industry has gradually slowed down, coupled with fierce market competition, the traditional street lighting market has been under pressure. "However, with the opening of the market and the recovery of the economy, the demand for the upgrading and transformation of traditional sodium lamps is gradually recovering, and the market space will be fully opened next year. Zhang Fengbin said.
It is worth noting that the smart street lamp industry, as a branch of smart cities, has opened a new window for traditional street lamps and street lamp pole manufacturers.
In the traditional mode, street light poles, traffic light poles, monitoring poles, signage poles, telephone poles, etc. are constructed separately, and the rods have a single function, and there are also problems such as waste of resources, scattered management, and affecting the city's appearance. In 2018, the concept of smart city began to heat up in China, and in 2019, the progress of 5G will be accelerated. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2021, the number of urban road lights in mainland China exceeded 32 million, and according to the online real-time data of poles and towers, as of December 29, 2022, a total of 392,000 smart light poles have been built in mainland China, of which 148,000 smart street lamps have been built, 187,000 are under construction, and 57,000 are under bidding.
Zhang Fengbin said that the most prominent advantage of smart street lamps is the intelligence, integration and Internet of Things in function. Smart street lamps integrate communication poles, street lights, traffic monitoring, security monitoring, traffic signs, roadside billboards, integrated pipelines, display communication and other major functional facilities in one, effectively avoiding multiple excavation construction, saving space, and achieving "one construction, long-term benefits".
Innovation promotes the development of smart street lamps AICA deepens the strategic layout of the whole industry chain
With the continuous advancement of smart cities, the upgrading of the night tour economy, and the application of new technologies, domestic lighting engineering enterprises not only need to face the competition of enterprises in other industries such as smart cities and cultural tourism. In fact, the setting of "multi-pole integration and multi-purpose pole" of smart street lamps has determined its cross-border attributes. In 2022, the smart light pole industry will usher in the first national standard "Smart City Smart Multi-function Pole Service Function and Operation Management Specification", which clarifies that the basic functions of smart street lamps include lighting, mobile communication, image information collection, intelligent road traffic management, environment, meteorological detection, etc.
In recent years, Huawei, ZTE, Inspur, Hikvision, Alibaba, Tencent and other industry leaders with big data and huge traffic resources have frequently sought cross-border development in the urban lighting industry. It is obvious that enterprises come across borders to seek new growth in business and the realization of their own social value, but they have also invisibly changed the development of the smart street lamp industry.
According to incomplete statistics, there are not a few LED listed companies that have laid out the smart street lamp pole business, including Huati Technology, Tailong Shares, Unilumin Technology, Aica Shares, etc., all of which have continued to make efforts under the favorable policies in recent years. Huati Technology has made efforts in the smart light pole business, while Tailong has entered the field of smart street lamp display through its subsidiary LED light pole screen products. Foshan Lighting launched its multi-functional smart light pole at the Guangya Exhibition, and planned a smart street lamp construction project in the fixed increase plan this year, while Unilumin Technology focused on technology research and development in the field of smart street lights, including smart street lights and smart city control systems.
Among the unlisted companies, there are also many old LED companies that have entered the field of smart street lights. In recent years, Shanghai Sansi has also made a lot of achievements in the field of smart street lamps and "multi-pole integration"; Jinan Samsung, which mainly focuses on outdoor lighting, has also launched its own smart light pole operation and maintenance management platform in recent years; Longteng Lighting, its multi-functional smart street lamp products and their integrated technology have also landed in the market.
In the eyes of industry insiders, smart street lamps are not only the mechanical superposition of technologies in various fields, but also the system integration capabilities behind their functions, the ability to integrate comprehensive business intelligence, the ability to solve the overall solution, the ability to integrate software and hardware and the ability to operate and manage in the later stage, especially the ability of artificial intelligence innovation application scenarios is the core competition.
As early as 2021, AICA has made it clear that "relying on the smart cloud control system, it will quickly deploy the R&D and construction of smart street lights". Since then, it has also been frequent, stepping up the layout. In the field of smart street lights, AICA has invested in a number of subsidiaries, each with its own focus. Specifically, Chengdu Aike Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. is mainly engaged in the manufacture of light poles, and Wuhan Aixin Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. is mainly engaged in the construction of smart lighting and smart cities. In May this year, Henan Eklet Technology Co., Ltd. plans to invest 2.5 billion yuan to participate in the construction of smart city business related fields in the Zhengzhou Airport area of Henan Province.
As the first listed company in the field of intelligent landscape lighting product supply, AICA has successfully realized the upgrade of solutions from lighting modules and lamps to one-stop lighting + control products + intelligent system platform by virtue of years of industry accumulation and its own technology development capabilities and innovation capabilities. In the field of smart street lights, we can see the layout of the whole industry chain, from a competitive comprehensive management and control cloud platform to a full coverage of key products such as smart street lights, ultra-high light efficiency modules and smart IoT controllers.
According to reports, the smart street lamp adopts modular and customized design, integrates practicality and innovation, and integrates the smart city infrastructure of artificial intelligence, smart IoT, communication, environmental perception, video surveillance, emergency help and other functions, which can not only be set up and operated intelligently through the cloud control platform, but also realize innovative intelligent applications with the smart street lamp hardware itself.
In the face of the market demand for smart road lighting, AICA has accumulated in technology research and development and product layout. AICA has independently developed an industry-leading smart IoT single lamp controller, and has accumulated a lot of rich experience and technology in artificial intelligence, data processing and platform applications.
The Galaxy ECCP4.0 smart street lamp integrated management and control cloud platform developed by AICA can realize applications such as smart lighting, smart security, smart environment, smart perception, smart operation and maintenance, and major emergency support, realize online remote monitoring, remote control and intelligent comprehensive management of various functions, and carry out intelligent energy consumption management, operation and maintenance decision optimization, etc., and generate visual data analysis and reports, greatly improving the refinement and efficiency of management.
Energy conservation and environmental protection policies promote the expected market size of more than 16 billion
In 2022, the "14th Five-Year Plan for National Urban Infrastructure Construction" was promulgated, which not only clarified the general direction of energy conservation and intelligence in urban lighting construction, but also brought policy impetus to all walks of life to participate in urban lighting construction. In the same year, under the wave of "new infrastructure", the scale of the smart road lighting market is also continuing to expand.
According to CTIA's forecast, the market size of various hardware and services in mainland China with smart poles as the entrance may reach 3.7 trillion yuan in 2021, accounting for 20% of the total scale of smart cities. According to CSAResearch statistics, it is estimated that the market size of China's smart street lamps is expected to exceed 16 billion yuan in 2025.
This year, due to the comprehensive impact of macroeconomic growth and the slowdown in the growth rate of local infrastructure investment, there may still be a window period for a period of time before the advent of the smart street lamp outlet that the industry has been looking forward to in the early years. According to data from Zhongzhao.com, in the first three quarters of 2023, at least 21 regions across the country have released smart street lamp-related projects, with a total of 143 projects and a total of 2.483 billion yuan (more than 1 million yuan).
However, both inside and outside the industry are full of confidence in the future development potential of the industry, and this window period may also become the best opportunity for companies to accumulate strength. Under the influence of macro factors, supply chain shocks, sluggish market demand and many other pressures, the concentration of smart street lamp market continues to increase. Zhang Fengbin pointed out that in the future, the relative advantages of leading enterprises will be brought into greater play, the survival pressure of small and medium-sized enterprises will be further increased, and the leading enterprises with strong R&D strength and channel advantages will further strengthen their position in the industry.
In recent years, AICA has continued to innovate, upgraded the smart lighting cloud control platform, and a variety of smart street lamps have also been successfully launched. In 2022, the walking path of Hefei Ecological Park will be equipped with AICA's new smart street lights. The product integrates lighting, monitoring, broadcasting, and wireless charging functions, and at the same time installs an intelligent system control platform, which can automatically realize the opening and closing of street lights and brightness adjustment according to the light and flow of people. It is reported that the AIKA smart street lamp can be adjusted to the brightness adaptively, and the super energy-saving mode can reduce energy consumption by 90% when there are fewer pedestrians in the middle of the night, which greatly improves the efficiency of energy use.
According to reports, AICA also combines the upstream and downstream superior resources of the industrial chain to launch the world's leading light efficiency products. In November this year, at the 2024 new product launch conference of AICA road lighting channels, the company released the sixth generation of ultra-high light efficiency LED modules, simple modular street lights, integrated die-casting street lamps and low-level smart lighting fixtures and other new products were officially released. The new products released this time are far ahead in terms of technical standardization, innovation and wide application.
"The use of AICA ultra-high efficiency LED modules can save an average of 347 kWh of electricity per street lamp per year, greatly reducing energy consumption and usage costs. Zhang Fengbin said.