A decision support system for assessment of street lighting tenders based on energy performance indicators and environmental criteria: Overview, methodology and case study

While LEDs are now the most efficient light sources, their adoption in the road lighting design has been delayed due to a variety of reasons such as malpractice, huge number of inappropriate luminaires, missing technical information and ineffective policies. An example is the, low luminous efficacy values, which confuse the decision makers for national roads. The new part of EN13201-5 describes many energy performance indicators, which are still not used in street light projects or in lighting simulation tools. The aim of this paper is a) to present the significance of using these indicators through a decision tool, capable to evaluate a number of lighting designs in a lighting tender and b) to propose an evaluation method as part of a future energy policy including environmental criteria. A case study is also presented. The results show that the aforementioned decision tool is necessary in order to evaluate the ranking of the corresponding offers. Thus, increased energy savings could be achieved together with environmental benefits. In the case examined, the best solution resulted in 72.1% energy savings and CO2 emission reduction.