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Smart Streetlights

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Founder: Riya Karumanchi

Helping make Toronto a more sustainable city

There are millions of streetlights around the world, all consuming a vast amount of energy that negatively impacts the environment. In Toronto alone, there are over 170,000 streetlights, which cost up to $700 per streetlight per year. More than $100 million per year is being spent on powering vehicle and pedestrian lighting.

Smart Streetlights is an environmentally friendly solution which will reduce electricity consumption, the cost of maintenance, and light pollution. Featuring LED bulbs, motion sensor technology, and air quality data streaming, the idea for Smart Streetlights first came to 13-year-old Riya while attending Toronto Metropolitan University’s ZerotoStartup program for youth innovators. After assembling an amazing team of mostly grade 7 students, a working prototype of Smart Streetlights was developed. Subsequent mentorship came from TMU’s business incubator program, the DMZ, and the TMU Basecamp program. Both helped Riya develop a business plan to launch her startup. Riya is now looking to add to the Smart Streetlights prototype a low cost WiFi feature, solar panel, and a sensor that detects if a bulb has burnt out. Recent meetings have taken place with the City of Toronto’s Transportation Coordinator and Riya’s next goal is to approach Toronto Hydro.

Installing Smart Streetlights technology into Toronto’s infrastructure will result in almost $60 million of annual savings – funds that Riya believes the city could instead put towards addressing other societal and environmental issues. For Riya and the Smart Streetlights team, social innovation and social enterprise help extend and strengthen civil society. These young trailblazers show that you don’t have to be an adult to make a difference in the world.

As we are mainly only in grade 7 and 8, we aren’t equipped with as much experience and knowledge that members of the SVZ could assist us with.

"The SVZ provides us with many opportunities – events, pitch competitions – to help further develop our company and learn new things."