Lighting Up People’s Quality of Life

Public lighting is one of the key elements in the dynamics of cities. This lighting highlights the attractiveness of urban centers, contributing to their development and giving the residents the opportunity to fully enjoy public spaces.

Codensa is the largest public lighting operator in Colombia, with a total of approximately 415,000 street lamps, providing lighting service to the capital, 34 municipalities of Cundinamarca, and supplying power for public lighting in more than 92 additional municipalities in the departments of Cundinamarca, Boyacá, Tolima, and Meta.

Aware that public lighting brings progress to communities by giving them the opportunity to make public spaces their own, in 2014, Codensa began a project to modernize and remodel the public lighting system in Bogotá, along with the Special Administrative Unit of Public Services (UAESP), which will continue until 2019.

In line with its objectives, and in addition to the technological benefits that include lower energy consumption and greater visibility of colors for users, this transformation also brings an important ecological benefit, since LED lighting does not contain mercury and generates significant savings in CO2 emissions.

Likewise, the fact that street lighting is strongly related to the perception of safety in cities, the company is even more committed, due to the fact that it is seeking activities and projects that help improve the quality of life of its customers. In this regard, the public lighting modernization project becomes relevant and obliges the Company to take an important and imperative step towards changing 100% of the street lamps.

With public lighting, Codensa seeks to build a city and create points of coexistence that its inhabitants can fully enjoy. At the same time, it wants to generate the people’s sense of belonging to their communal areas, by recovering and enhancing the historical heritage of each community, committing them to their care and maintenance.

The public lighting modernization project benefits the whole community, achieving a positive increase in security and tranquility of its inhabitants. Likewise, it has positively impacted commercial activities and has fostered tourism, contributing to the productivity of the region.

“Beyond improving the lighting, with the modernization work that we have been implementing, we are improving people’s quality of life, embellishing their municipalities and recovering their spaces. For the communities, the change has been very favorable not only in terms of security, but also in terms of their economic and social development.”

– Diego Valderrama Acevedo, Deputy Manager of Public Lighting and New Services in Enel Colombia.

So far, nearly 15,000 street lamps have been modernized with LED technology in Bogotá and the other municipalities, in which approximate energy savings of 45% is estimated.

Today, the global trend is to transform all energy systems to LED technology. The Company’s evolution at a global level in this area is ongoing. Codensa, a company of the Enel Group in Colombia, has taken advantage of the experience, support, and good practices in the public lighting market that the company has in the countries in which it operates, and has adapted it to the needs of its communities, to incorporate the technology of the future.