Install Site Portfolio

Illumient Lighting For Mission-Critical Railway Switchyard

Greenwich, New Jersey

In 2021, in partnership with Metrotech and Conrail, Clear Blue provided Illumient Smart Off-Grid for mission-critical lighting in a railroad switchyard where grid connection was cost-prohibitive. 

Why Smart Off-Grid? 

A failure of lighting in the Conrail switchyard would have dangerous consequences for the railway and the public. To ensure the safe operation of the railway switches, reliable lighting was needed. As the switches are located on the tracks, connecting to the grid to power the lights was going to be disruptive and cost-prohibitive. In addition, because the lights ensured the safety of the switchyard’s operation, downtime of the lights was unaffordable. So, Conrail needed an off-grid solution that was low-cost, and could deliver high reliability and continuous power availability.  

Results 

So, Clear Blue provided 8 Illumient Smart Off-Grid lighting systems for Conrail’s switchyard.  Through energy forecasting and management, Smart Off-Grid lighting systems met the high uptime requirement, and provided reliable lighting for this mission-critical infrastructure. By forecasting the energy generation over the next five days using weather and potential energy data, potential outages were detected in advance, and the systems were remotely and proactively managed to avoid downtime. The project with Conrail demonstrates how Smart Off-Grid can power mission-critical infrastructure for a variety of applications.