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Last updated: Tuesday, July 7, 2009

At the beginning of the Harry Potter series, the wizard Albus Dumbledore uses a magical “put-outer” to extinguish the streetlights in young Harry’s neighborhood. Now the municipal power company in Lemgo, Germany, is using a reversal of that idea to create a potential global business. Stadtwerke Lemgo, which provides electricity and other services to the city of Lemgo in north-central Germany and the surrounding area, is looking for partners to help it sell a locally developed technology called dial4light. The system lets residents use their mobile phones to turn on streetlights, which means the city can leave them off the rest of the time and save money and energy. “We’re doing something for the environment and the budget,” says Friedrich Ehlert, mayor of Drentrup, a town of 9,000 near Lemgo that was first to test dial4light. The idea came from Dieter Grote, an advertising executive who lives in Drentrup. Back in 2006, Grote was worried about the safety of his children after the town began switching off streetlights at night to save money. Around the same time, Grote, whose specialty is advertising for the lighting industry, happened to visit a public-services exhibit in Lemgo. While walking through the display, he noticed an old electricity meter that could be turned on and off according to need. “And that was the moment of inspiration,” Grote recalls. “Why shouldn’t it be possible to turn on and off streetlights like the lights in your living room?” Numbers on the Lampposts Grote approached Stadtwerke Lemgo with the idea. Managers of the taxpayer-owned utility liked it and enlisted help from A&H Meyer, a Drentrup company that makes lighting equipment. The system they invented works like this: A resident dials a number posted on a lamppost. The call goes to a computer at the power company. The caller taps in a…

Read more here:
In Germany, Switch On the Street Lamps Yourself

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