External artificial lighting system

The external artificial lighting system covers all 86 settlements (1 town and 85 villages). It also includes part of the national resort Pamporovo and the Raykovski livadi area.

The external artificial lighting system serves population of over 27 505 people and more than 70 000 town visitors per year.
The external and artificial lighting system includes the lighting of streets, boulevards, squares, parks, city highways, and highways with their associated road junctions, tunnels, bridges, underpasses. The most important elements and equipment used in the design of the outdoor lighting systems are lighting fixtures, light sources, poles, tube arms, cables and wires, control cabinets and switchboards, and others.  

The installed luminaires in the municipality are 7 538 in total. According to Municipality data, 2 729 of them have high-pressure mercury lamps with power from 125 W to 400 W, 5 033 of the luminaires are with HVAC with power from 50 W to 150 W. The park luminaires have high-pressure mercury lamps and metal halide lamps and most of them have power from 20 W to 55 W. In 2009, a general reconstruction was carried out in Smolyan, as replacement of the luminaires was completed based on a general technical design project. All old mercury luminaires have been replaced with new ones with NLVN, MHL and KLL. The main light sources are NLVN. From the end of 2009 until present day no actions have been taken for group replacement of the light sources and PRA of the luminaire. Only a single replacement of the light sources is performed. Non-compliance with the BDS EN13201: 2016 standard (but also with the BDS EN 13201: 2005 standard, in which the system was introduced) is observed everywhere - non-compliance with the minimum required illumination due to inadequate maintenance of the light source.

In the municipality settlements, no replacement of luminaires has been carried out since the date of their commissioning.

The maintenance of the lighting system is limited to replacement of the burned-out lamps. The luminaires are not cleaned which leads to their efficiency being very low and the light distribution curves are strongly deformed, because of which their efficiency is very impaired. 

The cable network is in poor condition. It consists of underground and overhead conductors. On many of the cable lines of the branches of the underground street network, only one of the three existing conductors is implemented. The infrastructure that allows the installation of luminaires (pole network) provides full coverage of the existing street network.

The outdoor artificial lighting infrastructure consists of steel, reinforced concrete and park (metal) poles, some of which perform the some of architectural elements of the environment. The pillars are old, relatively well maintained, but it is necessary that the boxes at the base of the each pole are paid attention. The street lighting poles are 9601 and are reinforced concrete and steel pipe with the height of 4 to 16 m and with good appearance. The city is dominated by steel pipe pillars. The distance between the pillars is on average of 30 m.

The brackets on which the streetlights are fixed are mounted on the poles above the overhead electrical network.

The electricity distribution network is air with 400 / 230 V voltage, mounted on reinforced concrete poles. All luminaires, buildings and other sites in the settlements are supplied from this network. In the central part of Smolyan the electricity distribution network is cable. The power supply of the luminaires in parks and gardens is also cable. In each village there are one or more substations of 20/0, 4 kV. The street lighting electric boards in many of the settlements are still in these substations and are to be taken out and shaped as separate electric boards for street lighting, and to be mounted near the substations or on one of their walls. The electricity meters in Smolyan are double-rate, and in the villages they are mostly single-rate. The street lighting is controlled by a total of 300 cassettes.  

The maintenance of the outdoor artificial lighting systems on the territory of Smolyan is carried out with Smolyan Municipality funds.