- The iLamp is a solar-powered street light that also functions as an off-grid, energy-efficient AI data center.
- Its goal is to reduce AI’s massive electricity and water use by distributing computing across city infrastructure.
- Conflow Power is already launching iLamp offerings worth millions, including security technology for thousands of Florida schools
A British green technology company has built something that looks like a streetlight, but acts more like a climate-aware brain. iLamp, developed by Conflow Power Group, is a solar-powered lighting system that also functions as a distributed AI data center. But it doesn’t connect to the network.
It may seem simple, but the iLamp arrives at a critical time. According to the International Energy Agency, AI data centers already consume 415 terawatt-hours of electricity per year. That figure is expected to more than double by 2030, reaching around 945 TWh, more than the total annual electricity consumption of many medium-sized countries. In this context, the idea of a self-sufficient solar pole that handles both lighting and computing with artificial intelligence has obvious appeal.
The core idea is to take ordinary streetlights and turn them into a network of solar-powered smart micro data centers. Each iLamp is powered by a self-cleaning solar panel, capable of generating between 200 and 600 watts depending on local conditions, and uses just 80 watts to operate, leaving more than enough surplus to power the integrated Nvidia Jetson AI processors, which consume a modest 15 watts each.
“While tech giants rush to build nuclear power plants to feed their AI addiction, we’ve built something smarter. Right now, to power AI, companies like OpenAI or Google Gemini need a huge building full of GPUs and have to pump huge amounts of electricity into it, along with a huge supply of water for the cooling system. This is inefficient and we need a smart solution,” Edward Fitzpatrick, director of Conflow Power. “There are streetlights everywhere in our towns and cities. By replacing them with iLamps equipped with Nvidia Jetson processors, you create a huge distributed data center that is clean, consumes no water and has low latency because the servers are close to the users. We are already in advanced negotiations with several large companies and world governments to make this a reality.”
AI streetlights
AI providers pay to use the computing power built into each iLamp. This means that, instead of facing an ever-increasing energy bill, municipalities and private operators can earn revenue from their lighting infrastructure.
Conflow Power has adopted a license-based business model. Territories are divided and exclusive licenses granted, allowing local partners to develop their own markets. Last year, Conflow sold the exclusive Florida license to iLamp Florida LLC for $45 million. Last month, that license was split again, this time to iLamp Secure Inc., which paid $80 million for a 50-year deal to equip 4,400 Florida schools with security-enhanced iLamps. That single deployment carries an estimated addressable market value of $777 million.
Those particular units are more than just light and computing: they include AI-enabled gunshot detection, facial and license plate recognition, fire and smoke early warnings, vehicle speed tracking, and private wireless connectivity. Conflow is also working to equip UK and French rugby clubs with a new version of iLamp designed for sports performance. These poles come equipped with AI-powered tactical cameras and proper lighting for training.
Of course, not everyone is going to pay for the smart lamp, no matter how green or smart it is. And there are questions to be answered about surveillance, especially as facial recognition and license plate scanning have increasingly been shown to be tools prone to abuse.
But what iLamp suggests is that perhaps we don’t need to build our AI future from scratch. Maybe we just need to modernize the parts of our cities that are already there and ready to do more.
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