LED streetlights are to illuminate the dark in a most crime-ridden block in the city of San Francisco. And the Mayor Gavin Newsom will visit the section today to test the energy-saving light source by lighting four street lights using his iPhone.

LED street lights consume much less power than traditional streetlights. And the lights with computer chips are networked over power lines thus can be shut off when no one is around. Besides, LED lights require far less maintenance and are tough to break. But these are not the most important for this weirdest section in the city.

There are actually more usages you can explore in the network. In Quebec, police can detect when accidents occurred with the help of smart streetlights with sensors. Applications for pedestrian safety are attempted to be added to networked streetlights in Oslo. These lights could also be connected to security cameras. Anchorage, Alaska set up networked streetlights last year.

BetaLED had made the LED street lights. And Echelon has developed and installed the broadband-over-power line technology which links the streetlights. Broadband-over-power line costs more, but it also can carry more data. ZigBee and BPL companies are already working on interoperability.