Power cameras/bridge on parking lot light pole

I'm looking at trying to put together a proposal for improving and expanding the surveillance coverage of our parking lots as we tend to have numerous hit and runs and thefts. So this involves putting cameras and wireless bridges on a couple of the parking lot light poles.

The issue at hand is the fact that these poles are on a timer. Is there anything out there that can be used to reliably provide power to these devices during the day when the timer cuts off? If I remember correctly, I think one of our maintenance guys said the lights are 270v? if that helps any.

Welcome to the world of batteries. The lights are being run @ 277v (or 480v if they are using 2 hots). Use this link to figure out the size of the battery you need. Then you charge it via solar or the poles. Alternatively, you can pull another set of wires to provide constant power to the poles

If there's conduit running out to the poles I would recommend pulling fiber cable instead of doing wireless bridges.

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In the parking lot we did, their electrician moved the timers from inside the main building to the bottom of the poles so we had a 24/7 electrical connection there without having to run any new cables (other than the fiber cable of course).

They wanted 4 x 4k cameras per pole so at each pole we used a 5 port PoE switch (along with the the products linked above) and a single fiber run.

-Jamie M.

Thanks guys! I appreciate the feedback on this. Though I'm sure there is, I'll check to see if there's conduit ran to the poles. Is it a code violation to run fiber in the same conduit as electrical?

I doubt I'll be able to talk the maintenance guys into putting timers on the poles as there's over a dozen light poles that are run off this one timer. I might be able to convince them into running new electrical wiring to a couple of the poles to dedicate for the cameras, even if it is more expensive.

inforlonghaul said:

Thanks guys! I appreciate the feedback on this. Though I'm sure there is, I'll check to see if there's conduit ran to the poles. Is it a code violation to run fiber in the same conduit as electrical?

I doubt I'll be able to talk the maintenance guys into putting timers on the poles as there's over a dozen light poles that are run off this one timer. I might be able to convince them into running new electrical wiring to a couple of the poles to dedicate for the cameras, even if it is more expensive.

Click to expand...

Where I live (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) it's against code to run low voltage cables (i.e. Cat6, even shielded!) in the same conduit as high voltage cables but there is no problem running fiber cable in the same conduit (doesn't need to be shielded, but order it with the thicker 3.0mm jacket to protect it better).

I asked their electrician to run new electrical cable just to power our cameras but he said it was the same issue as running Cat6, the 110v cable he was going to run for us is too low voltage to run alongside the 277v light electrical cables so he said it would be easier to move the timers rather than run another pair of 277v cables and use a step down inverter, etc.

At this place they had a staggered timer setup, i.e. one set of lights would click on then after approx 2 minutes the next would kick on, etc. so there was a timer for each pole (6 poles in total).

You want to avoid batteries at all cost.

-Jamie M.

toysareforboys said:

I asked their electrician to run new electrical cable just to power our cameras but he said it was the same issue as running Cat6, the 110v cable he was going to run for us is too low voltage to run alongside the 277v light electrical cables so he said it would be easier to move the timers rather than run another pair of 277v cables and use a step down inverter, etc.

Click to expand...

Too bad..NEC in the U.S. allows 120v in same conduit as 277v as long as conductors are properly color-coded and identified.

Great that he agreed to 'move the timers' so you could have hot power 24/7.

Fiber is great idea, be sure to label it NOTICEABLY above and in hand-holes and in pull boxes as fiber and inform maintenance staff to NOT to be pulling, yanking, etc. on the fiber. Our early fiber's jacket circa 1990 was black, looked like a #8; today's orange is a much better warning.

+1 on avoiding batteries....big headache that keeps on giving!