For decades, innovators have experimented with placing data centres in increasingly unconventional locations: Microsoft sank an entire facility beneath the ocean surface, while Elon Musk has floated the idea of launching data infrastructure into orbit. Now, a United Kingdom-based technology firm is pioneering a new approach that turns ubiquitous street infrastructure into a network of distributed computing power, with a landmark deal to roll out 50,000 units in a Nigerian state already sealed.
Warwickshire-headquartered Conflow Power Group (CPG) has developed the iLamp, a solar-powered connected smart lamppost designed to operate both as standard street lighting and a revenue-generating node in a decentralized AI data centre. When thousands of iLamps are networked together, the company says their combined low-power processing capacity can deliver the functional equivalent of a traditional centralized data centre, while cutting emissions by avoiding draws on fossil-fuel powered national electricity grids.
Each unit is fitted with a cylindrical solar panel that charges an on-board battery, which in turn powers an energy-efficient AI-capable processor. CPG chairman Edward Fitzpatrick explained to the BBC’s Tech Life programme that recent advances from chip giant NVIDIA have made the concept feasible. “NVIDIA is the company that’s created a small enough chip, powered with 15 watts of power, so it can be powered by solar, and we can put that inside a street light,” Fitzpatrick said.
Beyond their AI computing function, the smart lampposts integrate AI-powered surveillance capabilities that expand their use cases. For the Nigerian deployment, each iLamp will come equipped with a camera able to identify parking violations, speeding motorists, and drivers who do not wear seatbelts. Smaller-scale trials of the technology are already underway in the car park of Warwick Hospital in the UK, where the units provide CCTV monitoring and automatic number plate recognition. Fitzpatrick added that the technology could eventually be used to locate wanted or missing persons via facial recognition, with final-stage negotiations ongoing to deploy the full feature set with public schools and local governments in Florida, U.S.
The inclusion of facial recognition capabilities has already sparked potential privacy concerns, with critics highlighting longstanding risks of algorithmic bias, misuse of surveillance data, and erosion of personal privacy. In response, CPG emphasized that it will only roll out facial recognition functionality in formal partnership with relevant regulatory authorities, and in full alignment with all local and national privacy and security laws. Fitzpatrick even suggested the connected lampposts could open up new forms of public interaction, saying: “you could walk past the streetlight, put your two fingers up like a victory sign and that could be voting for something. That could be a poll which you could put out onto social media”.
The project comes as rising energy and water consumption from AI systems has emerged as a major global environmental concern. Some estimates already put the total annual energy use of global AI infrastructure on par with the entire United Kingdom’s annual electricity consumption, with water use for data centre cooling also drawing growing scrutiny. CPG’s solar-powered distributed model aims to address this carbon footprint issue, but industry experts have cautioned that the technology is not a wholesale replacement for large-scale centralized data centres.
John Booth, managing director of sustainability consultancy Carbon3IT Ltd and a member of BCS, the UK’s Chartered Institute for IT, noted that the iLamp model fills a specific niche rather than replacing traditional infrastructure. “The iLamps could have value as a relatively low-cost solution that can be used for small AI applications in conjunction with other larger sites,” Booth told the BBC.
Veteran data centre industry academic Professor Ian Bitterlin echoed this assessment, pointing out that decentralized street-side nodes cannot match the performance of large facilities built for training cutting-edge large language models. A key limiting factor, Bitterlin explained, is the physical distance between individual lampposts, which creates latency that makes high-speed coordinated computing for large AI tasks unfeasible. He also flagged physical security as a major ongoing concern, a challenge that Fitzpatrick openly acknowledges. “If people realise that there’s a $2,000 unit inside there they might try and steal it,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that CPG has engineered the units to permanently disable (or “fry”) the processor if it is improperly removed from the lamppost.
Despite their limitations for large-scale AI training, Bitterlin noted that the iLamps could fill a growing need for edge computing infrastructure. As more AI applications require processing power located close to end-users, the lampposts could act as accessible access points that connect users to larger, more powerful centralized data centres running big AI models, similar to how mobile phone masts support cellular networks.
For the landmark Katsina State deployment in Nigeria, the state government will generate ongoing revenue by leasing the collective processing capacity of the iLamp network to AI companies. After an initial three-year period, CPG will take a 20% cut of all revenue generated by the network. Fitzpatrick described Africa as the company’s primary target market for scaling the technology, citing abundant solar resources, supportive regulatory frameworks, and strong demand for basic street lighting infrastructure as key advantages. “Africa is our prime target because there’s plenty of sunshine which is great, they’ve got more relaxed rules and regulations, they want us to put the street lights on the street,” he said.
While the iLamps will be manufactured in Morocco, Taiwan and Latvia, CPG is also building a local assembly factory in Katsina to support the deployment. In a statement welcoming the deal, Dr Hafiz Ibrahim Ahmad, Special Adviser on Power and Energy to the Katsina State government, called the project a milestone for African tech innovation, saying the state is now “home to the only distributed AI data centre of its kind anywhere on the African continent”. He added that the project would deliver wide-ranging benefits beyond new tech infrastructure, including “safer streets, real-time crime and terrorism prevention, free public internet and a revenue stream that flows back into the state”.