As electronic wizardry goes, it could have come straight from the pages of a Harry Potter novel.

A Westcountry entrepreneur has developed a device that can switch public street lamps on and off at the touch of a button, not unlike the magic "delumininator" dreamt up by J K Rowling.

Nigel Graver's Dial2Lite incorporates technology that enables residents or local authorities to control town or village lighting through their mobile or landline phone.

The system enables them to connect to a remote device that switches their nearest street lamp on.

By pressing a speed-dial button stored on their telephone, callers are "recognised" and nearby lights will automatically come on, before switching off after about 15 minutes.

Mr Graver believes the gadget could be a boon for residents in areas deemed by local authorities too remote to light cost-effectively.

He said lighting on demand could also provide a solution to irksome street lamps that always seemed to come on in the morning and go off when it was dark.

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He said: "It costs no more to install than a traditional timing device and will also calculate and tell users how much each street lamp has cost per month to run. Street lighting can be an issue for residents in areas where the lighting is switched off late at night."

The Dial2Lite works by storing a remote master unit with the phone number of every resident or council worker registered to access a given lamp post. When a user contacts the unit by pressing their phone's speed-dial button, it relays a message to a responder unit installed into the designated street light.

Because the master unit recognises the signal sent from registered handsets before the call connects, the service will not incur phone charges.

Mr Graver said: "As most residents in most locations around the world have already paid for the streetlights, the suggestion of paying again to switch them on would meet with some resistance.

"We were made aware of other systems that worked on a similar concept, but required the use of passwords and also cost the user a call charge every time the lights were switched on."

Mr Graver now hopes to initiate talks with local authorities to adopt the product, which is manufactured by his company, Witura, in China and Malaysia.

He says it will work over "97 per cent of the country", regardless of the phone network.

"If you were using it for a couple of lights in a village, it would cost around £300 to install and nothing to run," he said.

"The whole concept is designed to be as simple as possible. If adopted by local authorities, they could satisfy the thousands of residents who are now left in the dark, and also save money and reduce their carbon footprint."

The system is also able to calculate the monthly cost of running each individual lamp.

A similar system designed by Dial2Open to open electronic gates has already become widely used by manufacturers.