LED Street Lighting Upgrade to Save City Thousands

Many cities around the country, and the globe for that matter, have saved enormously on energy cost and consumption by upgrading their street lighting to LED.  Recently, the city of West Richland, Washington completed an LED street lighting upgrade spanning the entire city, a project that is anticipated to reduce overall electricity consumption by 61% while saving the city $67,000 a year in energy cost.

In addition to the replacement of over 1000 high pressure sodium lights, the city installed a wireless monitoring and control system that will play a role in reducing energy cost.  Instead of paying flat rate utilities, the city will be billed according to consumption, which will reduce cost even further, (lowering the city's average cost per kWh by approximately 26%.)  Additionally, the monitoring system will allow the city to "implement dimming strategies," that should lower lighting consumption even further, by 10-20%.

There truly was no down side to this project for the city.  In this instance, the LED efficiency upgrade was considered "budget-neutral" for the city, as funding from energy efficiency grants and incentives from the city's electric utility helped cover cost.

In a statement regarding the project, Mayor Brent Gerry says, "It makes good economic and business sense for the City to install new LED street lights and a wireless control system that reduces energy use by more than 60 percent while improving illumination, safety and addressing dark sky considerations. In addition to dramatic energy and maintenance savings, the control system will also enable us to move to a lower cost metered rate schedule that provides further cost reductions.”

Photo via EquipmentWorld.com

Read Derek Markham's article for CleanTechnica.com to learn more details.