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Over a five-year period, the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Street Lighting will replace 140,000 existing streetlight fixtures in the city with LED (light-emitting diode) units that not only will improve LA's lighting quality and reduce its electricity use, but also will help the city to save money in the process.

LEDs Last 10 to 12 Years
While typical streetlight lamps last from four to six years, LED fixtures have a longer life span, estimated from 10 to 12 years. The new, white-light LED streetlight units are more durable and damage-resistant than other technologies. This not only will reduce the frequency and cost to repair streetlight fixtures, but also will provide LA with considerable savings in labour and material.

The improved equipment life also means that fixtures will more reliably light streets and sidewalks for city residents. In addition, LA is committed to using LED fixtures that will ease what is known as sky glow - the artificial illumination of the night sky.

"If you have ever been to Death Valley National Park and looked up on a clear night, you would see that the stars seem to be dimmer than they were when I was a child. But they are not getting dimmer, really - the rest of the sky is getting brighter because of all the lights from Los Angeles and Las Vegas and other surrounding cities and communities," President Clinton said. "Now, thanks to the work of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting, and my Foundation's Climate Initiative, the stars over Death Valley may again shine more brightly."

Once this overhaul is fully complete, LA will save electricity expended on street lighting in the city by a minimum of 40 percent and reduce carbon emissions by approximately 40,500 tons a year, which is the equivalent of taking 6,700 passenger vehicles off the road every year. Over a seven-year period, the city will save a total of $48 million and reduce carbon emissions by 197,000 tons.

After the loan is repaid in seven years, LA will continue to save $10 million annually as a direct result of this lighting retrofit project. In addition, this loan will have no adverse impact on the city, as the loan payments will be covered in full by savings from current energy and maintenance costs.

This LED retrofit project also will include the installation of remote monitoring units at all 140,000 streetlights replaced in the city. These devices automatically will report streetlight failures directly to the Bureau of Street Lighting for immediate repair, thus enabling its staff to optimise its maintenance services. N

How Every City Can Benefit
Street lighting costs represent one of the largest components of a city government's utility bill, often accounting for 10 percent to 38 percent of the total bill. With nearly 35 million streetlights in the United States, about 1 percent of all electricity is used by street lighting systems.

"If every city followed the example of Los Angeles and reduced the electricity used by their streetlights by 50 percent, it would be equivalent to eliminating over 2.5 of those coal plants per year," President Clinton said. "We would do that while saving taxpayers money. And by doing that, we would also reclaim our night sky."

Until recently, white-light LEDs were not technologically advanced enough to provide significant energy savings when used for roadway fixtures. These systems now, though, are able to upend the standard for cost-effective outdoor lighting, particularly when used in combination with new streetlight control and monitoring systems. CCI currently is building upon its efforts with LA and working with other cities on large-scale street lighting retrofit projects.