Public sector LED street lighting is an emerging market with tremendous potential for local governments to significantly reduce electricity costs, environmental impacts and maintenance while enhancing lighting quality. Technology is not the major issue. The real challenge is money and appropriate funding models will be critical drivers in the transformation of street lighting. Upgrading existing city street lighting is a capital intensive investment undertaking at a time when municipal governments are fiscally challenged. This toolkit is provided as a resource to help move these projects forward from start to successful implementation.
Lighting a Path to Energy and Dollar Savings for Your Community – Why you should be considering LED street lighting retrofits
Congress mandated DOE to accelerate LED technology use. “It is estimated that switching to LED lighting over the next two decades could save the country $250 billion in energy costs over that period, reduce the electricity consumption for lighting by nearly one half.”
A recent Pike Research report highlights to expected growth of LED street lighting – “Dramatically falling costs and rising efficiencies of LED lamps are driving up sales. Costs have fallen as much as 50% over the last 18 months and are expected to continue falling for years to come. LED lamps allow for better dimming control than standard streetlights, and their electronics allow for easy integration of control nodes. Rising sales of LED lamps will therefore drive up the adoption of smart street lighting systems. Pike Research expects the market for smart street lighting to grow steadily over the remainder of this decade. Shipments of smart street lighting systems, which will be under 200 worldwide for 2012, will reach more than 1,100 in 2020.
“US Conference of Mayors endorses the use of solid-state LED streetlight luminaires for lighting public streets and rights-of-way...”
Interested in getting started – here are some things you should know.
Governing Senior Fellow, Bob Graves interview with David Gassaway, management analyst, City of Rancho Cordova, California. Get a hands-on perspective on what it takes to start a citywide street lighting upgrade project.
Recent articles highlight experiences from the City of Beaumont, California and San Francisco, California.
Basics on LED streetlights
Analysis basics – doing your research (what is the scope of the project and under what terms does it make sense to do it)
Photometric analysis of current installation
Inventory what you have
Current costs for power and maintenance
Financial Analysis Tool – MSSLC Retrofit Financial Analysis Tool
Go – No Go. Is there a cost-effective, realistic project to move forward?
Launching a LED Street Lighting Retrofit Project
Technology and Features
Using LEDs
Specifications, Requests for Information (RFIs), Request for Proposals (RFPs) & Procurement
Working out the specifications for your installation Model Specification for LED Roadway Luminaires
Best practices – model RFIs/RFPs
Financing Strategies – finding the money (and terms) to do the project
Funding sources for you project may come from one or several combined sources including: state and federal government grants, utility programs, Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), as well as manufacturer’s programs. An excellent resource can be found in Chapter 4 Financial Analysis & Approaches of a guide entitled Next Generation Streetlights published jointly by the Bay Area Climate Collaborative, The California Lighting Technology Center and Energy Solutions.
Bob Graves is a Senior Fellow principally focused on energy and infrastructure with the Governing Institute, president and editor-at-large of Green Technology and co-founder of e.Republic, the parent organization of Governing.
E-mail: bgraves@governing.com
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