Thursday, October 31, 2013

New Energy Efficient LED Streetlights Coming To Your Block

And every other block in our fair city:
 In an energy-saving effort, the city plans to replace all of its 250,000 streetlights with brighter, whiter, energy-saving, light-emitting diode fixtures in one of the nation’s largest retrofitting projects, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, said in a news conference on Thursday.
I've been eagerly awaiting this for years, but this is one example of when it's good to be a later adopter.  The quality of LED bulbs has improved remarkably at the same time that prices have fallen dramatically.  And now:
The news conference was on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, where lights have already been replaced, expecting to save more than $70,000 and nearly 248,000 kilowatt-hours a year in energy. Unlike standard lights, which last six years, LED bulbs can burn for 20 years before they need to be replaced, the administration said, and the project is expected to save $14 million a year in energy and maintenance costs.
The project, which began as a pilot program in 2009, will be completed in three phases. The full removal will start in Brooklyn with 80,000 “cobra-headed” streetlights, with their sodium high-pressured bulbs, then move on to Queens and, eventually, the rest of the city.  
I hope at the same time they're going with a lamp design that reduces light pollution by doing a better job of focusing the light downward.

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