We have all gotten used to having lights to guide us down the road or down the sidewalk, but do you know how much electricity it takes to light that path? Many American’s have no idea what it takes to keep common area lighting going, but your cities and counties do. If you were to ask them how much it costs they would most likely state…TOO MUCH!

Cities have held back on making the leap to LED streetlights, since it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. Many city councils and or county supervisors get hung up on the price tag and vote no, but there are many more added benefits to making the change than one would think. When streetlights are upgraded to LED streetlights cities will gain more than energy savings and energy usage. They will be improving light pollution, wasted lighting and public safety. Many may doubt that the items listed above can be improved with just lights, but I am here to prove it to you!

Most of the older streetlights that you see today were installed in the 1970’s and give off an orange hue. The hue is caused by the lights containing sodium, which takes a lot of energy to keep lit.  Estimates show that for outdoor parking and roadway lighting the US spends around $10 Billion dollars’ each year. That same amount that goes to those outdoor lighting structures would be able to power around 6 million homes.  [i]   Besides the conservation of energy look at the dollars and cents that would be saved. That is a large chunk of money that a city or county could put toward a large improvement project.

When a city decides to make the switch to LED streetlights they would be able to use 60% less electricity. One such success story was featured in SF Bay. The City of San Jose is retrofitting 63,000 of their streetlights by the year 2016. [ii] It is one of the biggest lighting retrofits in the country. The city is doing a two part retrofit with the first part consisting of 18,100 lights and comes at a cost of $10.5 million. The city is working with PG&E on their streetlights program, which will provide around $900,000 in rebates once all is said and done. With the incentive taken into consideration the city will cut the big price tag down to $9.6 million. Not too shabby of a savings in my book.

Besides the money and energy savings cities can improve light pollution and wasted light as well. Having LED streetlights allows the lighting to be directed to where you would like the lighting to go to. [iii] Along with having directional light LED’s are able to deliver a more even light to the area being lit. With more even light you do not get the glowing sensation like you would with the older orange lights.

Now when it comes to improving public safety street lights help to improve pedestrian safety and traffic safety. With well thought out plans of street lights pedestrian can become more visible along the sidewalks as well as in the crosswalks or roadways. When it comes to traffic safety improved lighting would be a no brainer. With well-lit roadways and intersections you have improved visibility of vehicles. Most of your high lit areas would be those that have high traffic, high volume and dangerous or blind curves.

Though city officials would receive praise for making such large investments and upgrades they can also receive national recognition. Just this year President Obama launched the Presidential Challenge for Advanced Outdoor Lighting. This challenge is to help push municipalities to make the upgrade to better outdoor lighting. For those cities and local governments that would like to gain that recognition and complete the work they will be listed on the white house partners listing as well as gain press attention.