NYC Progressing In Retrofit Project To Replace 250,000 Conventional Street Lights With LEDs

Picking up the torch from the Bloomberg administration, New York City is proceeding with plans to retrofit the city’s 250,000 standard street lights with energy efficient LEDs (light-emitting diodes) by 2017.

Upcoming work will involve replacing about 24,400 lights along all major corridors including as the Belt Parkway, Grand Central Parkway, Cross Bronx Expressway, and other highways.

New York City replacing conventional necklace lighting on bridges with LEDs. Photo courtesy of the G4 Report: Your Guide to LED Lighting.

This will be included in the first phase of a three phase plan to replace the city’s standard “cobra head” high pressure sodium street lights across the five boroughs.

Following the replacement of the roadway lighting, the plan will also address decorative fixtures in the city’s business and commercial districts.  

These actions will be among the last legacies of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, before he left office. The mayor projected that the plan will save the city a yearly total of about $14 million when fully implemented – $6 million in annual energy savings and $8 million in maintenance savings.

The outgoing administration said compared to current standard bulbs which last about six years, the “LEDs can last up to 20 years before needing replacements, potentially producing up to an 80 percent savings on maintenance.”

This project is the first to receive a funding of $10 million through the Accelerated Conservation and Efficiency (ACE) initiative.

ACE is a $100 million competitive program launched this fall by the Department of Citywide Administration Services to expedite projects by city agencies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These include energy efficiency as well as clean heat retrofit projects.

In the lighting project, the city most recently installed retrofits along several key corridors, including the Eastern Parkway’s pedestrian lights between Grand Army Plaza and Ralph Avenue in Brooklyn.

Other retrofits have included Manhattan’s FDR Drive, along Central Park’s pedestrian paths; and on the necklace lights that adorn the cables of the East River Bridges.

The LED initiatives along the Eastern Parkway, along with the upgrades to the Central Park pedestrian path cost $548,000 and were paid for by the Mayor’s Energy Fund, and are “estimated to produce up to 62 percent in energy savings,” according to calculations from the Bloomberg administration.

The Bloomberg administration participated in numerous studies to determine the energy saving capacities of LED lights.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Transportation partnered with the Climate Group and the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct two separate studies to collect data on the performance of LED fixtures on the FDR Drive and Central Park as part of a global study to quantify the benefits for cities to use LED lights.

The Bloomberg administration reported that, “The test measured factors such as illumination, color and energy consumption, among others. Both replacement trials showed significant energy savings, up to 50 percent and 83 percent, respectively.”

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