The Takoma Park City Council recently voted unanimously to replace all of its traditional streetlights with high-efficiency LED fixtures, according to an announcement on the city’s website.
There are 1,505 streetlights in the city, and the replacement fixtures could save up to $100,000 per year in energy and maintenance costs, according to a Pepco estimate.
Takoma Park currently pays Pepco, which owns the lights, about $233,00 per year for streetlights, including about $53,000 paid to WGL for wind-powered electricity.
“Today we take a huge step forward as a community in fighting climate change and reducing our energy consumption,” said Mayor Kate Stewart about the decision. “Converting all of our streetlights to LED is the equivalent of eliminating 912,031 miles driven by car, each year. This project will also reduce our light pollution, increase public safety, and save us money. Making this switch has been a community effort and is an example of our long-standing commitment to sustainability and innovation.”
The fixtures selected for the project are 3,000K and will range in wattage from 24 Watts for residential streets, to 135 Watts in high traffic commercial areas. All of the fixtures will be International Dark-Sky Association Certified, which will reduce light pollution in the city.
The project is expected to cost $372,000 and the council expects to receive a $260,000 rebate from the EmPOWER Maryland program.
The new LED streetlight fixtures were selected taking into account the Illumination Engineering Society of North American guidelines for illumination levels and will help create more uniform lighting at the street and sidewalk level, correcting areas that are currently over or under lit, the city said.
Pepco is also providing additional field-installable shields to address instances where light from the new fixtures is found to shine directly into the windows of adjacent properties.
Updates on the project will be available online.
Photo of an example of an LED streetlight published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareALike license.