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| Greening Stamford's streets with new LED lights  Faced with shrinking budgets and expanding responsibilities, municipalities are being asked to do more with less when it comes to city improvements. The City of Stamford was up for the challenge when it began exploring how to light its town more efficiently. The resulting solution, a switch to energy-efficient LED streetlights, will save the city more than $146,000 annually. To jump-start the project, the city was awarded an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, an initiative funding energy efficiency and conservation programs across the country. The grant paved the way for the city to replace more than 1,000 high-pressure sodium-based streetlights in the city's main corridors with GE's Evolve LED Roadway Medium Cobrahead (ERMC) fixtures. The project, Connecticut's largest installation of LED streetlights, means a dramatic change in energy consumption for the city."The new LED streetlights are making an important contribution to Stamford's sustainability efforts, as well as curbing costs and allowing us to light our beautiful streets with a really aesthetically pleasing light source," says Nancy Pipicelli, energy/utility manager for the City of Stamford. "We looked at several manufacturers and thought the GE Cobrahead lights offered the best quality in terms of color temperature (4300 K), CRI, lighting uniformity and reduced glare." The award-winning GE LED ERMC system provides improved horizontal and vertical lighting uniformity, reduced glare and improved lighting control. The lights also consume just 95-157 watts per fixture, which is less than half that of consumed wattage under the city's previously used high-pressure sodium vapor systems. Their estimated service life of more than 10 years (50,000-hour rated life) means that maintenance costs for the city also will decrease. Thanks to the energy savings from the new lights, Stamford will receive a $357,000 rebate from Connecticut Light and Power, an electrical provider for the state of Connecticut. The city plans to use those funds to install an additional 467 energy-efficient streetlights using the GE LED Cobrahead technology next year. write your comments about the article :: © 2011 Construction News :: home page |