West Sussex is going to roll out LED.
Release date: 11 July 2019
A street lighting conversion scheme, which will cut electricity usage, maintenance costs and carbon emissions, is set to be rolled out across West Sussex over the next six years.
Converting 64,000 street lights to LED lamps will cost about £26.5million during a 25-year loan: but the total reduction in electricity and maintenance costs will save the council £90.1million over that same period.
Under the scheme, a remote monitoring system will be introduced to control the lights and also monitor and identify faults. This will help cut costs due to fewer site visits and reducing the need for temporary traffic lights and traffic management during maintenance - therefore reducing delays for road users.
Roger Elkins, Cabinet Member for Highways and Infrastructure, said: “This is a ‘win, win’ for residents and the environment, with reduced electricity and maintenance costs and a 17 per cent decrease in the council’s total carbon emissions.
“The decision to roll-out the scheme, which is subject to the council’s usual call-in period, comes soon after we launched our online climate change campaign. It shows our clear commitment to the West Sussex Climate Pledge and the practical, cost-effective measures we are taking to cut carbon emissions
“The LED lamps are also designed to have a cleaner ‘cut-off’ of light, so they are efficient at directing light where it’s needed, which also supports a darker sky initiative .”
LED technology has improved in recent years and these units can generate the same amount of light as traditional lanterns but using a lot less energy. They also have a much longer ‘lifespan’: traditional lighting needs lamp changes every four years – LEDs will last around 100,000 hours, which equates to approximately 20 years in our existing part-night areas.
There are already about 2,000 LED lamps in use in the county, with the majority of the South Downs National Park converted to help the dark sky initiative.The PFI only commenced 9 years ago, and West Sussex has relatively low energy discharge lighting anyway, with many residential streets having 36w and 55w compact fluorescent and a long established part night scheme (never went full night decades ago when other counties went full night).