LED road lighting advent set to bring Christmas cheer to councils and ratepayers

Price reductions in LED lighting over the past year, new Australasian regulatory standards making way for LED road lighting early in the New Year, and international examples of huge cost savings for cities switching to LED road lighting is set to bring some Christmas cheer for local and regional councils and their ratepayers in New Zealand.

The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) are sponsoring an inaugural road lighting conference in New Zealand in March next year, with the endorsement of Local Government NZ and the Road Controlling Authorities Forum, to help advance local understanding of the latest technologies and cost savings available.

Conference organiser Strategic Lighting Partners (SLP) Ltd says energy efficient LED road lighting has the potential to save councils from 20-45% of their overall electricity and lighting infrastructure maintenance costs, and with falling prices and new AS/NZS road lighting standards expected to allow for conversion to LED by early 2014, New Zealand’s yellow HPS road lighting is rapidly becoming outdated.

SLP director, Bryan King, says, “This is good news for councils and their ratepayers.”

He says conference speakers would include experts who had led the world’s largest urban LED road lighting retrofits, saving the City of Los Angeles USD $10 million a year and Seattle nearly $2.5 million per year so far in electricity and maintenance costs. They would also include international researchers who were identifying links between road lighting levels and accident rates.

Fellow SLP director, Godfrey Bridger, says the company’s consultancy work is confirming councils could save 40-70% of their road lighting and maintenance costs each year with LED, and that road lighting represented about half of a council’s overall electricity costs.

Together with Bryan King, he authored a report that last year identified economic opportunities and efficiencies available from LED road lighting, and they co-authored a second report that suggested better New Zealand road lighting would help reduce the $1.2 billion annual cost to the country of night-time road deaths and injuries.

More information on the conference “Road Lighting 2014: Innovation, Efficiency & Safety” is available at http://roadlightingconference.com/

The Bridger and King report commissioned by the NZ Transport Authority in May 2012, “Strategic Road Lighting Opportunities for New Zealand”, is available at http://www.nzta.govt.nz/consultation/rmtf-interim-report/docs/strategic-road-lighting-opportunities.pdf

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