Green Mountain Power Plans to Go LED

As we all know that new lights that save energy and lower emissions might be coming soon to a street near you.

Green Mountain Power plans to replace worn-out street lights throughout its service area with energy-efficient, long-lasting LEDs. The LED lights have a life span of more than 25 years, compared to the 5 to 7 years for traditional street lamp bulbs.

LEDs are traditionally used in Christmas tree lights, newer flash lights and basketball scoreboards. They use a different technology from standard incandescent bulbs.

“By reducing the amount of electricity that you use by more than half, it eliminates any environmental effects that will be needed to produce that power,” said Dotty Schnure of GMP. “Also, with the lights they’ll be replacing, mercury lights, those lights have mercury in them and have very specific disposal issues. With LED, we’ll be avoiding all the mercury disposal issues.”

GMP submitted the plan to the Vermont Public Service Board. If approved, the lights could be installed as early as March 1.

PITTSBURGH Considers LED Streetlights

It was said from a new study that Pittsburgh needs to replace 40,000 streetlights, and officials have the option of installing LED lights.

According to officials, this would be a big expense now, but could mean big savings later.

The city has already begun to test LED lights by installing 150 in Shadyside and South Side.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh concluded that the city could save millions of dollars by switching to LED lights.

The lights may be a bit more expensive, but they last longer and they’re much more energy efficient than the current lights.

Researchers studied several different options but concluded that LED offered the best bang for the buck. “An average streetlight would last about two years before you have to replace it; an LED light would last 15 years,” said Councilman Bill Peduto. “The energy costs associated with it are about 70 percent less than the regular streetlights. Put those together and you will see savings of nearly $2 million annually.”

Peduto said his goal is for Pittsburgh to become a leader in LED lighting. He hopes the city will begin installing more LED lights by the end of this year.

Green Bulbs Green Traffic Light

According to a member of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance, interest in energy-efficient traffic lights is brightening on Aug. 6.

Forty-three municipalities, including nine in Lackawanna County, have signed up to have incandescent traffic lights replaced with LED — light-emitting diode — bulbs, which require less energy to illuminate and don’t have to be changed as often, said Kurt Bauman, manager of the alliance’s energy assistance program.

“Incandescent bulbs go out more frequently,” he said. “LED bulbs are guaranteed for five years and expected to last 10 years.”

Throop is the latest municipality in the county to approve the switch. It has 17 traffic signals at two intersections — a total of 51 bulbs to be replaced.

Replacement work costs about $3,500 per intersection — 25 to 30 bulbs — including the price of the bulbs and installation, Mr. Bauman said.

Brightness is the most noticeable difference between LED and incandescent bulbs, Mr. Bauman said.

Drivers may also notice a small ring within the light itself, he said.

“They’re somewhat distinguishable,” he said.

LEDs got a trial run in Clarks Summit earlier this year. Mr. Bauman’s organization partially funded the purchase and installation of the lights at four intersections.

“We know that converting incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs offers energy savings,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure that the funding we provided the municipalities would be an incentive.”

A post-project energy audit estimated the town will save $3,600 this year.

The organization has applied for grant money to assist municipalities with the cost of replacing the lights. It would need about $1 million to fully finance projects in all interested municipalities. If necessary, municipalities have to sign a letter agreeing to pay matching funds toward the project.

LED Street Lights Testing in California

The LED Street Lights Testing was hold in California. As we all know that high-efficiency white LED street lights will cut energy use by 30 percent to 60 percent every year.

Garden Grove is testing four 250-watt LED street lights on Civic Center Drive at Acacia Parkway, said Senior Analyst Chau Vu. Whether the city will switch over to LED will depend on how this testing goes, she said.

“In the next six months to one year, we’ll look at how much wattage these lights use up,” she said. “If it does what they say it can do, then it’s definitely worth it for the city. These lights can save a lot in terms of energy and money.”

LED lights are also easy to maintain because they last longer, Vu said. The downside is that they cost significantly more. While a regular street light costs $300 a fixture, LED lights cost about $2,000 a fixture.

LED lights are constructed with 100 percent recycled aluminum, contain no mercury or lead and do not require hazardous waste disposal handling. The city of Los Angeles is testing 100-watt LED lights.

Garden Grove was one of the first cities in the state to install LED lights on traffic signals. These test lights are manufactured by a company called Leotek and were donated to the city by South Coast Lighting.

So, if the tests prove successful, the city should do their best to change all street lights to LED.

LED Light for City Night

Nighttime commuters may notice a bluish glow coming from the ten pairs of street lights lighting their way. Mounted 40 feet above the traffic, similar to those found in stoplights and laser pointers, the lights are not bulbs but rows of LEDs.

“This is the first interstate highway to be lit with LED lighting,” said Kevin Orth, director of sales for Wisconsin-based Beta LED, which makes the lights. LEDs are coming to the streets of Eden Prairie, where officials are replacing the city’s old street lights, and already illuminate the parking lot of a Cub Foods store in St. Paul’s Phalen neighborhood, which last month became the second certified energy-efficient supermarket in the country.

For large projects like these, the long-run savings in energy and maintenance, as well as the environmental concerns, generally outweigh the short-run costs.

This growing use of LEDs by government and industry marks a move away from traditional incandescent bulbs and, more recently, the more-efficient fluorescent lights that have come on the market. Although LEDs cost more to manufacture than other lighting options, they consume a small fraction of the energy of even fluorescent bulbs and last 25 to 30 years.

Lighting still accounts for as much as 20 percent of electricity used around the world, so improving lighting technology by even a little bit can lead to great savings in energy and reductions in greenhouse gases.

China Changes to Taiwan LED makers

It is reported on June 11 that China plans to turn to Taiwan companies to put LED technology into street lights in 10 Chinese cities.

The project aims to cut electric bills in Chinese cities by using LED in city lights. LEDs give off less heat, consume less energy and last longer than traditional lights, according to China’s National Semiconductor Lighting Industry Alliance, which oversees the project to light up China with LEDs. The technology is also inexpensive because it’s used in a range of projects, from Christmas lights and the displays of alarm clocks, DVD players and digital music players, to the backlights in LCD laptop screens.

The agreement was part of deals signed at a two-day conference between LED industry leaders and government officials from Taiwan and China.

Delegates from the conference also signed a letter of intent to work together to promote LED technology, including in research, development, qualification and the creation of new standards. Over 200 Taiwanese companies and 71 Chinese companies took part in an exhibition related to the conference, and around 80 government officials from China attended the event, according to Taiwan’s economics ministry.

The cooperation highlights increased cooperation between Taiwan and China over the past year. A new president elected last year in Taiwan has pushed forward a number of initiatives to strengthen ties with China, mainly economic, a far different tack than the previous administration, which advocated Taiwan independence. China and Taiwan separated in 1949 amid civil war, and China has vowed to attack if Taiwan moves toward formal independence.

A number of new policies have been implemented by the new administration in Taiwan, including direct flights between Taiwan and China for the first time in decades and greater business ties between the two places. Another example in the high tech area was last week, when Taiwan hosted the first ever China pavilion at the Computex Taipei 2009 electronics show.

LED sales to China’s lighting industry stand to be big business for Taiwanese companies, according to investment firm CLSA Asia Pacific Markets in Taipei.

“The fast-growing economic growth in China will inevitably lead to urbanization and higher electric lighting consumption,” said analyst Andrea Su, in a report on Thursday.

She believes China will increase spending on LED lighting to lower energy costs and that currently, lighting consumption per capita in China is only 10 percent that of North America.

The LED Streetlights Could Drive You Crazy and Make You Fat?

This is a test on LED streetlight. During the day, the block of bungalows and houses at 22nd Avenue East and East Mercer Street looks like most of Capitol Hill. But at night, it looks crazy. This is one of seven test areas in the neighborhood where Seattle City Light swapped the high-pressure sodium streetlights, which emit a warm orange hue, with glaring LEDs. City officials want to replace all 40,000 residential streetlamps in Seattle with the new light-emitting diodes by next year to save energy and money. But the lights cast a sickening hue. “It is a very cold color—zombie blue,” says Dan Travers, who lives on the block. “My first thought was that people are going to look scary under these lights.”

“It looks like you are in a supermarket aisle,” says Andie deRoux, who lives in an apartment building seven blocks west of Travers. Abby Katzman, who has lived on the eastern slope of Capitol Hill for 20 years, says, “I like the energy it saves, but it does seem very cool and wintery.”

On the shortest night of the year, just after dark at 11:00 p.m., I walked to each of Seattle City Light’s test areas to see what’s sparking revulsion from Travers and others who live under the lights. The beams from the high-intensity, light-emitting diodes are striking. The rays turned my skin the color of white taffy and cast crisp shadows on the pavement. “Zombie blue” is exactly right: Like a day-for-night special effect in a vampire movie, the test streetlights create the sort of atmosphere where you almost expect the undead to emerge from the flower beds and begin eating your face. Everyone I spoke to enthusiastically supported the idea of the LEDs—which require 50 to 60 percent less electricity for the same lumens—but most resented the quality of the light itself.

The problem with the new lights isn’t just aesthetic. According to Dr. David Avery—a professor of behavioral sciences and light therapy at the University of Washington and the region’s leading researcher on the impact of light on human chemistry—the LED lights could interfere with human biorhythms. Certain photoreceptors in the eye’s retina react to cooler colors of the light spectrum, sending a signal to the brain that the sun is up. When humans see the blue light, our bodies think it’s daytime. “The sensitivity to these cells for the blue and greenish color makes perfect sense, because the sky is blue. So for millions of years, life has evolved with this 24-hour rhythm of blue light being very prominent for part of the day and then darkness,” he says. “This is kind of a conductor of a circadian symphony in the brain and body.”

According to Avery, “Theoretically, if someone has one of these LEDs or a blue light outside their window, it could fool the eyes and the brain into thinking that the sun is still up, so the melatonin hormone might not rise normally and sleep might be disrupted.” Incandescent lights, the standard bulb in homes, are on the red end of the spectrum. (You may think of them as being white, but they’re not.) Shifting the city’s primary outdoor lighting to blue-hued LEDS, Avery adds, “would be a major change in terms of our environment.” Studies suggest that people exposed to daylight at the wrong hours, like those who work night shift, have more health problems such as high blood pressure and obesity, Avery says.

Mayor Greg Nickels wants most Seattle residents to be living under new streetlights by 2015. Seattle City Light intends to install the lights specifically in residential areas—not commercial arterials or industrial zones, which require more illumination than LEDs can affordably provide.

“They would save about nine million kilowatt hours and about $408,000 a year,” says Seattle City Light spokesman Scott Thomsen. An LED lamp uses only 50 watts, while traditional high-pressure sodium bulbs require 130 watts and waste electricity on heat. The conserved power roughly equates to the energy used by 750 single-family houses a year, Thomsen says. Moreover, the LED lamps last three to four times longer—up to 18 years—which drastically reduces maintenance costs to the city. (The city currently pays about $100 in labor costs to replace each dead bulb.)

But LED fixtures cost much more. Whereas the bulbs in the existing fixtures (awesomely dubbed “cobra heads”) cost about $15, the LED lamps are part and parcel with their fixtures and each costs $300 to replace, says Edward Smalley, Seattle City Light’s streetlight engineering manager. “The real payout for the city, to the customer, is not having to go out to change the light.” Funding to kick-start the program comes from a $6.1 million federal stimulus grant to reduce energy use. Of that, $1 million will go toward installing the first 2,500 streetlamps next year, assuming the Department of Energy approves the expenditure this summer. If the city council expands the program, new streetlamps citywide will cost about $20 million.

City officials acknowledge the test lights aren’t great. (A different brand of LED is being tested at each site, or in some cases the same brand at different levels of brightness.) Although some people like the lights, other people in the test areas have been complaining—in one area, the reaction from residents has been so intense that Seattle City Light is canceling that test site. And it is continuing to look for better technologies. There’s a relationship between a light’s warmth and how much energy it saves. High-pressure sodium lights, which give off that night orange glow, emit light at about 2200 degrees Kelvin. But the pilot LEDs are between 5000 and 6000 Kelvin. While Smalley acknowledges the new lights are “a lot bluer, for sure, than what we have now,” LEDs as warm as the old lights aren’t energy efficient enough to be practical. Seattle City Light will begin testing slightly warmer-hued streetlamps in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood in late July. “We are looking at 4000 degrees Kelvin and above, so that way we can provide the best comfort for the city and the energy savings that we are looking for.”

Anchorage has begun installing 16,000 LEDs streetlamps, San Francisco has announced it will convert 30,000 streetlamps, and Los Angeles has announced plans to convert 140,000 lamps. Smalley says that technology to produce energy-efficient LEDs with a more palatable hue is evolving, with new generations of lights emerging as quickly as every six months.

Considering the bulbs live longer than most pets, the city should take as much time as necessary to pick a light we can live with for a while. Smalley said that those folks who dislike the lights, stay tuned and look to our next test sites like South Park. No one has locked into what you see out on the street now.