Governor Kathy Hochul announced that New York has now replaced more than 286,000 of its streetlights with LED fixtures, surpassing the halfway milestone in the state’s goal to replace at least 500,000 streetlights with LED technology by 2025 under Smart Street Lighting NY. The street lighting initiative — administered by the New York Power Authority — is improving lighting quality and neighborhood safety while reducing energy and lighting maintenance costs across the entire state. The initiative also directly supports the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the most aggressive climate change law in the nation, through the increased use of energy efficiency to annually reduce electricity demand by three percent—equivalent to 1.8 million New York households—by 2025.
“Municipalities of all sizes across New York have been rapidly converting their streetlights to LED technology under the Smart Street Lighting NY program,” Governor Hochul said. “The new LED street lighting fixtures are a critical infrastructure improvement for the state as they reduce electric costs, improve safety and save money for local governments. I was excited to announce this program in 2018 and in a little more than three years, we’ve surpassed the halfway mark. We are well on our way to exceeding the state’s ambitious goal to replace 500,000 street lighting fixtures by 2025.”
The Power Authority has installed more than 71,000 LED streetlights statewide, with nearly 60,000 lighting replacements currently being installed. Some of the more than 100 municipalities that have already converted to LED streetlights in collaboration with NYPA include Syracuse, Albany, Rochester, and White Plains.
In addition, the Public Service Commission, working with investor-owned utilities around the state, has facilitated the installation of more than 215,000 additional LED streetlights.
NYPA President and CEO Gil C. Quiniones said, “Smart Street Lighting NY has been an enormous success story for the state and NYPA intends to aggressively continue the installation of LED street lighting and we are on track to not only meet, but to exceed the Governor’s goal of 500,000 LED streetlights installed by 2025. The program, which also offers municipalities the ability to expand SMART city technologies that meet a city’s individual needs, is a win-win for the state and our customers as it reduces energy use, improves safety and municipal government efficiency, and saves money.”
NYPA is working with cities, towns, villages, and counties throughout New York to fully manage and implement a customer’s transition to LED streetlight technology. NYPA provides upfront financing for the project, with payments to NYPA made in the years following from the cost-savings created by the reduced energy use of the LED streetlights, which are 50 to 65 percent more efficient than alternative street lighting options.
Through this statewide street lighting program, NYPA’s government customers are provided a wide array of lighting options to help meet their individual needs, including specifications on the lights to incorporate SMART technology, which can be used for dozens of other functions, such as cameras and other safety features, weather sensors, Wi-Fi and energy meters.
To further advance the Governor’s effort to replace existing New York street lighting, in 2020, NYPA launched a new maintenance service to provide routine and on-call maintenance services for LED street lighting fixtures installed by NYPA throughout the state. The new service is available to municipalities that have engaged NYPA to implement a LED street lighting conversion and have elected to install an asset management controls system on their street lighting system, reducing the number of failures and repairs needed after installation is complete.
To learn more about Smart Street Lighting NY and other innovative NYPA programs, visit the NYPA services website.
Tagged with LED, street lighting