Stimulus Watch

• Search for Keywords
• Browse by State/City
• Browse by Program Type

Changing from high voltage lighting to a low voltage and light emmiting diode tecnology will save the taxpayers money on electrical cost, and more importantly, this less electrical usage will save bruning as much coal to generate that power.

[edit] Points in Favor

LEDs provide savings of up to 75% on electricity, and focus light specifically where needed reducing light pollution. Effective luminous efficiency is therefore better than other, older luminaire technologies. Many LED suppliers finance retrofit costs out of energy savings through ESCO programs. By adopting LED lighting strategies for streets, walkways, parks and buildings, cities and counties can achieve a double benefit - 1) reducing the money they waste each year on energy (economic benefit), and 2) reducing the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere powering inefficient, power-hungry lights (environmental benefit). Stimulus projects are supposed to put people to work while at the same time helping address our various environmental and economic proeblems, and thus, LED retrofits of outdated lighting systems may thus be the perfect stimulus project. As well, the effort being made by the city to address these issues would be quite apparent to citizense with LED retrofit projects, due to high visibility of LED products (a shining advertisement for the environmental and economic responsibility demonstrated by the city every night).

This money SHOULD be spent on energy efficient lighting, but induction lighting could be looked at for cost and energy savings but with more lumens per watt, by far. The visual acuity lumens, the important part of lumens to the human eye, is higher with inductions than on LED's. Inductions are cheaper. The induction lamp life is double that of LED's.

[edit] Points Against

Lumens Per Watt is the measure of how much light you get for every watt of power put into the light. A higher number is obviously better.

LED Street lights output about 100 Lumens Per Watt. They are are less efficient than the three most common street lights; low-pressure sodium vapour lamps(200 LpW), high-pressure sodium vapour lamps (150 LpW) and Triphosphor fluorecents (100 LpW). The only place LEDs are more efficient are when compared to incandescent lights(17 LpW), which it is unlikely the city is using in any great numbers. Thus the city would spend a lot of money to replace the existing lights with ones which are as or less efficient than the existing lights.

References

• LED street lighting: Not as good as you think.