×

Council to explore LED street lights

WARREN — City council will discuss today approving a pilot program that would replace 12 high-pressure sodium vapor street lights with LEDs to determine if it would be cost effective to convert all the city’s street lights to LED.

Councilman Ken MacPherson, D-5th Ward, will lead the discussion during a 3 p.m. utilities committee meeting in council’s caucus room. The pilot program also would gauge the public’s perception of using the LEDs.

MacPherson said an increasing number of local communities are looking at replacing their older high-pressure sodium vapor street lights with LEDs, and believes the city should explore whether there would be a long-term cost benefit to replacing its lights.

The councilman also expects to discuss other street light alternatives, including using solar to power street lights, at perhaps an even lower cost.

Niles is in the second year of a multi-year project to replace its street lights with LEDs. It already has replaced 1,000 lights and is expected to replace 500 street lights per year for the next three to four years until all of the structures are replaced, according to Niles Light Department Superintendent James Newbrough.

Between 15 and 20 percent of the city’s street lights have been replaced, according to Newbrough. The city has about 3,000 additional street lights to replace.

Newbrough said once all of the street lights are changed over, the city’s costs should drop by half, because the cost of operating the lights is about half.

“We are able to do this because we buy our electricity in bulk and sell it to our customers,” Newbrough said. “We own the poles and the light fixtures. We charge our customers.”

“I believe this will be the direction of the future for those communities with their own light departments who sell their electricity to their citizens,” he said. “I don’t know about communities where companies like Ohio Edison provide the light poles and bulbs for street lights.”

MacPherson and Greg Greathouse, who is running for the Democratic nomination to run for council’s 3rd Ward seat, met with First Energy officials last month about the possibility of converting the city’s older high pressure sodium vapor street lights to LED.

Greathouse said First Energy expressed a willingness to sell some LED lights in a block of 12.

“We were told the city should first do a lighting assessment to make sure the lights would provide enough lumens to provide sufficient light for the street,” Greathouse said. “First Energy will not do that assessment. We were told the assessment could cost as much as $5,000.”

In addition to the assessment, the new LED light fixture would cost an estimated $228 per fixture.

“We were told First Energy would increase the per kilowatt hour from 3.5 cents per hour to 6 cents per hour,” Greathouse said.

MacPherson has not spoken to the administration about this project.

Warren Safety Service Director Enzo Cantalamessa said the administration had some preliminary discussions with First Energy officials about LED street lights about a year ago, but there was concern about the high upfront costs.

“The reason any community would want to do something like this is the cost savings,” Cantalamessa said. “We have about 5,000 street lights that would have to be replaced. We would have to look at ways to pay for the project. It certainly has not been included into this year’s budget.”

Cantalamessa said the city would have to determine whether there would be a savings to make this conversion.

“I don’t know whether we have someone to do this kind of study in-house or we would have to hire someone with expertise to do it for the city,” he said. “The bottom line, we’re not opposed to doing a further analysis. However, the benefits cannot be outweighed by the costs.”

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
     

Starting at $4.85/week.

Subscribe Today