Convert to LED street lights to save money

While I was president of my HOA a few years back we were in the process of changing out our street lights for LED. One of my board members is an electrician, so he headed up the task force to investigate a switch over. We had something light 130 light standards covering over 82 acres of property. The saving were QUITE substantial.

Considerably

LED's do last longer and are cheaper in the long term. The biggest issue is the upfront cost. Your going to pay a HIGH cost for the equipment up front. However, it is a long term pay off. So it's a great idea but be prepared to pay up.

Here is an interesting tidbit... The first light bulb invented is still on. It's in a fire house somewhere. Here's the deal. Lightbulbs never have to burn out. However, due to wanting to make money, light bulb industries put out bulbs that burned out. Could you imagine the cost of having an original light bulb that never burns out for over 100 years? You best believe that upfront cost would be like buying a car now a days...

Thank you for the replies. Melissa, the upfront cost is the key thing that will drive this project, if it happens. We have about 100 streetlights that were originally installed in 1990. They were designated as a reserve item in 1994 after turnover but no reserve money was ever set aside for them. The estimated lifetime was 25 years. About half of them are noticeable tilted off-vertical due to settling of the concrete footings. Maybe we can kill 2 birds with one stone. Some people are unhappy that visitors and potential homebuyers are greeted with the sight of tilted lamp posts that give the impression that the place is falling down.

Anyway, I'll be trying to get a few people together to come up with the numbers that we can present to the board as a whole with the idea that "it will pay for itself in X years". Acceptance or rejection will likely depend on the upfront cost and whatever value X turns out to be.

Assuming the poles themselves are in good condition they could be 'shimmed' to vertical as they 'should' be bolted to the bases.

Unless you have the 'cheapo' poles merely stuck into the concrete with the wiring exiting a hole in the side underground.

Simply replace the 'bulbs' as they burn out (HPS or Sodium Vapor may require minor rewiring).

see: http://www.neptunlight.com/products/26/1/led-retrofit-kits-and-bulbs.html

Thanks for the heads up on This Old House, Melissa. There is some good information there that I, as a newbie to these things, found very informative.

PitA, they are in pretty good shape. Shimming may be possible. I think the posts are bolted to the footings but I'm not sure how far down the footings go. The soil here is very sandy and they settled over time due to the off-center fixtures on top applying continuous torque for 25 years. There are a few double-arm lamp posts that are balanced on either side and those are not tilting.

Larry, they are ugly looking. Our fixtures are all glass-enclosed (with frosted glass) so the appearance of the "bulbs" isn't too much of a concern. Ventilation might be a problem since some LEDs apparently aren't supposed to be used in enclosed globe lights. Ours aren't air-tight by any means so maybe that won't be an issue.

I found a lot of info on studies and projects done by municipalities all over the country but they all assume replacement of city-strength "cobra head" streetlights. Ours are positively decorative and light-duty compared to those. The best thing for us would be screw-in replacement LED "bulbs" that we could just drop in and go. There's got to be some rewiring and maybe re-socketing involved though, it can't be as simple as screw-in replacements for the old bulbs. Or maybe it is

A preliminary back-of-the-envelope calculation shows we could, after the 15% rate hike, save perhaps $10,000 a year on electricity costs. One rule of thumb is if a project's payback period is 10 years or less then it should be considered but if the payback period is longer than 10 years then it should be deferred. That puts an upper boundary of $100,000 up-front costs in place for 100 lamp posts. The question then becomes: can we do the project for $1,000 per lamp post?

Thanks for all the replies.

We're thinking about converting to LED lights for our over 500 ceiling corridor lights in our two high rise towers. Apparently the ROI is a very short period. The trouble on a section of the test floor is that they're too bright. So, our engineer is looking into dimmers.

Unlike Europe where about 80% of hotel corridor lights do NOT burn 24/7they're on motion sensors or timers, we don't have that option in my city or maybe in the USA!

Tim _ I believe that your community and my community have the same power company as well as the same "watch Light" program. Let me ask you - What is the wattage on the sodium bulbs that you now have and have you had any luck with asking them to increase the wattage on these bulbs? Tks.

I believe that they are 150's. It's very difficult to deal with this power company and they have been totally unresponsive. These watch lamps were installed on our common areas under the same program that you guys are most likely under. However, the same type lights on the one state maintained road is managed through Fairfax County. The county has limited funds occasionally for what they call the dim bulb program where they can have the power company beef up (increase) the wattage on these lamps. I'm not sure why the power company is so obstinate about allowing us to increase the wattage on the lamps that are on our common area, but the county can have them do this on the ones that are on the state maintained roads. They are the same type lights but the poles are just a little taller. Look up the Dim Bulb program on the County website. It takes a petition to do this which we have already filed.

On another note, one of our electrical contractors says that he has converted the type of light over to LED before, but the power company will not let us touch the fixtures as they maintain them and they of course have no interest in helping up get them upgrade to LED type fixtures.

Mike,

We are actually working though our local delegate to have a light installed on a county road.

You might be able to do the same.

The delegates office has been very responsive and provided many suggestions on how to gather support from the surrounding community.

It still might take a full year (or more) to get this done, but we do see progress.

One of my key assumptions was wrong. FPL is asking for - and will likely get - a 23.7% rate hike, not 15%.

Thank you, LarryB13, I hadn't seen that. Very interesting article on several fronts. Arrangements where streetlights are owned by the local electric utility aren't uncommon. It does not surprise me in the least that FPL has got Valencia Lakes over a barrel. I looked on Google Maps and Valencia Lakes in Boynton Beach is one of the few gated subdivisions where "street view" is available. The design and overall appearance of their streetlights is very similar to ours.

According to the article, Valencia Lakes is 696 homes with 230 streetlamps that pays $18,000 a year for the electricity to light them. We are 100 homes with 100 streetlamps and our electric bill is $15,000 a year. Something doesn't add up.

Our maintenance committee is against an LED modernization program. They claim that as the old mercury vapor bulbs burn out they are replaced with CFL equivalent brightness bulbs. CFL does represent significant savings over traditional incandescent and they feel any additional savings wouldn't be worth the cost.

I would be inclined to agree with that assessment but no one here can say for sure how much we pay for streetlights today. One maintenance committee member remarked sotto voce that he thought some of the streetlights were wired directly to the FPL lines and bypassing the meters completely! No one can tell me where our FPL meters are or what's connected to them. There's no streetlight wiring diagram anywhere. I'm in the process of getting copies of the actual FPL electric bills for the last couple of years to see what the heck is going on. We pay $15,000 a year for 100 streetlights but that HOA in Boynton Beach is paying $18,000 for more than twice that number.

I also found a discussion [link] that really worries me. I'm almost 100% positive that a situation like that poster found in his community also exists here. He's talking about a newer home in a newer subdivision with code violations. We were all built out over 20 years ago and it's got to be a slam dunk that we have streetlight wiring problems at least as bad as what that guy has uncovered.

No one here wants to deal with it outside of myself and a couple of sympathizers who'd like to shave 5-10 thousand dollars off our yearly FPL bill. I'm starting to wonder how much I really want to deal with it. Inertia and is a hell of a thing.

I was in charge of my HOA's changeover to LED street lights. The project was completed about 2 years ago now. Prior to that we had 150W high pressure sodium (HPS) lamp units. Our ROI was calculated at approximately 3.5 to 4 years taking into account the cost of electricity and maintenance. In the two years that they have been up, we lost one unit almost immediately after installation and that was covered under warranty. Other than that we still need to maintain the Photo Cells but the units themselves have been trouble free. The units are manufactured by Hadco/Philips. Here is a link to their product line that we used

http://www.lightingproducts.philips.com/our-brands/hadco/lumilock-led-engine-gx3-rptld.html#!f=%2b%40Category%3aUrban%2b%40SubCategory%3aUrban+Accessories

As far as your question about just a "bulb change". Most street light are HPS which uses a ballast. Because of this the entire lamp head unit must be changed. The new LED unit will have it's driver circuitry as part of the assembly. Your electrician that currently maintains the lights can best tell you what your current lighting is and can put you in touch with a rep. of replacement LED fixtures. Hopefully there is a unit that will fit your poles and heads. Worse case is that you may have to change the head [globe] as well as the lighting unit.

When we did ours, we were able to identify the manufacturer of the street light poles and worked with them on their LED replacement head. The unit was a snap in assembly that fit our poles/globes so labor wise it was minimal but still performed by a licensed electrical contractor for 100 poles.

BTW I am a retired electrician and worked 41-years in NY before retiring to Florida

They were manufactured by Hadco

Attached are some of the cut sheets on them and parts

The heads are similar to their architectural style

Thank,s Joseph. Our current street lights look something like the first 2 pictures on this page [link]. I'm told the "bulbs" themselves are currently a mix of mercury vapor and CFL. I don't think they were ever HPS, but the maintenance guy tells me there is some sort of ballast. Adapters were required at one point to allow the installation of standard-size screw base. We have a handyman/maintenance contractor who's a jack of all trades, but he's not an electrician. He'll change a bulb but he doesn't like to mess with electricity.

The existing fixtures - like the ones in that web page - are nearing 30 years old. The originals have frosted glass panes held in with spring clips. According to the maintenance man, the clips are all rusted and can't tolerate being removed and replaced, so they break and then the glass has to be silicon'ed back into place. In other words, he doesn't like to work on them, the maintenance committee doesn't want to worry about them, and the board never gets to hear about the possible savings because those resisting the change are kicking up a lot of sand into their eyes.

I'm continuing to plow ahead, though, with the help of another couple of owners here. Unfortunately, one of them is headed back to New Jersey in about 6 weeks.

(We moved here from Long Island 2 years ago.)

Joseph, if you want you can send an email to enb.mtc.trg AT mamber.net

and I'll respond from my real email address with more details.

The address above is a "spam firewall email address" of sorts. It will self destruct after receiving and forwarding a pre-set number of emails. In other words, it's spam proof and I can give it out in public, which I would never do with my real email address

Thanks!

Sent email yesterday morning (4:52AM)