The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is converting ALL, yes, ALL of its downtown streetlights over to this sort of light (LED) starting in November. The project is part of the LED City initiative, which already includes Raleigh, North Carolina, and Toronto, Ontario.Seems like a great idea… Ann Arbor, as always, is one of the more progressive communities in the nation. While it has been dubbed hippie in the past for such forward thinking, at this point you have to commend and admire them. From their trash policy to their park conservation efforts, it all doesn’t seem so dumb now.
Thanks to my to my brother who sent me this article!!
The LED City initiative is an expanding community of government and industry parties working to evaluate, deploy, and promote LED lighting technology across the full range of municipal infrastructure. The argument for LED lighting is:
· Save energy
· Protect the environment
· Reduce maintenance cost
· Provide better lighting quality for improved visibility and safety
And lastly, more details about the project in Ann Arbor:
The Ann Arbor project is being undertaken in conjunction with LED technology company Cree, which supplied a portion of the lighting components. The city has been running a smaller test of the lights on a city block, using streetlights based on the New Westminster product line from Lumecon. Based on the results of the smaller test, the city snagged a $630,000 grant from the Ann Arbor Development Authority that it will use to fund the LED retrofits. According to Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje, the installation could save the city up to $100,000 per year in electricity costs and reduce its annual greenhouse emissions by 294 tons of carbon dioxide. The retrofit will take approximately two years. The city will work in conjunction with Detroit Edison, which will meter the streetlights, to determine whether a new pricing/usage model should be developed.
