Newcastle to introduce LED streetlights

More than 5000 ageing streetlights will be replaced by environmentally friendly LEDs in Newcastle.

Newcastle City Council is implementing new lights in an effort to cut the city's annual energy use.

Council has resolved to replace 5312 sodium and mercury vapour streetlights in residential areas with LEDs in a move that will save 1.38 gigawatt hours (GWh) of power annually, or nearly 10% of council’s entire electricity usage.

The replacement program will reduce council's annual electricity bill by $240,000, save $73,000 in maintenance costs, plus produce a one-off energy saving certificate payment of $355,000 issued by the NSW Government.

"Energy use from streetlighting accounts for around half of Council's total energy consumption, and LEDs, as well as having a longer life span, provide a more effective, higher quality white light that requires less energy," Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes said.

"Replacing the 5000-plus lights makes sense financially and will help council meet our 2020 carbon and water management targets of using 30% less electricity and for 80% of all streetlighting to use LEDs."

The rollout will take the number of streetlights upgraded in Newcastle to around 7300, more than half of the 14,000 Ausgrid maintains for council.

"Accelerating the replacement of streetlighting means that energy and maintenance savings can be realised far more quickly," Council CEO Jeremy Bath said.

"The alternative is to only replace existing streetlighting as it fails. However, this would result in continued higher energy costs, consumption and maintenance after our annual electricity bill doubled in recent years.

"As Ausgrid begins scheduling 100,000 light replacements across all councils in its network, Newcastle is looking to get ahead of the pack and begin the rollout as soon as possible."

Ausgrid services around 250,000 streetlights on behalf of 33 local councils, community associations and other authorities.

It has deployed more than 40,000 LEDs since 2013, after trialling the technology in 2009 with the City of Sydney, which recently committed to upgrade all its streetlights to LEDs.

Image credit: ©Foto-Ruhrgebiet/Dollar Photo Club

Please follow us and share on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe for FREE to our weekly newsletter and quarterly magazine.