Over the last few years, LED street lights have gone from something cities would love to have to the sector standard. That the market has shifted so swiftly is thanks to the efforts of early movers such as the City of Los Angeles, which last month completed the world’s largest LED street light replacement project.
When I reported on the city’s LED street light swap-out at this blog in January, more than 80% of the LED fixtures had been deployed. On June 18, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced [PDF] the completion of the first phase of the project, with LED fixtures installed on 141,089 street lights.
Los Angeles is certainly not alone in making the switch to LED street lighting. I’ve reported at this blog, for instance, about the many other California cities, big and small, that have done the same. In March of this year, the City of Las Vegas finished outfitting 42,000 street lights with LED fixtures. One month later, the City of Austin, Texas, announced plans to install 35,000 LED street lights. And, in December of last year, CPS Energy said it would install 20,000 LED street lights in San Antonio.
But, owing to its size and influence, Los Angeles, with its partners, the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), have done much to jump-start the market. Navigant (formerly Pike) Research recently predicted that shipments of LED street lights will increase from fewer than 3 million in 2012 to more than 17 million in 2020.
The City of Los Angeles estimates it will see at least $7 million in electricity savings and $2.5 million in avoided maintenance costs annually with the switch to LED street lights. Street lighting can account for up to 40% of a city’s electricity bill, according to Eric Woods, writing at the Navigant Research blog. The LED fixtures used in Los Angeles, which include Cree’s XSP series and LEDway series, Hadco’s RX series (Hadco is a Philips Philips company), and Leotek’s GC series, consume about 63% less electricity, and last much longer, than the high-pressure sodium (HPS) fixtures they replaced.
For more information on the City of Los Angeles’ LED street lighting program, take a look at my January post or this presentation [PDF] delivered by Ed Ebrahimian, Director, Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting, at a seminar hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki on June 6.
Deployment drives innovation and lower prices
“As the LEDs improve, and the manufacturers develop the technology, the energy savings are being realized and continue to increase,” said Ebrahimian in a talk [PDF] delivered in April 2012. Before launching its street light replacement program, Los Angeles city planners had estimated that LED fixtures would yield a 40% electricity savings over HPS units. As noted above, the actual savings is just over 63%. Las Vegas officials discovered much the same. “What I’m seeing so far is that we’re actually exceeding our projected savings,” Tom Perrigo Perrigo, the city’s chief sustainability officer, told the Sustainable City Network.
Deployment has driven down prices and improved the product. Yearly comparisons of LED fixture prices and specs compiled by Ebrahimian [PDF, p. 19] illustrate this trend. An LED fixture installed on a residential street light in Los Angeles, in 2009, cost an average of $432, illuminated at 42 lumens/watt, lasted 80,000 hours, and came with a 5-year warranty. By the end of 2012, that same fixture cost an average of $245, illuminated at 81 Lm/W, lasted at least 150,000 hours, and came with a 7-year warranty.
In the second phase of its LED replacement program, Los Angeles will retrofit 70,000 decorative street lamps. The city is testing and evaluating LED and induction fixtures for use in the 400 different styles of such lamps operating in Los Angeles. The city also announced, in April, that it would expand a pilot program with GE Lighting to measure the performance of GE’s LightGrid Outdoor Wireless Controller units. The technology enables remote monitoring and control of individual street lights.
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/dentonfracking/20141030031250im_/http://b-i.forbesimg.com/justingerdes/files/2013/07/LED_Hoover_HPS_LABSL-272x300.jpg)
Los Angeles’ Hoover Street before … Credit: Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting
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… and after the conversion to LED street lighting. Credit: Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting