The video describes how the city is applying the latest in LED technology to light its streets and reduce power consumption by 50%.

Across the United States, local governments are slashing budgets, presenting significant challenges to those entrusted with providing services to the community. The city of Ann Arbor suffered a 60% reduction, spurring the search for areas to cut costs, including the city’s power consumption. Just to light the streets, the city was spending more than $1.4 million a year.

Says Andrew Brix, acting director of the city’s energy program, “We’re talking about taxpayer dollars, and the money we spent on streetlights every year was a big chunk of change.”

Rather than simply letting the streets go dark, the city embarked on a pilot program to replace its 6,600 streetlamps with energy-saving LEDs. The measured result after installing an initial 1,000 LED lights was a decrease in energy use from 120 watts per fixture to 56. As a result, says Brix, the overall bill was cut in half, and the savings are expected to pay for the replacement program in just four years.

ElectricTV.net is a joint production of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and is the only web TV program dedicated to reporting the latest developments in the electrical construction and information systems industries. (Source: LEDs Magazine)