U.S Mayors team up with Philips to power city LEDs
New York City set to convert 250,000 streetlights to LEDs and Washinton D.C will upgrade 13,000 lighting fixtures as part of Mayors' Lighting Partnership with Philips
Washington D.C is set to implement LED lighting in thousands of municipal fixtures as the city takes advantage of Philips Lighting's "lighting as a service" model.
Philips will upgrade more than 13,000 lighting fixtures in the U.S capital at no upfront cost to the city and will provide a 10-year maintenance contract.
Philips will get paid from the $2 million in savings the LEDs are expected to provide each year. The project starts this spring and will take about a year.
Philips will pay the upfront costs of installation and be compensated through a performance contract — the energy savings the retrofit produces.
The bulbs automatically will adjust based on the amount of natural light that's available, and software will alert Philips when repairs are needed.
A survey of 300 mayors released last week by the Mayors Climate Protection Center shows that switching to LEDs is a high priority (82 per cent), second only to public building retrofits (86 per cent). LEDs and other energy-efficient lighting are the "most promising technologies" for reducing energy use and carbon emissions. The most significant barriers are budget constraints (84 per cent) and upfront costs (71 per cent).
And while only 36 percent of cities currently have a comprehensive energy plan, a third more say they will have one within two years. Ninety perc ent of mayors surveyed say they will have a plan to keep vital services operating during sustained power outages within three years, and 75 per cent already have developed such plans.
At he U.S. Conference of Mayors in June, city leaders adopted a policy that affirms the importance and benefits of advanced lighting systems in cities. And a meeting this month saw the formation of a partnership with Philips Lighting to help mayors with this effort. Through the Mayors' Lighting Partnership, Philips will provide free energy audits, technical assistance and its new financing option.
New York City is converting all 250,000 streetlights to LEDs, and Boston and Los Angeles both recently finished their own city-wide lighting retrofits. It's estimated that the 35 million streetlights in the U.S. consume about 1 percent of all electricity — and they are often the single biggest energy cost for cities.
