In Meadville, Pennsylvania, U.S., about 300 of the city's decorative street lights will reportedly be upgraded to LED street lights, which will save the city about $11,000 a year in electricity costs.
It was announced last week that the city council accepted a grant from the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies to pay for the upgrades. The Alleghenies is a non-profit organization based in Johnston that administers nearly 700 area charitable funds. The grant will provide $17,350 to purchase LED bulbs and conversion equipment, while the city will provide the labor needed to install the new streetlights.
The new LED bulbs will be installed in the city's decorative streetlights, such as those on Chestnut Street and Diamond Park, according to city official Andy Walker.
Walker said the grant does not provide LED bulbs for the approximately 1,100 streetlights throughout the city that belong to Penelec, but Penelec has slowly begun upgrading those streetlights as well. According to him, "We have a full list of conversions and we've been asking Penelec to upgrade those streetlights as well. That is one of our goals."
It is understood that the city's cost for street lighting jumped from $102,000 in 2014 to $168,000 in 2017, with $160,000 budgeted for this year.
Walker said the entire ongoing effort to switch from traditional streetlights to LED streetlights could reduce expenses, but the reduction would not be as high as hoped. He told the council that the city pays an electric rate set by the state Public Utilities Commission, and that cost has been increasing.
"There's been a massive reduction in the current LED lighting and streetlighting electric bill," Walker said, "There's still going to be a certain amount of cost of course - but it's been reduced very much."
