GE Lighting has welcomed the announcement that Harlow District Council is to switch its street lights back on overnight but has warned that raising local taxes to cover the associated energy cost is not an efficient strategy in the long term.
The decision, which was reported in localgov.co.uk this week, was made after Essex County Council agreed to raise council tax by 1.5% to help cover the £106,000 annual cost of keeping street lights switched on all night. Pointing to the significant reduction in energy costs that can be made by switching to LED luminaires, GE Lighting has suggested that there are other ways to keep the lights on without impacting on residents’ finances.
Mike Barrett, General Manager for Northern Europe at GE Lighting, commented: “Street lighting is a key factor in helping citizens feel safe and secure, so while it’s encouraging that Harlow District Council is taking steps to provide adequate illumination throughout the night, the fact that this is being done at residents’ expense feels like a missed opportunity.
“Of course we understand that councils face tremendous budget pressures and may not have the ready capital to invest in large scale lighting upgrades, but making the switch to LED can provide significant returns both immediately and in the longer term. There are a number of EU and private finance schemes available to make this process easier, such as the UK Green Investment Bank and Salix Finance Ltd, which is a publicly funded company that offers interest free capital to the public sector for energy efficiency projects.
“Attentively working with a specialist lighting partner to employ a Special Purchase Vehicle (SPV) is another option that requires no initial investment or accumulation of debt. This is a means for the local authority to lease the lighting assets for a fixed monthly fee, meaning it can benefit from the reduced lighting costs without having to invest up-front. It is essentially a self-financing system that could offer a very real solution for councils like Harlow.”
Offering energy savings of up to 80% and a lifespan that is many times longer than traditional high-pressure sodium lamps (meaning maintenance costs are also greatly reduced) LED lighting retrofits offer phenomenal returns on investment. For example, Torbay Council has recently completed a major refurbishment of the street lighting assets on its main roads, replacing more than 1,600 sodium lamps with low energy LEDs from GE Lighting. This has resulted in annual energy savings of 60% and has reduced the council’s lighting bill by 57%.
LEDs also provide a much clearer quality of light, which improves safety and increases visibility for drivers and pedestrians, as well as providing better image and colour rendering for CCTV images. Similarly, the angle of LEDs can be more closely controlled, allowing precision illumination of roadways and minimising glare, as well as reducing nuisance light spillage into homes and other surrounding areas.
Finally, LEDs have the potential to be fitted with controls for optimising use, as well creating a data gathering and communications platform that can facilitate a wealth of smart software-based services, from weather and pollution monitoring, to traffic and parking management.