City Announces Cost-Saving Upgrades With LED Street Lighting

Press release from the City of Grand Rapids:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – During its meetings on Tuesday, the City Commission approved the adoption of LED lights for all neighborhood street lighting. City officials cited economic, safety and environmental benefits for this move.

The Commission’s approval awards a contract to Strain Electric to replace existing street lighting throughout the city with LED lights. The contract amount is approximately $6.2 million and will not exceed $9.46 million when automated system controls are added. The selection progress included a heads-up competition of delivery through a traditional contract method or contracting through an Energy Savings Company (ESCO). The traditional method proved to provide lower life-cycle costs.

The City currently has a total of approximately 18,000 streetlights and 2,000 have already been converted to LEDs through maintenance and various street and piloting projects. When the remaining 16,000 lights are replaced, the City expects an estimated annual energy savings of approximately $350,000.

In early 2019, the City formed an LED Pilot team composed of staff from the Energy, Lighting, and Communications (ELC), Environmental Services and Engineering departments, along with engineering consulting firm GeoTech. The group recommended this change after extensive research, analysis and community engagement, which included surveys in targeted neighborhoods and side-by-side comparison of two light color temperature options.

“Color temperatures in LED lights are measured in kelvins (K) and range from warm orange (lower kelvins) to cool blue (higher kelvins) tones. The City selected 4000K which offers a good balance and closely represents natural moonlight,” said Utility Systems Manager Bruce Sweeris.

“Our primary goal in arriving at this decision was the safety of our residents and neighborhoods, which is a critical objective in the City’s strategic plan,” said James Hurt, Managing Director of Public Services. “We know that most accidents involving pedestrians and bicyclists happen at night, and many of those are the result of poor visibility. Additionally, better lighting will make residents feel safer in their own neighborhoods — cities like Detroit have seen great results when they transitioned to this LED temperature for their street lighting.”

In making this change, Grand Rapids joins 314 of the country’s largest cities (those with more than 100,000 residents) who have adopted this temperature color of LED lighting for all their street lighting. According to Sweeris, in addition to the safety issues, other key reasons for the adoption of this LED lighting are:

• Cost-savings benefits -
  • Lower energy costs - 4000K LED lights have been proven to be slightly more efficient than 3000K, resulting in a reduction in energy across the City’s street lighting system
  • Less inventory - The City considered using both 3000K (local streets) and 4000K (major streets), however, this would require stocking 33 street lighting fixture types instead of 18, increasing inventory costs if both fixture types are required; this transition will result in an estimated $75,000 annual savings
  • Labor costs - the transition to solely 4000K lighting will reduce costs for engineering and design staff, who will not have to invest time in determining which color temperature is to be used at intersections for major and local streets and in residential, business, commercial and downtown areas of the city.
• Environmental benefits - transitioning to 4000K lighting will further reduce greenhouse and carbon dioxide emissions as well as the City’s overall carbon footprint.
• Operational efficiencies - unlike the current lighting system, the transition will allow for an automated control system with the following features:
  • Real-time monitoring - to detect any issues, problems as they arise
  • Diagnostics - to collect data, measure energy usage in real time
  • Dimming capabilities - as necessary due to weather, to address neighborhood/resident issues and to increase lighting levels as LED fixture outputs degrade over time.

This move also aligns with the City’s strategic plan in the following objectives:

• residents feeling safe in their neighborhoods at all times
• community engagement through surveys for residents’ perception of City services, events, programs and facilities
• improving cost-effectiveness through asset management, continuous improvement and innovation.

“While there has been some debate on the selection of this LED temperature, the opportunity costs, figuratively and literally, associated with not adopting this recommendation and a full transition to 4000K temperature LED lighting are far too great to ignore,” added Mike Grenier, Environmental Services Manager. “And at a time when Smart Cities like Grand Rapids are faced with budget shortfalls during the COVID pandemic that are resulting in economic challenges, it is incumbent on municipalities to continue finding ways to lower their costs.”

Residents can expect to see the change in their neighborhoods starting in the summer of 2021. The citywide LED project is estimated to last 18 months.

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This press release was produced by the City of Grand Rapids. The views expressed are the author's own.