The Council has just finished converting the District’s 4,700 street lamps to LED bulbs – a more modern and efficient type of lighting.
“At the Council we’re constantly on the lookout for ways to reduce energy consumption, and running our street lights is one of the big expenses on our power bills,” says Council’s Group Manager Infrastructure Services, Sean Mallon.
“Our latest power bill in June showed a near-70% drop in street light energy consumption compared to the same time last year. Now we’ve finished the conversions we’re expecting to see savings of at least $130k a year.
“We’re also anticipating some minor additional savings on maintenance costs as LEDs (or light emitting diode bulbs) tend to last about 15 years longer than the old sodium vapour bulbs.
“We’ll be re-investing the savings back into our upkeep of the District’s road networks.”
Mr Mallon says the conversions took place over a two year period and were made possible as a result of a one-off government subsidy from the NZ Transport Authority, which covered 85% of the funding.
“The conversion to LED street lighting is a significant change the Council has been able to make to reduce our carbon footprint and be more efficient in the way we operate.”
-KCDC
