Seattle City Light has completed its conversion of more than 40,000 residential streetlights to energy efficient LED technology ahead of schedule, General Manager and CEO Jorge Carrasco announced today.
Lineworker Craig Reed installs one of the first LED streetlights in Seattle.
Seattle City Light has completed its conversion of more than 40,000 residential streetlights to energy efficient LED technology ahead of schedule, General Manager and CEO Jorge Carrasco announced today.
“At Seattle City Light, we are always looking for ways to improve service and lower costs for our customers,” Carrasco said. “Replacing the old high-pressure sodium streetlights with LEDs provides better lighting, increases reliability, reduces their energy consumption and saves money.”
Among those benefits:
• LEDs use up to 62 percent less energy and last three to four times longer than high-pressure sodium lights.
• They provide higher quality light that improves driver, bicyclist and pedestrian safety through increased depth of field and peripheral vision along with truer color.
• The new system will save the City of Seattle an estimated $2.4 million in annual energy and maintenance costs.
“The conversion to LED streetlights is a great example of how energy conservation can help us all manage our bills better,” said City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, Chair of the Energy & Environment Committee. “I am proud of City Light’s work to find real cost savings for our ratepayers while also continuing to lead the way in energy efficiency efforts. These LED lights also have the added benefit of improving public safety, which only enhances the value of this project to the City of Seattle.”
City Light started the project in 2010 and originally anticipated completing it in 2014. The nation’s greenest utility is already moving forward on the next phase of its streetlight conversion, replacing the streetlights along arterial roads and in commercial districts.
By the end of this year, City Light expects to switch out about 1,800 arterial and commercial district streetlights. Work was recently completed in the White Center business district and the Cascade neighborhood. Currently crews are working along streets between Denny Way and 65th Street.
Get more information about City Light’s LED streetlight work here.
Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.