The City of Long Beach announced last week that it has replaced roughly 1,750 high-pressure sodium streetlights with LED streetlights, marking the completed first phase of a citywide project to save money and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
“By retrofitting the City’s streetlights, we are reducing energy usage and pollution, making neighborhoods safer, and saving millions of dollars,” said Mayor Robert Garcia in a statement.
A $659,000 Port of Long Beach Community Mitigation Grant made the first phase possible, according to the city.
The second phase will replace roughly 24,000 high-pressure sodium streetlights and cost about $6.1 million. The cost will be fully offset in four years with the resulting energy savings, alongside energy rebates from Southern California Edison totaling $3.2 million, according to the city.
The LED streetlights are expected to last 100,000 hours, or 24 years, when operated for 12 hours per day. The projected lifetime savings for the LED Streetlight Retrofit Project is expected to be an estimated $15.1 million.
“The reduced energy costs and the increased lifespan of the LED streetlights will have a positive impact on the City’s budget moving forward,” stated Public Works Director Craig Beck.
The west part of the city will see the first sections of the LED rollout, as well as the downtown area, while the replacements will continue to the east. The city is currently replacing roughly 1,600 to 2,000 streetlights every month.
Information from the Energy Network states that the retrofit will save approximately 9.6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, reducing the city’s overall energy use by nearly 10 percent. The project will also reduce carbon emissions equivalent to taking 21,000 cars off the road.
The City also partnered with City Light and Power for this project. The LED retrofit project is administered by the Energy Network, a program sponsored by Los Angeles County and authorized by the California Public Utilities Commission in 2012 to achieve energy savings in Southern California.