LED lights seem to be the future of Vancouver

The City of Vancouver continues to weigh the benefits and disadvantages of switching over to LED technology in its streetlights. One expert says there is a lot of money and energy to be saved.

Moreover, Led lights are already making Vancouver's traffic lights glow and the President of 1.888.Burnt.Out Chris Jordan says it's the way of the future.

"[They're] the cleanest lights first of all," he says. "It's a pure white light and energy savings and maintenance savings are really the biggest issue. LEDs run at about 20 per cent of the energy costs of any of the other technologies."

He estimates the cost of one streetlight retrofit would be less than $1,000.

"We do retrofits with an American-made LED product," he explains. "The life expectancy on those products is about 100,000 hours. So, running at 12 hours per day as an average, you're looking at 23 years of life out of these things."

Vancouver has been testing out LED technology with about 150 streetlights as part of a pilot project that started in 2009.

On this picture, a Led lighting art project installation extends 120 meters up the concrete face of the west tower of West Pender Place.