City of Stamford, Conn., cuts costs with LED Streetlights

Faced with lowered budgets and greater responsibilities, municipalities are being asked to do more with less when it comes to city improvements. The City of Stamford was up for the challenge when it started exploring how to light its town more efficiently. The resulting solution, a switch to energy-efficient LED streetlights, will save the city more than $146,000 annually.

To jump-start the project, the city was awarded an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant, an initiative funding energy efficiency and conservation programs across the country. The grant led the city to replace more than 1,000 high-pressure sodium-based streetlights in the city’s main streets with LED fixtures. The project, Connecticut’s largest installation of LED streetlights, means a drastic change in energy consumption for the city.

“The new LED streetlights are making an important contribution to Stamford’s sustainability efforts, as well as curbing costs and allowing us to light our beautiful streets with a really aesthetically pleasing light source,” says an energy/utility manager for the City of Stamford. “We looked at several manufacturers and selected the one that offered the best quality in terms of color temperature (4300 K), CRI, lighting uniformity and reduced glare.”

Thanks to the energy savings from the new lights, Stamford will receive a $357,000 rebate from Connecticut Light and Power, an electrical provider for the state of Connecticut. The city plans to use those funds to install an additional 467 energy-efficient streetlights using LED technology next year.