L.A. Goes LED

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October 9, 2013

6th Street Bridge in Los Angeles before and after the LED conversion
(credit: City of Los Angeles) Four years after announcing an ambitious project to "Green LA," the city of Los Angeles has substantially reduced its greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs simply by changing its street light bulbs. As part of his green initiative and the Clinton Climate Initiative, the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, teamed up with the California Department of Water and Power and the U.S. Department of Energy to launch the LED Street Lighting Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program which will replace the existing high pressure sodium (HPS) bulbs with super energy efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The retrofit was no small task: Los Angeles has the nation’s second-largest street lighting system, composed of 210,000 street lights along 4,500 miles of road. Sixty-eight percent of those have now been converted to LEDs, making it the largest LED street light retrofit ever undertaken by a U.S. city.

After the installations were complete, the city was able to see the real benefits of the project. So far, the energy savings have surpassed the initial estimates, which predicted savings of 40 percent; the actual savings are more than 63 percent, a total of 7 million dollars. In addition to these energy savings, LEDs mean lower maintenance costs and less waste. Very little maintenance is required for the new system because LEDs are much less likely to need replacement: an average of 10 percent of the HPS bulbs would fail over 3 years, but only 0.3 percent of LEDs do so. With these huge savings, in just seven years, the $57 million project will be repaid through electricity and maintenance savings alone. And since the new LED bulbs require so much less electricity (much of which is produced from fossil fuels), they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The city's lighting system now prevents 40,500 tons of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere, which is equal to taking 9,500 cars off the road.

In addition to these significant savings, the switch to LED street lighting provides improved visibility and reduced light pollution. The Los Angeles Police department even reported lower crime rates in areas where the lighting was improved. The community feedback has been positive; many people had assumed that more lights were installed when in reality the streets were just brighter from the new and improved bulbs. Finally, the program created jobs and accelerated innovation. By procuring bulbs from several different manufacturers, and testing them carefully, the city fostered competition and encouraged the LED industry to make continuous improvements, creating 227 manufacturing jobs in the process.

The city of Los Angeles plans to continue its efforts to replace all city lighting with LED bulbs, thereby joining Ann Arbor, Michigan (the first city in America to replace all its streetlights with LEDs), and several other U.S. cities. The next phase of the project will involve installing LEDs in all of the city's decorative fixtures.

Author: Gabrielle Tilley

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