Pittsburgh Street Lights Update

Yesterday, Pittsburgh moved one step closer to its dream of converting all of its 40,000 street lights to energy efficient doppelgangers. The city received an $816,000 grant which will pay for upgrading about 3,000 street lights.

The first phase of the conversion, involving about 3,000 lights in 30 neighborhood business districts, will save about $110,000 in energy and maintenance costs each year. An estimate of the energy savings in phase one was not provided.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations bring that in at an 8-year payback period. Not too shabby. From informal polling of the South Side light experiment and a University of Pittsburgh recommendation, the city will be going forward with LED lights in the conversion. According to the Pitt study, the city should save about $1.7 Million per year on energy and maintenance costs when all the lights are converted (about 40% of the current cost).