And the success of that project has some wondering if Oklahoma City shouldn’t pursue a similar path as it begins a $115 million makeover of downtown that will include the replacement of 880 city streetlights.
By all accounts, LED, or light-emitting diodes, continue to be an emerging technology. Only a $630,000 grant made it possible for Ann Arbor to buy the expensive fixtures, but with that initial investment came an estimated energy savings of $100,000 a year. It’s a project that began with 25 globe lights retrofitted with LED in 2006.
"The first block was well received,” said Andrew Brix, Ann Arbor’s manager of energy programs. "In 2007 we started replacing all 1,000. We’ve done about 700, and we haven’t performed any maintenance on any of them, including the original block.”
Ann Arbor is seeing reduced maintenance costs, Brix said, and has cut the city’s energy bill in half.
Even as its sister city Tulsa considers letting some streets go dark to save money, Oklahoma City officials are uncertain whether to follow Ann Arbor’s lead. They were unaware of the LED lighting pursued by Ann Arbor and other cities before such efforts were first mentioned at a planning meeting Wednesday by local architect Rand Elliott.
Elliott is urging Oklahoma City to look at the LED City program — an alliance of cities like Ann Arbor and LED manufacturers and vendors led by Durham, N.C.-based Cree Inc.
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