City moves forward with switch to LED street lamps
The colour of Edmonton’s nighttime streetscapes is changing.
The traditional yellowish-orange glow from street lights is gradually being replaced by the bluish-white light of LED fixtures.
It’s a switch the city started in 2011, after a pilot project in 2010.
To date, 44,800 of Edmonton’s 117,400 street lights have been switched, Vlado Cicovski, Edmonton’s senior street light engineer, said Monday.
The LEDs use 40 to 60 per cent less electricity than the old highpressure sodium luminaries, saving an average $4,300 a year in each neighbourhood, according to a 2011 Journal story.
“You can find places in the city where there are good LED street lights and not-so-good LED street lights, and you can certainly appreciate the difference in terms of the ground illumination and the effect on your own eyesight,” said Doug Hube, a retired physics professor from the University of Alberta.
Costs, from $400 to $700 per fixture, depend on where the LEDs are installed, the manufacturer and the wattage, Cicovski said.
If the city receives funding from either the provincial or federal governments, the change could be completed sooner, but as it stands, it would take “about 10 years or so” to completely switch to LEDs, he said.
When the project started off, the city installed LEDs that emitted a bluish light. Over the years, the city converted to LEDs with warmer glows.
“Edmonton has been done fairly well with the available technologies,” said Rod E. McConnell, president of Light-Efficient Communities and the Alberta Dark Skies Association.
If complaints about either insufficient light or glare are received, Cicovski said the city investigates, and if needed, changes the settings or luminaries.
Hube said while LEDs are unquestionably better than incandescent lights for energy efficiency, people should be educated that more light is not always better.
Other than affecting health and sleep patterns, light pollution is also an issue, he said.
The northern lights, which can be seen from Edmonton, are now often lost in the background of artificial lights, he said.