Council approves replacement of street lights

City council is going ahead with a plan to better illuminate Peterborough’s streets.

Council voted a final time on Monday to replace nearly 7,000 exterior streetlights with energyefficient LEDs, at a cost of $4.9 million.

Councillors gave preliminary approval to the plan, last week.

Now that the plan has received final approval, the replacement of the streetlights can begin in fall. It’s expected to take no more than about a month to be done.

A staff report recommended the new LEDs because most of the city’s streetlights are is getting old and should be replaced.

A firm from Montreal called Realterm Energy is going to oversee the work.

Last week, officials from Real Term told councillors the new LED fixtures can last more than 20 years.

Also, the LEDs are expected to save the city roughly $500,000 in energy costs and $200,000 in maintenance costs annually.

At that rate, the lights are expected to pay for themselves in seven years.

Wayne Jackson, the city’s director of utility services, told councillors more on Monday about why the Montreal firm was selected for the job.

He said the Association of Ontario Municipalities (AMO) searched for a firm that could install LED streetlights for more than 150 cities – and RealTerm was the selected bidder.

They teamed up with Cree Lighting – an LED supplier based in North Carolina – to offer a reasonable price.

Jackson said the city could set up its own bidding process to try to find a better bargain, but that would take between six and eight months.

In the meantime, he said, the city is losing money on lights that are old and not particularly energy efficient.

RealTerm is expected to hire local workers to do the installation of the streetlights, Jackson told council.

“So there’s a significant amount of local work that still needs to be tendered,” he said.

There was no debate from councillors – they simply voted to go forward with the plan.