New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Bill introduced would help towns buy their streetlights
Hamden is the only municipality in United Illuminating Co.’s service area that hasn’t let the company convert its street lights to energy-efficient LED lamps. But it’s not because town officials don’t want energy and cost savings.
Hamden wants to buy its streetlights from UI before the company installs new LED lamps, but there’s nothing requiring UI to go along with this plan.
“Our streetlights aren’t for sale,” said UI spokesman Ed Crowder.
UI, a subsidiary of Avangrid, owns and maintains the streetlights in 16 of the 17 Connecticut towns and cities it serves and the company has converted nearly all of its 51,500 municipal streetlights to LEDs. New Haven is the only city able to buy all its streetlights from UI thanks to a deal reached in the 1980s.
However, cities and towns serviced by another utility company — Eversource — may buy their streetlights due to a 2001 decision by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, then the Public Utility Control.
In response to a grassroots effort to provide legal parity between both utility companies, state Rep. Michael D’Agostino, D-Hamden, has introduced House Bill 5580. The bill would allow those municipalities serviced by UI to buy their streetlights, which Hamden is eager to do.
“Streetlights are a profit center and towns are in constraints,” said Hamden resident Christina Crow-
der, a member of the Hamden Low-K LED Alliance, which worked for more lighting options when UI sought to convert Hamden’s lights to LEDs around August 2017.
UI projects Hamden would save around $317,000 in energy costs if the company switched the town over to LEDs and maintained the lights. But town officials say Hamden can do better.
Cost savings of LED lights
As UI has converted its towns to LED lamps, all the municipalities have realized cost savings at no expense. West Haven projected it would save $388,000 a year when the city converted in 2017 and North Haven sees a $200,000 savings yearly since they converted to LEDs in 2016.
UI projects Hamden would save around $317,000 in energy costs if the company switched the town over to LEDs and maintained the lights. But town officials say Hamden can do better.
Right now, in addition to paying electricity charges, the town pays for each light to be bought and maintained by UI.
The nearly $1 million a year Hamden pays UI covers the cost of buying the lights and maintaining them without the town hassling with it. For each light purchased, UI takes on the upfront cost and the lamp’s value depreciates over time. Christina Crowder said the town pays about $100 per light, but some fixtures are 20-30 years old and the town would have paid for it many times over at this point, so the extra money being spent goes straight to UI.
If the town bought the lights, it could save close to $700,000, Crowder said, basing her estimates on other towns that have done it in Eversource’s service area. If the town converted to LED lights after taking them over, the savings would be even greater.
“The savings, pure and simple, is number one,” Christina Crowder said.
More municipal control
Hamden isn’t only interested in cost savings, though. Crowder said she and Mayor Curt B. Leng want the ability to control whatever lighting technology gets installed in the town. Lighting technology is constantly evolving and if Hamden wants to take advantage of it, officials don’t want to wait for UI to get on board, she said.
“UI is good at a lot of things but they’re not specialists in lighting technology,” Christina Crowder said.
These days, street lights exist that can can deliver municipal Wi-Fi or metered parking, Crowder said. Another possibility is having dimmer/brightening controls on lights so towns can adjust the brightness for appropriate settings.
“That’s just today, and who knows what exists in the future,” Christina Crowder said.
Having municipal control is such benefit to the town its’ a no brainer, she said, “particularly when Eversource towns have the right, so why don’t UI towns?”
The Joint Committee on Energy and Technology heard testimony on House Bill 5580 at the end of February, but no action has been taken since. A number of Hamden residents, including Christina Crowder and Leng submitted testimony in support of the bill.
A representative for UIL Holdings Corporation, which includes United Illuminating, Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas, said in testimony requiring electric distribution companies to sell street lights “would not be in the best interest of the rate payers, both system wide as well as in the municipality requesting to purchase the assets” because UI has high level standards and
experience maintaining the lights, a cost that towns would assume.
In a letter to UI’s attorney Leonard Rodriquez, Leng formally informed the company that Hamden is interested in buying the town’s streetlights. When the service company indicated it won’t sell the lights, the town prepared a petition for a declaratory ruling to PURA, seeking advice on whether UI can refuse to sell lights to any town within the town’s own territory.
Audits & CCM support
Hamden is also working to hire a company to audit the town’s streetlights to assess their age, use and placement.
“The Town is still evaluating all aspects of this idea, working to consider all potential costs, burden and liabilities as compared to the many apparent benefits,” Leng wrote in his letter.
The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities also wrote to support the legislative bill but suggested it include specific requirements of service companies.
They suggested that upon request, utility companies must provide a free audit of streetlights in a municipality within 120 days, which is critical for cities and towns looking to buy the inventory; municipalities shouldn’t be forced to buy private lights on utility poles; cities and towns could perform all street lighting maintenance work except for actual connection to the utility’s secondary system; the final purchase price of streetlights must be based upon their fully depreciated value, rather than their substantially greater market value.
CCM also suggested that all service providers be required to track the operations and maintenance cost the way Eversource does now to set accurate streetlight rates.
“It may get stuck in committee but I’m hoping it’s part of an inevitable march that one way or another Hamden is going to wrangle control over our lights,” Crowder said. “We’re not without options even if this bill doesn’t make it through. We’re going to keep hammering away on it.”
What other cities have done
Torrington and Middletown have bought their streetlights and been saving significantly.
Middletown bought its 5,000 streetlights for about $1.2 million in August 2015. Middletown Energy Coordinator Michael Harris said the deal took three to four years to pay back, but now the city is seeing significant savings.
The city went from paying $800,000 a year for service and to lease the lights to paying roughly half that after the sale. About $100,000 of the savings goes toward contracting a maintenance company to manage the lights, but owning the lights has been much less expensive overall with the potential to save more, he said.
“One of the keys to owning the lights is then you have the opportunity to convert them to higher efficiency rather than wait for the utility company to do it or have to lobby for them to do it,” Harris said.
Come spring, Middletown will begin converting its street lights to energy efficient LEDs, he said, which will cut operating cost again by roughly half, bringing the operating cost down to $200,000 a year.
Torrington was an early adopter of streetlight ownership when the town bought its 3,775 lights on Sept. 1, 2000, from then Connecticut Light & Power, now Eversource. Owning the lights initially saved the city $225,000 yearly, officials said. When the city converted most of its lights to LEDs, it began saving roughly another $150,000 a year.
Former Public Works Director Jerry Rollett, who oversaw the streetlight purchase, said there haven’t been any difficulties operating and maintaining them.
Early adopters
West Hartford was another early purchaser in 2002, but, like Middletown, took a while to convert about 6,000 lights to LEDs. West Hartford Energy Specialist Catherine Diviney said the two rounds of cost savings in streetlights are the initial purchase and then the conversion to high-efficiency bulbs.
Eversource charges two separate rates to municipalities that own their streetlights and those that don’t. The difference in charges per LED fixture is approxi-
mately between $6 and $11 for those Eversource maintains and 60 cents to $3 for lights municipalities own, depending on the brightness of the lamp.
UI also has different rates for municipalities that own the lighting, which is only New Haven — for now.
Christina Crowder said the utility companies and municipalities have competing interests — one seeks to make money, while the other seeks to pay less.
Utility companies have potentially a lot to lose financially if more municipalities begin buying fixtures.
“It shouldn’t be a trade-off because they should be openly supportive of energy
efficiency, but they’re conflicted because they’re a for-profit company and all of this is a loss of revenue,” Harris said. “They’re losing a lot of revenue between the lease and energy charges and they’ve pushed some rate increases and if they can charge people for the repairs and maintenance.
Harris said the conflict is unfortunate because the reason Connecticut is so far behind in energy efficiency is because of corporate influence.
“There shouldn’t be such difficulty when we’re facilitating energy efficiency,” he said. “That should be something we work hand in hand.”
Maintenance of the lights
When towns buy the lights, they also take on the operating an maintenance
cost . Torrington and Middletown officials decided to contract out maintenance, while the West Hartford Public Works Department assumed it for the city.
North Haven First Selectman Michael J. Freda said he’s comfortable with UI maintaining the lights and having the company convert the fixtures to LEDs has saved the town $200,000 a year.
“I was totally on board with it,” Freda said. “It represented $200,000 in savings but also tied into a larger mission at that time to reduce overall energy costs for the town, which was looking at green energy efficiencies.”
Freda said he is not interested in buying the town’s fixtures because it would be a significant capital expense up front in addition to the town assuming operation and maintenance, or contracting it.
“To buy each light, that’s a significant capital expense in my opinion,” he said. “I’m not sure how you could get an additional payback on a huge capital expense up front.”
North Haven has 3,544 streetlights, all of which have been converted to 4,000kelvin LEDs.
“I’ve got no problem with the format and the concept,” Freda said. “I’ve had no thought of trying to change that. The LED conversion was a good example of UI keeping up with the savings and technology by offering a more cost efficient solution.”
In the end, Freda said he wanted a net savings for the town and that’s what he got.