Officials tout streetlight program
State financing helps local towns score savings by buying lights in bulk
Thirty-five municipalities across the greater Philadelphia region have seen the light, literally and figuratively, and are encouraging others to do the same.
Local officials and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission held a joint reception Monday to talk about DVRPC’s Regional Streetlight Procurement Program, which county commissioners’ Chairwoman Valerie Arkoosh said will make a big difference in Montgomery County.
“It’s very exciting for the county. Eleven county municipalities are taking very forwardlooking steps, to save money for their local constituents and improve the environment at the same time,” Arkoosh said.
“Over the life of the project, it will more than pay for itself, and you just don’t get that kind of opportunity very often,” she said.
Since early 2016, DVRPC has helped coordinate municipalities in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties into a joint program to purchase and install
new energy-efficient LED lights in their streetlights, traffic signals, and other lights, to replace older models and pay down the installation costs by savings on reduced energy bills.
Local municipalities taking part include Jenkintown, Lansdale and Schwenksville boroughs and Cheltenham, Hatfield, Lower Moreland, Lower Pottsgrove, Springfield, Towamencin, Upper Dublin and Whitemarsh townships. Combining the four counties, more than 26,000 streetlights, exterior lights and traffic signals will be upgraded, producing annual reductions of over 10,000 megawatt hours of electricity used, removing the equivalent of 5,500 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and saving $1.4 million in annual energy and operating costs for those municipalities, according to DVRPC.
“We at DVRPC saw an opportunity to promote regional cooperation, to support local governments, to address energy efficiency, to improve safety, and to
save money. That’s a fiveway win,” said DVRPC Executive Director Barry Seymour.
DVRPC, state and county officials spoke about the program Monday, at a joint press conference and reception hosted by WESCO Distribution in Eagleville. As they spoke, officials stood
next to display models of the various LED light fixtures, next to shelves full of boxes containing the LED light fixtures that will be installed across the region this summer.
State Treasurer Joe Torsella said Monday the program was the first, and hopefully the first of many,
administered by the Pennsylvania Sustainable Energy Finance Program, or PennSEF, and other joint efforts could be found and funded in the municipality, university, school and hospital sectors.
“The only rules we have, that we’re pretty strict
about, are that the project has to have a net savings in energy or water use and it has to pay for itself. Within those two parameters, we are open for business,” Torsella said.
A total of 35 municipalities have signed on to the project: 14 in Delaware
County, 11 in Montgomery, seven in Bucks County and three in Chester County. Torsella said the program is, “pardon the pun, a shining example” of what can be achieved through cooperation.
“In a sea of sometimes discouraging news on these kinds of issues, this is real progress. This is real news, and this is real progress, it’s real savings, and a real step forward when it comes to
the environmental impact. We can do more of this,” he said.
Stephanie Teoli Kuhls, Township Manager of Middletown Township in Bucks County and formerly Hatfield’s township manager, said her township will replace roughly 1,700 cobra head streetlights, over 1,000 decorative streetlights, and about 150 exterior lights, using a $1.3 million loan from Univest Bank
arranged by PennSEF.
“As a result of this project, the financing, and our guaranteed energy and operational savings, we will be paying this back within 11 years,” Teoli Kuhls said.
After the installation costs are paid back, Middletown Township is expected to save $2.3 million in energy operating costs over the next 20 years as a result of this project.
“We’re really thrilled to
be a part of it,” she said, adding that she and other municipal managers have already started to hear “a lot of talk about what else we might be able to do” in joint efforts, and “this program was a natural fit for us.”
John Byrne, Chairman and President of the Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment, said the project would benefit the environment not only by cutting energy usage,
but also by wherever those savings go.
“After the payments made on the loans, you still have roughly $14 to $16 million to spend. Communities need libraries, they need a variety of other things,” he said.
“You have the ability to invest in your future, and I hope you will put part of that to work on behalf of your environment,” he said.
Torsella said he saw “no reason not” to develop future rounds of the program, so more municipalities can make similar upgrades to their lights, and Seymour said DVRPC is beginning talks on other pooled purchasing initiatives such as for municipalities to buy alternate fuel vehicles for their own fleets.
“Getting through this together, pooling our resources, and getting a lower price, potentially could open the door to all kinds of other things,” he said.
Arkoosh said Montgomery County has already used pooled purchasing power to bid out bridge repair projects across the county, and is closely watching an effort by the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association to help municipalities find ways to reduce runoff and clean that watershed.
“It can be done, when people are willing to come together with goodwill, and acknowledge that one person may have a higher need this year, and that it will be their turn next year,” she said.
“But that takes a lot of trust, and so finding ways to convene all of these different levels of government together, for a long enough period of time that they develop that trust — that’s when you can really start to see positives like this happen,” Arkoosh said.
The program also fits the county’s Montco 2040 comprehensive plan goals of reducing carbon emissions over the next two decades, and Arkoosh said by 2040 she hopes DVRPC’s map of participating municipalities show all of Montgomery County’s townships and boroughs taking part.
“I sure hope so. There’s really no reason for it not to be” full of participants, she said.
“I think as more municipalities see these lights go up, and someone literally crosses from one block to the next, and they have this new technology, and the neighbors on the other side of the street are talking about how much money this is saving the municipality, there’ll be a real local groundswell to get more of these projects done.”
For more on the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission’s Regional Streetlight Procurement Program, visit www. DVRPC.org or follow @ DVRPC on Twitter.