With the case for making the switch to LED street lighting now crystal clear, local governments and researchers are starting to roll out large-scale projects and trials. In Queensland, a research team has just wrapped up a 12-month LED street lighting trial, which found power savings of up to 82%.
Researchers switched over sections of street lighting across Brisbane, Ipswich and Townsville to bright LED lights that exceeded the road lighting requirements of the relevant Australian Standards.
“Public street lighting is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions for local government in Australia and is estimated to cost councils more than $250 million a year,” Dr Gillian Isoardi, a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researcher and lecturer in optical physics says.
“Compared with High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights, LED street lighting offers significant energy savings of up to 60%, demand reductions and large maintenance savings from long design life (up to 20 years).
“New advancements in LED street light control mean they can also be dimmed when and where appropriate, which can further increase energy savings to 80%.”
The Brisbane trial took place on the roadways surrounding the Brisbane Airport Skygate Centre where 98 Metal Halide and High Pressure Sodium (HPS) streetlights were replaced with 104 LED streetlights.
The new LED luminaires had dimming capabilities and could be addressed individually by wireless communication. LED replacements were applied to the existing poles, and when operated at 100% power the new LED installation consumed approximately 67% less power than the previous lights. The annual energy usage decreased from 119.8 MWh to 39.3 MWh.
Three locations in Townsville were assessed: the Townsville Civic Theatre Car Park, Murray Lyons Crescent at the RSL Sports Complex Annandale, and Stokes Street in the Townsville CBD.
“In each location, new LED streetlights that were dimming capable and individually addressed by wireless communication were used on the existing poles as replacements for older lamp types," Isoardi says.
“Over the course of a year, the annual energy consumed at the Murray Lyons Crescent site decreased from 9.19 MWh to 4.40 MWh (a 52% reduction). For Stokes Street, it dropped 70% from 13.75 MWh to 4.06 MWh. At the Civic Theatre Carpark, energy savings of 82% were achieved through the active control (dimming) of light levels, dropping the annual energy usage from 43.6 MWh to 7.97 MWh.
“At Ipswich, we trialled 53 LED luminaires (ranging from 28W to 158W) in the road network within Queen’s Park, which replaced 28 fluorescent, HPS and Mercury Vapour lights. The new lighting design was quite different to the old one and covered a greater area which meant we couldn’t do a direct comparison of overall energy savings. But we did compare two locations, the Nursery Car Park and Entrance Road, where the lights were brighter than the relevant standards required, which meant we could dim them by 20% and reduce energy consumption by a similar amount.”
Isoardi says LED streetlights are evolving over the world and have already been installed in countries including the US, Canada and the United Kingdom.
“In addition to energy savings, ‘smart’ street lights are also being enabled to act as sensor networks, collecting and communicating data relevant to transport, environment, city management, energy, safety and security service applications. New technology LED street lights have the capacity to include features like digital signage, CCTV, speakers, ‘push to talk’ emergency systems and even electric vehicle charging," she explains.
“Australia has been slow to uptake the technology due to uncertainty about technical performance, a lack of new funding models and ongoing questions of ownership between network utilities and local government."
LEDs on the Sunshine Coast
In September, the Sunshine Coast Council endorsed the Urban Lighting Master Plan, which will see it become the first local government in Australia to deploy LED lighting across its entire region.
Economic Development Portfolio Councillor Stephen Robinson said the ULMP will improve public lighting outcomes by achieving greater energy efficiency and reduced ongoing costs through the use of new LED and smart control technologies.
“This project will also make our Council the first in Australia to deploy LED lighting across the entire region including major and minor roads; use street lighting controls to provide the foundation for the Smart City vision; redesign public lighting on every roadway and deliver the lowest energy usage per kilometre of roadway through the use of high performance LED, innovative design and smart controls," he says.
“The 27,000 street lights on the Sunshine Coast cost the council around $4.6 million last financial year and that represents 56% of council’s total electricity costs.
“Street lighting also consumes more than a third of council’s total energy usage."
Robinson says the ULMP detailed upgrade plans for 27 locations across the region and would deliver energy savings of around 50%.
“The Plan adopts a host of positive changes including six options with a range of energy savings to cater for local conditions like nearby roads. It also includes a range of LED lights and brackets to suit the look and feel of coastal and hinterland areas,” Robinson says
“It incorporates a hybrid networking solution that enables the delivery of smart city Framework services across low, medium and broadband capacity across the Coast. The key benefit of investing in a hybrid bandwidth network would be the cost efficiencies of undertaking the installation simultaneously to LED conversion and accelerating the timeframe for the deployment of smart city initiatives to the broader region which may otherwise take over a decade to deliver.
IPWEA's Street Lighting and Smart Controls Programme
IPWEA’s Street Lighting and Smart Controls (SLSC) programme is a two-year initiative that aims to speed up the deployment of LEDs and smart controls in Australasia, through forming partnerships with governments, industry associations and industry partners.
IPWEA’s vision for the SLSC programme is to see the near-full deployment of LED street lighting and smart controls across Australia and New Zealand by 2027.