Energy efficient street lighting was placed firmly on the agenda at IPWEA’s Sustainability in Public Works conference. PWPro talks to four conference speakers about sustainable street lighting management and the role of LED lighting.
by Jill Park
Graham Mawer, Director, Next Energy
We are in “a time of unprecedented change in street lighting”, Graham Mawer, Director at Next Energy told delegates at IPWEA’s Sustainability in Public Works conference. In his presentation titled, Towards More Energy Efficient Street Lighting, Mawer noted that the recent activity follows six decades of stagnation in the sector.
In IPWEA’s new Practice Note, Towards More Sustainable Street Lighting, Mawer and his co-authors Bryan King and Godfrey Bridger of Strategic Lighting Partners, have laid out the emerging street lighting options for councils.
During his presentation, Mawer commended the IPWEA for looking into the issue. “We’ve now got to the point where widespread adoption is a reality,” he said. “We are all rapidly pivoting to LEDs.”
“There are very important environmental and social benefits with LED lights,” he told delegates. “With LEDs you have to be careful what you ask for because they are so controllable.”
The nature of LED lighting is that it only places light where it is required. Mawer told of stories where councils have introduced LED lighting, but the lack of spill light on the surrounding buildings has not been taken into account and they are left in the dark while the street itself is bathed in white light.
According to Mawer, widespread deployment of LEDs and other energy efficient street lighting in Australia would reduce energy and greenhouse gases by 47 per cent.
In the panel discussion following his presentation, Mawer also highlighted opportunities to capitalise on the communications capability of emerging street lighting control systems.
He pointed to the work of communications companies Ericsson and Philips, which announced earlier this year that they would work together to develop LED street lights that can be fitted with a small radio base station that could provide cities with additional mobile broadband capacity. Under the proposal, Philips would manage the network of cells and councils would be able to rent the cells to telecommunications utilities or Ericsson, to
generate revenue.
George Angelis, Traffice and Operations Manager, City of Sydney
In 2012, City of Sydney started its three-year, $7.1m roll out of LED technology, a project that has since received considerable media attention. The project is replacing, 6448 conventional lights (75 per cent of the city’s lighting stock) with LEDs.
City of Sydney Traffic and Operations Manager George Angelis recounted his experience of rolling out LED lighting in Sydney to conference delegates. It all began with City of Sydney’s vision to reduce emissions by 70 per cent by 2030. Sustainable street lighting was identified as an important step towards achieving this target.
Angelis cites research and trialling as being the key to successful planning of an energy-efficient street lighting project. Key questions he highlighted included: Are the energy reductions achievable? What does the financial business case analysis show?
“We asked LED manufacturers to come up with solutions for us,” he told delegates. While a number of the manufacturers were optimistic about meeting the objectives, there were some who said the task was impossible. “We had people in the room who said ‘you are wasting your time, it’s like putting a car onto a pole’.”
The City of Sydney research and trial period lasted two years prior to implementation. The lights are being supplied by GE Lighting and installed by UGL Limited. While there have been some challenges encountered in retrofitting the lights, to date City of Sydney has installed almost 4,000 LED lights.
The project has yielded positive results for the City of Sydney, achieving 46.71 per cent energy savings. To date, no failures have been reported.
“The City was aware that costs would continue to decrease and performance would improve,” he told PWPro. “However the City decided that as a world leading city it had to show courage, innovation and leadership in the implementation of this rapidly developing technology.
“The next step for the City could include the implementation of smart controls, which will act as an asset management tool. This will allow staff to reduce inspections, plan future maintenance requirements and record energy use in real time.”
Paul Brown, Managing Director, Ironbark Sustainability
Ironbark Sustainability Managing Director Paul Brown has worked with the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) to roll out energy efficient street lighting across the state by 2016.
“In the early days we saw T5s dominating,” he told delegates at the conference. “Now we are seeing that LEDs are the preferred option for councils.
“Things are changing rapidly. In the last few months alone Warrnambool City Council announced that it will be the first council in Australia to use LED technology for a bulk changeover of residential street lighting”
In his presentation, Brown identified five key stages for implementing energy efficient street lighting projects: prepare, fund, define, procure and manage.
“For a bulk street lighting changeover where a council wishes to change all of its residential lights to more efficient alternatives, the first step is a detailed technical and financial business case or feasibility analysis,” he told PWPro.
According to Brown, the creation of a business case was the first step in the Victorian street lighting program that will see 232,000 inefficient 80w Mercury Vapour lights replaced by energy efficient alternatives.
“Once you have developed a business case that demonstrates that a project is technically and financially viable, it’s onto funding or financing models and then project definition – lighting design, communications plans and projects plans,” he said.
In 2011 Ironbark Sustainability prepared the National Strategy on Energy Efficiency on Street Lighting. As a part of the development of this strategy document, it undertook a nation-wide survey of 200 organisations. The main barriers identified by councils were costs (most commonly capital cost), expertise (dealing with the complexity of street lighting) and working with external stakeholders.
“But the barriers are no longer there in many jurisdictions,” he said.
Brown presented various financing options available for councils that are struggling to find the upfront capital cost for moving to energy efficient street lighting. He even cited instances where banks have contacted councils to ask about street lighting projects to PWPro.
Rachel Ollivier, Manager of Sustainability and Waste Management, Glen Eira Council
Rachel Ollivier, Manager of Sustainability and Waste Management at Glen Eira Council in Victoria, spoke to conference delegates about the process they went through to replace their MV80 lights with more energy efficient T5s.
“Each light Glen Eira changed reduced [the council’s overall] energy consumption by 68 per cent,” Ollivier told PWPro. “By changing over 5300 MV80 street lights, Glen Eira City Council has been able to cut its overall reported carbon emissions, by more than 10 per cent.”
It took Glen Eira Council roughly two years between developing the business case and starting installation. According to Ollivier, the most difficult part of the process for them was the lack of deep knowledge of street lighting within the council. She acknowledges the hard work of other councils that paved the way for Glen Eira and others in terms of street lighting programs. “We made the decision to play the game with the rules as they were,” she told delegates.
‘Playing the game’ meant having a strong, articulated business case to incentivise the electricity distribution companies, who own the street lights, to agree to an upgrade to T5s.
“Understanding the specific requirements of each distribution company is important,” said Ollivier. “Some distribution companies may require a council to engage them to do the supply and installation, and not allow engagement of a third party. This may be a quicker process with less risk for council, but doesn’t necessarily give access to true price competition.
A strong business case was also important when convincing her CEO to back the project. Ollivier herself has financial training and had computed the net present value for the project.
While Glen Eira Council’s recent project didn’t use LED lights, but T5 fluorescent lights, the council is investigating LEDs for some other applications.
“There is rapid technology change occurring in many energy-related activities which could flow through to street lighting,” says Ollivier. “LED lighting is continuing to evolve and prices are improving so that they are more and more attractive option for wider applications.”
This article was first published in the Sep-Oct 2014 edition of PWPro.