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Street Lighting Upgrade on the Way

Dunedin (Friday, 4 July 2014) – New generation LED street lighting has just been installed in the Vogel Street/Water Street area as part of the warehouse precinct upgrade.

DCC Roading Maintenance Engineer Peter Standring says this form of lighting is Dunedin’s first taste of technology that will most likely be rolled out across the whole city, as it looks to upgrade its stock of street lights in the next few years.

“The city owns 14,920 lights and they operate 4,300 hours per annum. At the moment all these lights use high pressure sodium (HPS) lamps – a system which has reached the end of its development.

“We plan to replace these with LED lights, which offer a range of benefits, from reduced energy consumption and lower maintenance, to greatly reduced light spill, which will mean people on the street will get to see more of the night sky.

“The change only involves replacing the lamps and luminaire or lighting head at the top of the pole – not the pole itself. The current lights are anywhere from 15-25 years old and they are beginning to break down. They are at a point where we should logically be renewing them.”

Mr Standring says changing the lighting will cost $6 million, but savings in energy and maintenance costs mean the lights will pay for themselves in five years.

The LED lights offer a range of other benefits, including better colour rendition, rather than the eerie orange glow given off by the sodium lights.

They also provide a degree of future proofing. Being a solid state light source means there is the potential to one day install a central management system that would allow them to vary the light levels, have motion activation systems or even have individual lights switch themselves on and off via advanced photo cells.

There is even scope to have solar and wind powered lights.

Mr Standring says if people want to get a feel for how the new lights will look and the sort of lighting they will provide, they have replaced ten lighting units in the Water St/ Vogel Street area.

“I think people will be pleasantly surprised at how much of a difference this form of lighting makes to how well they can see the surrounding streetscape at night.”

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