Big interest in LED road lighting

Big interest in LED road lighting

A big turnout is expected for New Zealand’s second road lighting conference in Auckland next month (9-10 March) including councillors and council staff from around the country, lighting professionals, contractors, researchers and government officials.

Road Lighting 2015 conference organiser, and managing director of management consultancy Strategic Lighting Partners (SLP) Ltd, Godfrey Bridger, says, since the inaugural conference in 2014 which attracted nearly 240 attendees, the regulatory environment has changed to encourage New Zealand councils and road controlling authorities to make the switch to LED road lighting.

“Many people will now be more interested to find out how LED road lighting saves energy and money, reduces accidents and street crime, and provides a digital platform for smart city developments,” says Godfrey Bridger.

“These messages may seem almost too good to be true, but a top line-up of international speakers from five nations - US, UK, Canada, Denmark and Australia - is reinforcing them with first-hand experience of city-wide LED lighting retrofits and the benefits enjoyed by residents and ratepayers as a result.”

He says conference speakers have been selected to contribute to the “smart city investment” theme and include experts who are leading the world’s largest urban LED road lighting retrofits, saving the City of Los Angeles USD $10 million a year and expected to start saving London nearly GBP 2 million per year and Melbourne nearly A$1.2 million in electricity and maintenance costs. They also include researchers identifying clear links between road lighting levels and accident rates, and experts who are adding traffic, weather and other sensors together with internet controls to develop smart city applications for the new digital lighting infrastructure.

Godfrey Bridger says SLP identified three years ago that councils in New Zealand could halve their road lighting and maintenance costs each year with LED, and that road lighting represented between 40% and 70% of a council’s overall electricity costs depending on whether it’s a rural or urban Council.

A second report prepared by SLP directors Godfrey Bridger and Bryan King suggested better New Zealand road lighting would also help reduce the $1.2 billion annual cost to the country of night-time road deaths and injuries.

Bryan King says, “Organising these two conferences was a natural follow-up to the information SLP uncovered in the course of preparing these reports on LED road lighting.”

The conference is sponsored by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), Electrix and SLP. Other agencies lending their support include Local Government NZ, the Society of Local Government Managers (SOLGM), the Road Controlling Authorities Forum, the Illuminating Engineering Society of Australia and NZ (IESANZ), Lighting Council New Zealand, the Energy Management Association of NZ (EMANZ), and the Electrical Contractors Association of NZ.

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