Greenfield city officials are hoping to live up to the “green” name and save money in the long run with the installation of additional Light Emitting Diode streetlights.
With 600 LED lights already installed and more than 700 yet to go, city officials want to secure more money for additional lights.
Last year Greenfield Power and Light entered into a $630,000 program – the majority of which was grant funds – to purchase 1,334 LED bulbs for the city’s tall light poles.
Installation began in November, and officials continue to place new lights and dispose of the old ones.
But recently Greenfield was notified that there was extra grant money available. Nelson Castrodale, superintendent of Greenfield Power and Light, said the city decided to continue to participate in the program, and now an amendment to an ordinance is before the city council to secure those funds.
Mayor Brad DeReamer said when he found out more money was available, “I texted them and said, ‘I’ll take everything we can get.’”
“Any time I can get something 10 cents on the dollar, I’ll take them all day long,” DeReamer said.
The new funds will purchase 130 more LED lights, making for a total of 1,464 of the city’s total 2,700 streetlights being replaced.
The entire program including the new funds available will be $704,836, with the city contributing $84,530 of utility funds that are already on hand and $56,387 worth of in-kind services to install the lights.
The new money available is $75,735, with the city contributing $11,360 in both utility funds and in-kind installation. The city council will consider the ordinance for additional commitment to the project during its March 9 meeting.
The grant money comes from the Indiana Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the program is administered through the Indiana Municipal Power Agency, a wholesale provider of power to many local communities. Greenfield is one of 20 communities to participate in the program.
Walking through Greenfield Power and Light, 333 S. Franklin St., Castrodale pointed to dozens of boxes piled high with LED lights.
“Once the weather breaks, we’ll get them all out in no time,” he said Wednesday. “We’re anxious to get them up so we can get them out of here because it kind of overwhelms us.”
The building also includes bins for recycling old lighting plastics. The hazardous bulb of the old mercury vapor lights have to be wrapped up and shipped to be properly disposed of.
The old lights had a yellow glow and would light up all around the bulb. The new LED lights have a white glow – Castrodale compared it to moonlight – and the light shines directly on the street.
The new lights have been installed mostly on the south side of Greenfield so far, and crews are working north of U.S. 40 to continue the installation.
Castrodale said a few people have complained about the new lights not shining on their yards anymore, but for the most part he hasn’t heard of problems with the new ones.
The lights are expected to save between 50 percent and 80 percent in the cost to the city to light up Greenfield, according to IMPA.
An example of the savings can be viewed in a one-month snapshot. With less than half of the LED lights up in December, 48,071 kilowatt-hours of energy were saved. That translates to over $4,300 in savings to the city for the month of December.
The city spends $184,000 a year to light up the city’s streets.
“The biggest advantage in that is the reduction in the cost to the taxpayer to run them,” DeReamer said.
Both DeReamer and Castrodale said several of the old lights needed to be replaced anyway. Some of them were from the 1950s, Castrodale said.
DeReamer said at this time there are no plans to replace the remaining city streetlights with LED lights. Without a grant, it’s difficult to do because of the expense, he said.
There are around 900 post-top lights in the city, and getting LED lights for those decorative features is even more expensive than the tall, cobra-head lights. Castrodale said they received a sample post-top LED light from the supplier and will be displaying it in front of the power and light building, but the bulbs can cost up to $1,000 each.
Still, he said the city will continue to look into ways to save money on energy, including changing the times the lights are on through the touch of a button on Castrodale’s computer.
“It’s kind of the low-hanging fruit with street lighting (to save energy),” Castrodale said.
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