Supervisor Bill Reilich has announced an important development in his ongoing effort to reduce energy consumption and save money for Town of Greece taxpayers. Namely, the Town is making significant progress on its multi-phase program of converting town-owned street lighting assets to light emitting diode (LED) technology. The Town previously purchased the street lighting infrastructure from Rochester Gas & Electric (RG&E), which created the opportunity to initiate the LED conversion process.
“Our decision to previously purchase the street lighting infrastructure is what is making new lighting upgrades possible,” Supervisor Reilich said. “Not only are we saving money on maintenance costs, but now we will begin converting the lights to a new technology that is not only cheaper to run but also provides better light quality for our community”.
Phase 1 of the street lighting upgrade project is currently underway. This phase entails converting 1,272 street lights to LED technology along all or part of several major arterial roadways in the Town of Greece: Ridge Road, Latta Road, Long Pond Road, Fetzner Road, Dewey Avenue, Stone Road, Mount Read Boulevard, and Ling Road. In these areas, traditional high intensity discharge (HID) fixtures will be replaced with Philips brand LED luminaires and CIMCON asset management nodes. Wendel Energy Services has been retained to lead the turnkey, Design-Build project that will provide guaranteed savings to the Town. Power & Construction Group, Inc. will be installing the new fixtures later this summer, the vast majority of which are “cobrahead” style fixtures.
The project has been facilitated in part by the Town of Greece’s successful efforts to obtain “Clean Energy Community” designation in October 2018 from the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA). Through the Clean Energy Communities program, the Town of Greece completed four of 10 high impact action items to demonstrate its commitment to energy conservation and sustainability, including adopting the Unified Solar Permit, obtaining Energy Code Enforcement Training, benchmarking energy use of Town buildings, and achieving clean energy upgrades to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The CEC designation garnered the Town a grant of $150,000 to be used towards the LED street lighting project. Rebates from RG&E valued at $63,692 will further reduce total project implementation costs.
LED street lighting luminaires consume less electricity and last four times longer than traditional HID fixtures, thus saving the Town money on operational costs and results in a project that will have a payback of about 5 years. The financial savings from Phase 1 of the LED street lighting upgrade will total more than $2.5 million over the next 25 years.
Additional phases of Greece’s comprehensive lighting upgrade project will convert several thousand more Town-owned street lights to LED, primary in residential areas. This work is anticipated to start in 2021.