The New York Power Authority (NYPA) and the City of Amsterdam are installing energy efficient SMART LED streetlights throughout the city under the state's Smart Street Lighting NY program. The program's goal to replace 500,000 streetlights with LED technology was achieved in August 2023, years ahead of its scheduled goal of the end of 2025. The program directly supports the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the most aggressive clean energy law in the nation, through the increased use of energy efficiency by participating municipalities to annually reduce their electricity demand by three percent equivalent to 1.8 million New York households by 2025.
"Amsterdam's new streetlighting fixtures will upgrade critical energy infrastructure, curb carbon emissions and reduce the city's energy costs," said NYPA Vice President of Marketing and Product Development Joseph Rende. "Under the Smart Street Lighting NY program, more than 500,000 streetlights have been replaced with SMART LED fixtures, improving municipal energy efficiency throughout the state."
The Power Authority and the City of Amsterdam partnered to replace nearly 2,000 streetlights with new, energy efficient LED fixtures. The new fixtures will save the $340,000 in annual operating and maintenance costs and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 100 metric tons the equivalent of removing 23 cars from the road. Additionally, the town will benefit from a new asset management system to monitor and control the entire streetlight system, providing diming options and outage reporting. The project will begin this week and is expected to complete by the end of 2024.
"City residents are looking forward to this long-awaited transformation to a higher quality and easier to manage and maintain streetlighting model," said Amsterdam Mayor Michael Cinquanti. "This single investment will deliver three highly desirable outcomes. The new lighting will enhance public safety in our city, conserve energy and save our taxpayers a significant amount of money and we appreciate the support and assistance we are receiving from New York State, which has helped make this project doable."
Albany, Utica, Rochester and Syracuse, among others, have already converted to LED streetlights in collaboration with NYPA.
Smart Street Lighting NY
NYPA is working with cities, towns, villages and counties throughout New York to fully manage and implement a customer's transition to LED streetlight technology. NYPA develops the project, with payments to NYPA made in the years following from the cost-savings created by the reduced energy use of the LED streetlights, which are 50 to 65 percent more efficient than alternative street lighting options.
Through this statewide street lighting program, the Power Authority's government customers are provided a wide array of lighting options to help meet their individual needs, including specifications on the lights to incorporate SMART technology, which can be used for dozens of other functions, such as cameras and other safety features, weather sensors, and energy meters.
To further advance the state's effort to replace existing New York streetlights, in 2020, NYPA launched a new maintenance service to provide routine and on-call maintenance services for LED street lighting fixtures installed by NYPA throughout the state. The service is available to municipalities that have engaged the Power Authority to implement a LED street lighting conversion and have elected to install an asset management controls system on their street lighting system, reducing the number of failures and repairs needed after installation is complete.
To learn more about the Smart Street Lighting NY program, visit the program webpage.
About NYPA
NYPA is the largest state public power organization in the nation, operating 17 generating facilities and more than 1,550 circuit-miles of transmission lines. More than 80 percent of the electricity NYPA produces is clean renewable hydropower. NYPA finances its operations through the sale of bonds and revenues earned in large part through sales of electricity. For more information visit www.nypa.gov and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and LinkedIn.
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