Sep 2, 2011 / ENERGY GLOBE Award Project presentation - "A
glowing city thanks to LEDs" Money savings and simultaneous
environmental conservation were the motto of the city of Ann
Arbor (Michigan, USA) over the past two years as they replaced
all traffic lights and street lights in the downtown with modern
LED lamps. This saves the city government some $100.000
annually, or 50% of the lighting costs. The advantage of these
LEDs is that they consume only 56 watts and have a lifetime of
ten years; the old lamps drew 120 watts and had to be replaced
after two years. Thus the investment for retrofitting ($630,000)
amortizes in only 4.4 years. In addition to the city budget, the
environment profits from the project due to a reduction of 2.2
tons of CO2 emissions annually. Due to its huge success, the
project is to be extended: In addition to the 2000 streetlights
belonging to the city, Ann Arbor has 5000 others that are
operated by DTE Energy, whereby the city pays for these. Ann
Arbor is now considering purchasin