Replacing street lights. Where's the 'saving'? Options

[CrackerJack]

I see WBC are going to be spending £7.24m on replacing the street lights with LED lamps over the next couple of years.

Street light replacement

All well and good and I thought that it was obviously a 'spend now to save in the long term' kind of project. However if this article is to be believed it seems that £7.24m is being spent in order to make savings of £4.87m over the next 25 YEARS! Surely it's more cost effective to just keep the one's we have going if that's the economic basis of this project?

And this is at a time where Councils are increasingly looking at energy savings and floating the prospect of turning street lights off in future years as our ailing power stations struggle to cope.

I know it's probably down to Never look a Gifthorse in the Mouth, but I don't quite get the logic. It's a bloody expensive way of going about making efficiency improvements.

[gel]

Yes Labour Party would call such expenditure an "Investment" of course, but the ROI (Return on Investment) numbers don't stack up.
But they know best and some Chinese LED manufacturer will be most grateful

[MontyPython]

The published returns do appear to be lower than I would have expected.

One of the benefits is supposed to be longer bulb life. My experience of the low energy home bulbs is the claims are grossly exaggerated - and of course the guarantee will not be long and the salesmen will be long gone when we realise that they have not lasted as anticipated!

[CrackerJack]

One of the benefits is supposed to be longer bulb life. My experience of the low energy home bulbs is the claims are grossly exaggerated - and of course the guarantee will not be long and the salesmen will be long gone when we realise that they have not lasted as anticipated!

Indeed. And if cost benefits are truly being looked at over a 25 year cycle then it's a given that within ten years there will be a new type of lamp column, or lamp unit, or all-singing all-dancing method of lighting streets which make this £7.24m 'investment' entirely redundant.

Another scenario of course is that within ten years Putin or his successors will have turned off our gas supplies and there won't be so much as a spark from our dead power stations to light these expensive bulbs.

[Biker1]

The published returns do appear to be lower than I would have expected.

One of the benefits is supposed to be longer bulb life. My experience of the low energy home bulbs is the claims are grossly exaggerated - and of course the guarantee will not be long and the salesmen will be long gone when we realise that they have not lasted as anticipated!

Not confusing LED's with CFL's are you MP?

[MontyPython]

Not confusing LED's with CFL's are you MP?

The lights at home are indeed CFL's - but do we believe that the LEDs will last as long as promised?

[On the edge]

Sadly, the 'energy saving light bulbs' were sold against a cynical sales claim. The glass bit does indeed last as long, if not longer than the advertised claim. The other bit - which makes it work, doesn't. Mind, they do save a fair amount of energy - so there was no real reason to start the myth. LED light is actually better. However, as you rightly say, in comparitor terms, the cost difference is marginal.

Having lighting, inside and out that operates directly at low voltages is far more useful in that it can make use of local sustainable and stored energy. If you have that sort of infrastructure / equipment in place, there is the advantage of very low operating cost and freedom from the grid. In the meantime, proper switching systems are now avaliable quite economically which enable much finer control of on/off times and permit dimming or switch outs where appropriate - this cuts energy use even more.

[Gazzadp]

Living beside the A4 in Speen, we have found that the energy saving factors of those LED street lights are quite considerable, as we very rarely need to have any lights on in the back rooms of our property, before this lights were changed I was thinking of installing a security light in our back garden, but we do not need one of them either.

The only downside is that those LED street lights are so bright, I have forgotten what stars in the night sky look like!

[CrackerJack]

Speak to the Council as they can attach a shield to the lamp unit to control the spread of light if it's spilling too much, too strongly into private property.