Street Light Conversion to LED Fixtures
There are two categories of street lights in the City of Sheboygan. Generally all of the lights that are attached to a wood pole are owned and maintained by Alliant Energy. All of the lights that are on metal or concrete poles are owned by the City and maintained by City staff. There are 1,900 City owned streetlights in use currently. This number does not include parking lots, bike paths and parks. Alliant Energy owns and maintains 1,463 unmetered street lights for the City. That is a split of 56.5% City owned lights and 43.5% of lights owned by Alliant Energy and under contract to the City.
Sheboygan has been installing new lights with LED fixtures and upgrading older lights to LED fixtures as budgets allow. Some of the new LED light installations are Erie Avenue from 14th Street to 8th Street and Eisner Avenue from 8th Street to 21st Street. As existing lights are converted to LED the power savings has been tracked. Here are some examples of savings. On North 14th Street from Erie to Saemann Avenue, we save an average of $150 per month after converting 33 fixtures. On 7th Street from North Avenue to Geele Avenue there was a savings of $56.85 per month on 22 fixtures. At Fountain Park we save $17.42 per month on 13 fixtures and on Highcliff Ct. 8 new fixtures save $10 per month. These 76 converted fixtures save $2, 816 per year. In addition, the LED bulbs have a 10-15 year life expectancy versus 3-5 years for the lights that they are replacing. Longer bulb life will also lead to lower maintenance costs for the city. On average, a simple bulb change will vary from $23.34 for a bulb only to $161.65 if a new ballast is also needed.
Alliant Energy is also conducting a LED conversion pilot program on the lights that are installed in the City of Sheboygan. The City contract with Alliant energy calls for a $16,325.76 payment each month for the power and maintenance of the 1,463 lights. Currently 367 of the Alliant Energy light fixtures have been converted to LED.
The City of Sheboygan applied for and received a Planning and Implementing Clean Energy Investment in Wisconsin Communities Grant from the State of Wisconsin Energy Office. The matching grant of $75,000 will allow the conversion of 168 street-light fixtures in a high-traffic area along Kohler Memorial Drive, from High Pressure Sodium fixtures to high-efficiency LED fixtures. Once this project and 12 LED fixtures on Pennsylvania Avenue and 30 more Green Cobra LED fixtures are installed on North Avenue, 25% of city-owned street-light fixtures in Sheboygan will be high-efficiency LED fixtures. The conversion of the Gardco lights to LED on Kohler Memorial Drive is expected to begin in late April with the other projects to follow this summer.