NYPA Press Release

Town-Wide Energy-Efficient Lighting Upgrades Result in Energy Cost Savings and Emissions Reductions

Statewide Smart Street Lighting NY Program Calls for 500,000 Street Lights to Be Converted to LED Technology by 2025

Photos of the Completed Lighting Project: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3

WHITE PLAINS—The New York Power Authority and Town of New Paltz announced the completed installation of energy-efficient LED streetlights throughout the city as part of Smart Street Lighting NY, a statewide program that calls for at least 500,000 streetlights throughout the state to be replaced with LED technology by 2025. The initiative directly supports the goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (the Climate Act), the most aggressive climate change law in the nation, through the increased use of energy efficiency to annually reduce electricity demand by three percent—equivalent to 1.8 million New York households—by 2025.

The project included the replacement of the town’s 86 existing fixtures with state-of-the-art energy efficient LED streetlights. The New LED streetlights will improve lighting quality and neighborhood safety while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The $117,000 project includes asset management nodes and functions that allow the lights to be dimmed and remotely controlled. Smart street lighting controls included in the project will allow automatic reporting of outages, minimizing maintenance costs.

NYPA Interim President and CEO Justin E. Driscoll said, “The Smart Street Lighting NY initiative has been tremendously successful as we strive to help communities lower their greenhouse gas emissions. The program offers communities the opportunity to be energy efficient while saving money, and that is why we are already more than halfway toward reaching the state’s goal of installing 500,000 fixtures statewide. We are thrilled to be working with the Town of New Paltz to help deliver energy savings to its residents.”

New Paltz Town Supervisor Neil Bettez said, “The town had entertained the idea of converting to LED streetlights for years because it saves money and is better for the environment, but doing so proved to be both expensive and complicated. However, once the town started working with NYPA, the whole process became very easy and affordable. We’re very happy to have been able to take advantage of this opportunity.” 

New York has now replaced approximately 300,000 of its streetlights with LED fixtures, a significant milestone in the state’s goal to replace at least 500,000 streetlights with LED technology by 2025 under Smart Street Lighting NY. Some municipalities that have already converted to LED streetlights in collaboration with NYPA include: Albany, Utica, Rochester, Syracuse, and White Plains, among others.

Smart Street Lighting NY: Energy Efficient and Economically Advantageous

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 provides upfront financing for 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, NYPA’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, Wi-Fi and energy meters.

To further advance the state’s effort to replace existing New York street lighting, 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 new service is available to municipalities that have engaged NYPA 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 on NYPA’s website. 

New York State's Nation-Leading Climate Plan

New York State’s nation-leading climate agenda is the most aggressive climate and clean energy initiative in the nation, calling for an orderly and just transition to clean energy that creates jobs and continues fostering a green economy as New York State recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. Enshrined into law through the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, New York is on a path to achieve its mandated goal of a zero-emission electricity sector by 2040, including 70 percent renewable energy generation by 2030, and to reach economy wide carbon neutrality. It builds on New York's unprecedented investments to ramp-up clean energy including over $21 billion in 91 large-scale renewable projects across the state, $6.8 billion to reduce buildings emissions, $1.8 billion to scale up solar, more than $1 billion for clean transportation initiatives, and over $1.2 billion in NY Green Bank commitments. Combined, these investments are supporting more than 150,000 jobs in New York's clean energy sector in 2019, a 2,100 percent growth in the distributed solar sector since 2011 and a commitment to develop 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035. Under the Climate Act, New York will build on this progress and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent from 1990 levels by 2050, while ensuring that at least 35 percent with a goal of 40 percent of the benefits of clean energy investments are directed to disadvantaged communities, and advance progress towards the state's 2025 energy efficiency target of reducing on-site energy consumption by 185 trillion BTUs of end-use energy savings.

About NYPA

NYPA is the largest state public power organization in the nation, operating 16 generating facilities and more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines. More than 70 percent of the electricity NYPA produces is clean renewable hydropower. NYPA uses no tax money or state credit. It 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 @NYPAenergy, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and LinkedIn.