NYPA Partners with Lewis and Jefferson County Communities to Replace All Streetlights with LED Fixtures

For Immediate Release: 12/02/21

Contact: Alex Chiaravalle | alex.chiaravalle@nypa.gov | (518) 860-9935

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; Halfway Mark announced in September

 

WHITE PLAINS—The New York Power Authority (NYPA), in partnership with 11 municipalities across Lewis and Jefferson counties in the North Country, announced the start of installation of energy-efficient LED streetlights 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. When complete, the project will replace all streetlights for these 11 municipalities. 

 

The $2.3 million lighting upgrades, which are being financed and implemented by NYPA, include the replacement of more than 1,800 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 by approximately 67.7 metric tons.

 

The streetlighting replacements will include asset management nodes and functions that allow the lights to be dimmed and remotely controlled. Smart street lighting controls included in the projects will also allow automatic reporting of outages, minimizing maintenance costs. NYPA is providing $210,000 in funding to support additional smart city devices, such as improved public safety camera systems.

 

NYPA Interim President and CEO Justin E. Driscoll said, “The Smart Street Lighting NY initiative has been an extremely successful tool in advancing the goals of New York’s Climate Act—the most aggressive climate change legislation in the nation. Our partnership with communities within Lewis and Jefferson Counties will upgrade local lighting infrastructure while realizing more than $220,000 in yearly energy and ownership savings.”

 

The participating municipalities in Jefferson County:

• The Town of Adams
• The Village of Adams
• The Village of Carthage
• The Village of Deferiet
• The Village of Sackets Harbor
• The Village of West Carthage
• The Town of Wilna

 

The participating municipalities in Lewis County:

• The Village of Copenhagen
• The Village of Croghan
• The Village of Lowville
• The Town of Martinsburg

 

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.

 

The street lighting 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.

 

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.