NYPA Partners with Town of Ramapo to Install Energy-Efficient LED Fixtures

For Immediate Release: 03/10/22

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

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

 

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

 

New Streetlights to Improve Safety for Pedestrians and Allow for Automatic Reporting of Outages

 

WHITE PLAINS—The New York Power Authority (NYPA) and the Town of Ramapo announced that energy-efficient LED streetlights will be installed throughout the town as part of the state’s Smart Street Lighting NY program. New York has now replaced more than 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.

 

The project calls for the installation of more than 3,000 fixtures with state-of-the-art energy efficient LED streetlights, including the addition of hundreds of LED lights at new locations throughout the town. The project will improve safety for pedestrians and reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 metric tons annually. The installation is set to begin this September and is expected to complete in June 2023.

 

The $5.2 million project, financed and implemented by the Power Authority, will feature asset management nodes and smart street lighting controls that allow for the automatic reporting of outages, minimizing maintenance costs. Additionally, the light fixtures will have the capability to be dimmed and remotely controlled.

 

“NYPA is proud to partner with the Town of Ramapo to create a more energy efficient New York State,” said NYPA Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Sarah Salati. “The new LED streetlight fixtures will upgrade Ramapo’s critical infrastructure and directly assist New York in its goal of replacing 500,000 streetlights with LED technology by 2025, a target for which we have already met and surpassed the halfway milestone mark.”

 

Ramapo Town Supervisor Michael B. Specht said, “We are excited to take this opportunity to upgrade our infrastructure, enhance public safety and quality of life for our residents, and increase efficiency in an environmentally sound way.  Ramapo is proud to be among the municipalities to join with NYPA in using this smart technology to benefit our residents.”

 

Some additional municipalities that have already converted to LED streetlights in collaboration with NYPA include: Albany, Utica, Rochester, Syracuse, and White Plains, among others.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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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 $33 billion in 102 large-scale renewable and transmission 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 $1.6 billion in NY Green Bank commitments. Combined, these investments are supporting nearly 158,000 jobs in New York's clean energy sector in 2020, 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.