Ann Arbor is on its way to being the first U.S. city to light up its downtown with 100% LED-based streetlights. The city expects to install more than 1,000 LED streetlights beginning next month. The city anticipates a 3.8-year payback on its initial investment.
The LED lights typically burn five times longer than the bulbs they replace and require less than half the energy. The LED streetlights currently installed in Ann Arbor are by Lumecon, which contain LED light engines from Relume Technologies. The light engines are based on the Cree XLamp LED.
Full implementation of LEDs is projected to cut Ann Arbor’s public lighting energy use in half and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2,425 tons of CO2 annually, the equivalent of taking 400 cars off the road for a year. Detroit Edison, Ann Arbor’s local utility provider, will meter the new LED streetlights with the intent to gather sufficient information to develop new LED-based tariffs.
Other North American cities like Raleigh, N.C., and Toronto, have started installing LED streetlights too.
Above is a diagram of the Relume streetlight by Lumecon.
Via: Inhabitat
26 responses so far ↓
1 Shagata Ganai // Jan 26, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Congratulations. Looks great in the pics. Cheers!
2 ZACHARY KELMAN // Jan 26, 2008 at 6:32 pm
I LIVE IN ANN ARBOR AND THIS IS PURE BS. THERE IS A LIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW IN THE BACK ALLEY AT WASHINGTON AND 5TH THAT CONSTANTLY FLASHES ON AND OFF AND HAS BEEN DOING SO FOR THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS.
3 Traine // Jan 26, 2008 at 6:51 pm
A small percentage will have a failure as long as most of the lights work it will be successful. Whats important is if the new led lights put out as much light as the ones they replaced
4 LOL // Jan 26, 2008 at 7:01 pm
What good are the LED streetlights in saving energy when they’ve light all the trees with christmas lights from October through January?
5 purrl.net |** urls that purr **| // Jan 26, 2008 at 7:05 pm
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These are the web’s most talked about URLs on Sun 27th Jan 2008. The current winner is …..
6 Brutus // Jan 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Ann Arbor is a whore
7 JDOG // Jan 26, 2008 at 9:08 pm
THe problem with LED’s is that they flicker on and off 60 times a second and create an unpleasent and somewhat irritating type of light similar to florescents. Hopefully we do not read 3 years from now about the effects of LED’s causing people to be irritated and violent. LOL!
8 deweyja // Jan 26, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Nice job Ann Arbor.
Is there a way to get warmer looking light from LED’s?
9 colinnwn // Jan 27, 2008 at 1:02 am
JDOG,
That is only true of cheap leds with poorly designed power supplies. They use half or full wave rectification without filtering necessary to produce constant DC. LEDs provided true constant DC make light as steady and flicker free as incandescents.
10 morphine // Jan 27, 2008 at 1:29 am
I live in Ann Arbor and plan on shooting these lights out. These LED lights are just another step toward robots taking over the planet.
11 fdadsf // Jan 27, 2008 at 1:58 am
fdasdfdsa
12 s // Jan 27, 2008 at 2:47 am
“new LED-based tariffs” … uhmm. what?
13 Deliggit.com | The social sites' most interesting urls // Jan 27, 2008 at 9:44 am
First U.S City To Be Lit With 100% LEDs: Ann Arbor! : MetaEfficient | Deliggit.com…
metaefficient.com
Info on an interesting green lighting project.
Full implementation of LEDs i…
14 Undisclosed // Jan 27, 2008 at 10:27 am
A pity that the LEDs waste a fair amount of energy by illuminating the night sky (ie shining upward, instead of onto the ground).
15 john b // Jan 27, 2008 at 12:21 pm
foolish move. The best LEDs you can’t even buy yet have not beat the sodium lights most cities use already. The white sodium lights are where a few in-lab LEDs claim to approach but as far as I know those are not sold or proven at this time; even so, the yellow sodium lights are significantly above the white lights and they run for many years as well.
see wikipedia on the on the different kinds of light bulbs.
16 Read The Story // Jan 27, 2008 at 4:40 pm
@Zachary
“The city expects to install more than 1,000 LED streetlights beginning next month.”
Read before you comment
17 O-H // Jan 27, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I-O
18 Brian Briggs // Jan 28, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I live in Ann Arbor and I hate LEDs. I hate technology. And I hate everyone and everything. Im a satanist. And Im homosexual. Don’t tell my wife.
19 AJ // Jan 28, 2008 at 8:33 pm
this is a great idea and to all the dicks that are scared and plan to shoot them or think that “robots” are going to take over the earth because of this or want to knock it without knowing the facts and just assume to know better than the intelligent ones do the rest of us a favour and go and hang yourself from the highest branch of the biggest tree you can find by the neck untill you and all your seed have been banished from the earth and no longer continue to pollute the world with your inbred half witted slack jawed ideas and rants
20 Ty // Jan 30, 2008 at 4:29 pm
We need Population Control, We have reached and passed the worlds amount of people, Time to stop making babies
Anyway to cut back on electricity use in big cities is great—- oh yea and because we cut back on energy use doesn’t mean we have left over energy to use for other things. Just because you have a hybrid car doesn’t mean you should be able to drive more.
21 George // Jan 31, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Uh, Why don’t we all just turn off the lights after a certain time, say 11:30 to 5:30?
Right - lets just start a global movement, Here, NOW. - 11:30 Lights out (streetlights, and exceptions in Bar/night club areas.) Who really needs the road to be lit up - it is easier, but if it were dark I would simply drive slower.
22 Alan // Feb 9, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Lot of rednecks here with your 6th grade education. Better not go to anywhere with technology cause dem dere flying cars will run you morons over!
23 Mytsikan // Feb 9, 2008 at 9:09 pm
New LED tariffs = “We’re going to hike the price of electricity through the roof, using the environment as an excuse, so the cost of using LEDs will be the same as using light bulbs anyway. So cheap light bulbs will be too costly for everyone to run, and everyone will have to buy our expensive LEDs to save on electricity. We’ll make a huge profit both out of electricity hikes and LED sales, and so we the rich will get even richer and the poor will get even poorer.”
24 Ydub // Mar 27, 2008 at 8:23 am
One big benefit I see will be a reduction in light pollution. The old design let light bleed to the sky, the new ones direct light to the ground where you want it.
25 Benjamin Snetter // May 20, 2008 at 8:20 am
Please sent detail information for your lights There is some interest in my community in these type of lights. I will also need some examples of these lights to show my Clients.
26 Todd in Cali // Jun 21, 2008 at 6:28 pm
LEDs are the future !
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