Timetable for arterial streetlight switchover to LEDs: Still a few years away for most of West Seattle

| Utilities | West Seattle news

After switching residential streetlights to LEDs – which cast light in a dramatically different way from their predecessors – Seattle City Light is working on arterials, as first announced two years ago. But West Seattle arterials aren’t scheduled for the change any sooner than 2017, according to the utility’s recent update. SCL says the new lights use up to two-thirds less energy and last up to four times longer, among other attributes. Our area’s busiest city road got them almost two years ago.

brizone August 25, 2015 (2:44 pm)

Hmmm…. So how do LEDs save energy when City Light & SDOT leave them turned on 24 hours a day? Some lights seem to stay on all the time on the bridge (may be an individual sensor), but the entire central-east SECTION of the Spokane St Viaduct has ALWAYS been on since the retrofit, regardless of whether it’s a bright sunny day (and they leave the lights UNDERNEATH on constantly too).

Seems pretty hollow for them to trumpet how much energy LEDs save when they ignore such wasteful practices under their purview…

commenter August 26, 2015 (6:57 am)

Actually, yes it does save energy to have an LED running 24/7 rather than an incandescent. Quite a bit of energy. :-)

But more to the point, have you reported this problem?

http://www.seattle.gov/light/streetlight/form.asp

Scott Thomsen, Seattle City Light August 26, 2015 (2:43 pm)

Brizone,
LED streetlights save energy by being significantly more efficient than the high-pressure sodium lamps they are replacing. To get the same amount of light, an LED streetlight might use 1/3 the amount of electricity (so 2/3 less).
Thank you for your note about the lights staying on. I will share that with our streetlighting team so they can check it out.