Senior councillors approve £30m investment in new smart street lights for Leeds

Street lights in Leeds are to be upgraded to make them more energy efficient after a proposal was approved by senior councillors this week (October 18th).At the meeting of the council’s executive board meeting at Civic Hall, councillors approved a recommendation to invest £25.4million to convert 86,000 lights across the city to new LED lamps. The board also approved investing a further £5m in making the light system across the city more controllable in terms of utilising the latest technology as part a ‘Smart City’ network approach.The council currently spends around £4.8m a year on electricity to run approximately 92,000 street lights, with 6,000 of these already earmarked to be converted to LEDs if the wider programme is approved. The proposal called for the remaining 86,000 to also be converted over a four-year period starting next summer, generating savings of £3.4m a year at current energy prices when the programme is complete.As well as making the lights more energy efficient, the upgrade offers the opportunity to make the light system ‘smart’ by being able to be controlled remotely and in real-time, connected as a network and with other city infrastructure such as CCTV, air quality and temperature monitoring.Public consultation on street lighting in the city was carried out from November 2017 to January 2018. More than 2,000 responses were received, with more than 80 per cent backing the upgrade of lights and (52.2 per cent) supportive of both the upgrade to LEDs and increased levels of nighttime switch-offs. There are no plans for further nightime switch-offs at this stage, with the position being kept under review.The council will now work with street lighting partner TVL on the upgrading programme.