The New York Power Authority has completed the installation of smart energy-efficient LED streetlights throughout the city of Utica as part of a state-wide programme that calls for at least half a million streetlights throughout the state to be replaced with LED technology by 2025.

The project included the installation of nearly 7140 LED streetlights, improving lighting quality and neighbourhood safety while reducing energy and maintenance costs. The $11.1m lighting upgrade – which includes asset management nodes, smart street lighting controls that allow for the automatic reporting of outages, reducing maintenance costs, and the capability for the lights to be dimmed and remotely controlled – was financed and implemented by NYPA.

“Smart Street Lighting NY has been an enormous success story for the state and NYPA intends to aggressively continue the installation of LED street lighting,” said Gil Quiniones, NYPA CEO. “We are on track to not only meet, but to exceed the governor’s goal of 500,000 LED streetlights installed by 2025. The programme, which also offers municipalities the ability to expand smart city technologies that meet a city’s individual needs, is a win-win for the state and our customers as it reduces energy use, helps improve safety as well as municipal government efficiency, and saves money.”

New York has now replaced more than 286,000 of its streetlights with LED fixtures in the state’s goal to replace at least 500,000 streetlights with LED technology by 2025 under the Smart Street Lighting NY programme. Some municipalities in addition to Utica that have already converted to LED streetlights in collaboration with NYPA include Albany, Rochester, Syracuse and White Plains.

“Our partnership with NYPA in converting the city’s streetlights to LED has been tremendously beneficial to our community,” said Robert Palmieri, city of Utica mayor. “As the city completes the installation of over 7100 LED streetlights, this initiative has allowed us to reduce our energy costs, improve our infrastructure, upgrade our technology, reduce our carbon footprint and provide better customer service. This initiative has been a win-win for our community, and I commend NYPA CEO Gil Quiniones for his leadership and continued support.”

NYPA is working with cities, towns, villages and counties throughout New York to manage and implement a transition to LED streetlight technology. NYPA provides upfront financing for the project, with payments to the authority made in the years following from the cost-savings created by the reduced energy use of the LED streetlights, which are 50 to 65 per cent more efficient than alternative street lighting options.

Through this statewide street lighting programme, NYPA’s government users 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, wifi and energy meters.

To advance the effort to replace existing New York street lighting, in 2020 NYPA launched a maintenance service to provide routine and on-call maintenance services for LED street lighting fixtures installed by NYPA throughout the state. The service is available to municipalities that have engaged the authority to implement an 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.