Duane Hicks
An initiative is underway to replace all of the town’s more than 1,000 streetlights—an overhaul that will save the town an estimated $110,000 annually on an ongoing basis.
Fort Frances Power Corp. crew haves been installing the lights for the past few weeks, switching out high-pressure sodium lights with new brighter, energy-efficient LED ones.
Facility/special project co-ordinator Travis Rob said not only is the town looking for ways to find energy cost-savings, but its streetlight bulbs are reaching the end of their service life, having been converted from metal halide to high-pressure sodium in the late 1980s/early ’90s.
“The Town of Fort Frances owns the lights and we pay FFPC to do maintenance on them—changing the bulbs, changing ballasts, doing repairs—and we were seeing a pretty sharp increase on a year-by-year basis of our maintenance costs as these lights reach the end of the lives and need pretty major repairs,” Rob explained.
“At the same time, LED streetlight technology has really, over the past five years, just exploded and gotten extremely good,” he added.
“We did some tests, tried different styles of light fixtures, found a type we liked, and we are going through and replacing all these high-pressure sodiums with the LEDs.”
The project is expensive to undertake at $800,000 (although about $65,000 of the amount is to be covered by grants).
But the savings to be realized are considerable. Rob said the LEDs are even more energy-efficient than anticipated, and is more than half of what the old lights use.
This will result in a reduction of $56,000 a year in energy costs.
As well, the town is expecting to save an additional $54,000 in maintenance costs each year.
With the high-pressure sodiums, the bulbs last anywhere from two-four years. With the LEDs, there’s no bulbs to change while LED fixtures are estimated to last 20 years, noted Rob.
“The savings that we’re seeing are pretty substantial,” he stressed.
“It’s pretty expensive to undertake right off but at the same time, the payback is pretty short,” he added.
“We’re going to see very substantial savings.
Rob also noted that as electricity rates go up in time, the energy savings only will get better and better as years go on.
For those who have not seen the new lights yet, Rob said the high-pressure sodium lights shed a yellowish light over a broader area while the new LED ones are “a much cooler colour” and more focused.
“I’ve done some testing with an actual light meter and the light input on the road is pretty much double what the old ones are,” he remarked.
“It’s a cooler colour. It gives you a lot better visual acuity,” he added.
“That’s the whole idea of why people are switching to them,” Rob said. “You can drive down the street and tell what colour that car is coming towards you.
“Before it was just a car that was a light colour or a dark colour. Now you can tell it’s blue.
“It’s not only brighter but you can comprehend more with your eyes,” he reasoned.
FFPC crews will install the new streetlights on an ongoing basis in addition to doing their regular work.
New lights so far have been put in mainly in the east end of town, as well as samplings in other areas, like Old Shambles Road, the Sorting Gap Marina, and the 100 block of Scott Street.
The FFPC will continue to install as many lights as it can before embarking on its summer projects program, then resume the streetlight installations in the fall.
The town is hoping all the lights can be converted before the end of the year.
