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    Upstate New York City Converts Streetlights to LED

    Oct. 25, 2021
    NYPA financed and implemented the streetlight upgrade.
    Photo 127168311 © Mahmoud Suhail | Dreamstime.com
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    An $11.1 million citywide project to upgrade streetlights in Utica, N.Y., is complete, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) reported in early October.

    A collaboration between NYPA and the City of Utica, the project entailed installing nearly 7,140 LED streetlights. NYPA pointed out that it financed and implemented the streetlight upgrade, which included asset management nodes and smart street lighting controls to enable automatic outage reporting as well as the capability to dim and remotely control the lights.

    The Utica project falls under NYPA’s Smart Street Lighting NY program, which calls for replacing at least 500,000 streetlights with LED technology across the Empire State by 2025.

    “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,” commented NYPA President and CEO Gil C. Quiniones. “We are on track to not only meet, but to exceed the governor’s goal of 500,000 LED streetlights installed by 2025. The program, 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.”

    Under the Smart Street Lighting NY program, NYPA provides upfront financing for cities, towns, villages, and counties to transition to LED streetlights. The organization explained that it receives payments from the localities in subsequent years as a result of cost-savings from reduced energy usage. It contends the LED streetlights are 50-65% more efficient than alternatives.

    “Our partnership with NYPA in converting the city’s streetlights to LED has been tremendously beneficial to our community,” said Utica Mayor Robert M. Palmieri. “As the city completes the installation of over 7,100 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.”

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.