Council to save cash by turning off lights

October 02, 2009

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A COUNCIL hopes to save £60,000 by switching off street lights earlier and turning them on later.

Bolton council hopes to make the saving over 10 years by keeping the lights off for just eight minutes a day - four at dusk and four at dawn - adding up to almost 50 hours a year for each of the town's 36,000 lights.

The move is one of a number of new street light initiatives approved by the council.

More than £150,000 will be spent swapping 45 watt bulbs with energy-saving 18 watt LED bulbs on residential roads.

A trial scheme to dim street lights using a computer system will also be launched in Victoria Square in the town centre.

The council says the dimming will be 'undetectable by the human eye' yet save money.

Coun Ismail Ibrahim said the council plans to cut carbon emissions by a third by December 2013.

He said the changes would cut emmissions from energy used to power street lights by 40 per cent.

Investment

He added: "Through this investment we will be improving existing street lighting installations that have been installed more than 10 years ago.

"This will involve removing the old-style lanterns and replacing them with LED lamps in more than 300 locations around the borough."

Bolton's annual energy bill has shot up from £870,000 to £1.5m in the past two years - street lighting makes up one fifth of the figure.

The council says the new LED bulbs are dimmable and can be more easily controlled by a central management system.

It also hopes to limit the use of illuminated signs and bollards in the future.

The move comes after politicians in neighbouring Bury scrapped a more radical black-out plan.

The M.E.N. revealed the council was considering turning off one-in-four street lights on selected roads between midnight and 5.30am to save nearly £300,000 over two years.

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salfordrat (02/10/2009 at 11:34)

How aboout every council department becoming ISO14001 certified? Being as local authorities nationwide are now asking companies that tender for LA contracts to be ISO14001 registered it is time they began leading from the front on carbon eminssions. ISO14001 for those who do not know is an environmental management system - it can include things asx simple as turning off lights and computers in offices.

The fact is that public buildings i.e. lcoal authorities and government buildings, are responsible for more carbon emissions that any other source in the country, far outweighing that of every car on the road in the UK. So, let's see local authorites put their money where their mouth is and introdice ISO14001 across the board immediatly!!!

City Darren, Ashton U Lyne (02/10/2009 at 11:57)

How about the country entire turning traffic lights off on the quieter roads after say 10 at night until 6 in the morning? That would save a fortune.

Sarcastion Nastyface (02/10/2009 at 12:22)

salfordrat, are you by any chance some kind of freelance implementation consultant for ISO14001 ?!

That bit of fluff, under the sofa (02/10/2009 at 12:31)

what a waste of time, for the following reasons:

- the saving over 10 years is ignorable

- global warming is a myth to get us to conserve oil.

And, if M

Englisc Stannes, North Manchester (02/10/2009 at 12:37)

Someone remind me why we need street lamps. There was a good reason some official mentioned once.

Deejay, Bury (02/10/2009 at 15:42)

It's a good start. I'd rather they simply switched them off after midnight. It seems to work in many other European countries, so why not here. Perhaps too many are scared of the dark...

Is It Me? (02/10/2009 at 20:27)

I wonder if the councils in China and India are turning their lights off? Have they got any street lights?

to the point, bury (02/10/2009 at 20:54)

Police crime prevention advice.
Leave your car in a well-lit area.
Put lights in dark areas out side your house.
Don’t walk down dark alleyways.
Walk in well-lit areas. The list is endless.

Try turning off the lights in and on the town Hall.
Turn off traffic lights on traffic islands.
Turn the lights off, on St Peters way, pedestrians are not allowed on it.

Disconnect Prestwich Village from the supply, it will save a fortune.

DoubleU (02/10/2009 at 21:13)

Manchester Council should look at the blocks of flats. If you look at Brookway Court near Wythenshawe Park, it has 9 floors with 18 lights on each floor, one outside each flat doorway. If they switched 50% off on each floor it would still be light enough and be one hell of a saving on my Poll Tax. They could probably get away only leaving a third of them switched on. It would be a start!!!

salfordrat (03/10/2009 at 08:03)

salfordrat, are you by any chance some kind of freelance implementation consultant for ISO14001 ?!
Sarcastion Nastyface,

Just something I had to look into as part of my job recently. Some local authoritys are moving in that direction in some departments, but mostly not. It is typical of lcoal and central government attitude of do as we say, not as we do. They could save a lot by using video conferencing also, which is technology that can be aquired for a couple of grand nowadays, instead of sending staff all over the country for meetings and so forth. But then again, it would mean them not getting a day out of the office and we can't have that can we!

salfordrat (03/10/2009 at 08:06)

what a waste of time, for the following reasons:

- the saving over 10 years is ignorable

- global warming is a myth to get us to conserve oil.

And, if M

Eggsy w (03/10/2009 at 17:54)

I wonder whether Bolton MBC have taken steps to find out where the new LED Lantern's are actually manufacturered. The saving's that they think they are going to make in Carbon Emissiom's is probably dwarfed by the amount of Carbon Emission's taken by the selling company to import these Lantern's from Europe by freight, actually increasing the Carbon Footprint to the Authority.

Prestwich Red, Prestwich (05/10/2009 at 09:19)

Why not turn the motorway lights off between Junction 17 and 18 of the M60 during daylight hours?

Rammylad (05/10/2009 at 18:15)

The dimming will not be noticeable to the human eye. Ha ha ha. Sounds like the council have been duped by a very good salesman. The human eye will notice that is why there are standards for lighting and light levels to comply with. You would be better to invest in better quality products instead of buying cheap tat. e.g. Piccadilly Gardens used to have some very high quality ERCO recessed lights. Typically ERCO products last 15-20 years. Now we have cheap contractor range 2D bulkheads. An awful lamp, an awful solution. Why was that, why were they changed after 5 years. All that high quality engineering thrown in the bin and some cheapies shipped over from a labour camp in china instead. I wonder if a councillors brother runs an electrical firm?

Start by doing the easy stuff.

Eggsy, Hyde (06/10/2009 at 15:18)

There are indeed BS Lighting level's to be adhered to, however these are depicted in part by traffic flow. So to dim the lights to a lower catagory during hours from Midnight to 6:00am is a great idea for lowering energy/carbon emission's and should be appauded.

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