ZHEJIANG ALITE LIGHTING CO., LTD.
ZHEJIANG ALITE LIGHTING CO., LTD.
POTSDAM — Town Board members on Tuesday night discussed how they can take the steps to join other municipalities in the switch to LED streetlights.
Town Highway Superintendent John A Keleher talked about the conversion process and what would be provided by National Grid, telling the board that, unlike the village, which has more than 400 streetlights to consider in its move to LED lighting, the town has only 33 streetlights to change over.
Those lights, located in the lighting districts of Sissonville and Hewittville, Barker Road Extension, at the town highway garage and at routes 56 and 72, would only have to be retrofitted for the LED lighting, Mr. Keleher said, which is less expensive than a complete changeover in the National Grid LED Street Light Conversion Program.
“There are going to be the two types of scenarios: either National Grid is going to own those lights, which you don’t save as much money and they do the repairs, or you get the bigger savings and the town of Potsdam will own the streetlights.”
As far as repairs go, he said it’s only a matter of unplugging one light and plugging in another.
“Basically all the town has to do to get started is we have to formulate a letter and send it to National Grid asking for the book value for the existing lights, which gives the town no obligation to do anything past that,” Mr. Keleher told the board. “Then they will send that information back to us and it is going to be what the lights are worth what they are sitting there now and what the other lights are going to cost to retrofit them.”
In most instances, the municipality gets all its money back, though it’s not guaranteed, he said.
Mr. Keleher recommended the letter to get started be sent out to National Grid as soon as possible, which he said would allow the board to have an idea of how it would want to proceed sometime early into the new year.
“We need a lot of information going forward,” Town Supervisor Ann M. Carvill said. “Some of the stuff I was more interested in was about the fact that Smart Street Lighting New York, it was the governor‘s goal to have 500,000 streetlight conversions by 2025 and they have reached 67 percent of the capacity already, so I thought we are behind the median then, in terms of taking action and then they talked about money that was available in base grants of $20,000 if you have between zero and 500 lights . . . Obviously, long range, it is the smart thing to do.”
The town of Potsdam would join the municipalities of Norwood, who began looking at the switch in August, DeKalb, Stockholm and Waddington in St. Lawrence County. Canton and Potsdam are also in talks over joining the project.
Jefferson and Lewis counties have 15 communities involved in projects as well, including the villages of Adams, Carthage, West Carthage, Castorland, Copenhagen, Deferiet, Lowville, Lyons Falls, and Sackets Harbor, as well as the towns of Adams, Champion and Wilna.
The town of Denmark, which Mrs. Waldorf said has five lights, also wants to join the project.
As a part of the recent Downtown Revitalization Grant, the village of Potsdam will also be looking to make the change to LED street lighting along Market and Raymond streets to better illuminate the sidewalks and for senior citizens and people with disabilities.
“Ours will not me an installation, it would be a retrofitting, because we already have the street lights.”
Copyright © All Right Reserved 浙ICP备15016532号
BY：