Tulita looks on the bright side
New LED streetlights expected to reduce costs
Kassina Ryder
Northern News Services
Published Monday, March 24, 2014
TULITA/FORT NORMAN
Tulita streets look brighter these days after the community's LED streetlight project wrapped up earlier this month.
Tulita completed its LED streetlight project on March 5. - photo courtesy of Tejas Kashyap |
Tejas Kashyap, Tulita's economic development officer, said the project to replace high-pressure sodium bulbs with light emitting diodes in the community's 100 streetlights finished on March 5.
"It consumes less energy, it provides better illumination," Kashyap said. "It lasts longer and it's a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions."
The Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) and the Arctic Energy Alliance began partnering with communities to replace streetlights last year. Similar projects are now completed in Gameti and Jean Marie River. Tulita is the third community in the territory to make the switch.
Kashyap said the LEDs will save the community money.
The high-sodium bulbs needed to be replaced within a few years, but LEDs last three times as long, he said.
"We had people complaining about the streetlights burning out every two or three months and by the time they were replaced, it took a couple more weeks," he said. Kashyap said even if Northern winters take their toll, he estimates the bulbs will last at least a decade.
Myra Berrub, manager of energy services for NTPC, said LEDs are estimated to last about 15 years.
LED lights also use less energy to produce light than high- pressure sodium bulbs, Berrub said.
"Your day-to-day operating costs have lowered because you need less energy to run the lights and then they're going to last so much longer," she said. "The new streetlights that we're putting in are using half the power of the old high pressure sodium lights.
"That means we're using half the diesel fuel."
Berrub said while rates vary, the average cost of one high-pressure sodium streetlight in the NWT is about $64.
The new LED lights will initially cost about $19.15.
"Once those streetlights get installed, they see an immediate change on their bill in terms of the rate," she said.
Kashyap said he estimates the lights will save the community the equivalent of 50-megawatt hours a year.
"Fifty megawatt hours is the energy consumed by five houses," he said.
