Despite the cold winter temperatures and snowy weather, crews working for town contractor Siemens this week will start removing sodium-vapor bulbs and installing new LED (light-emitting diode) fixtures in each of the town’s 1080 streetlight installations.

Siemens crews are scheduled to begin the streetlight conversion work in Old Saybrook on Jan. 15; work will take about three to four weeks to complete, subject to the weather conditions.

On March 5, 2017, a Town Meeting authorized a sum not to exceed $585,000 to purchase the town’s 1,080 streetlights from Eversource and pay Siemens to convert the town’s streetlights to LED fixtures. About 1,000 of the town’s streetlights are attached to utility-owned poles that carry electricity wires and other infrastructure. Maintenance and responsibility for these poles lies with Eversource, whose electricity infrastructure is attached to the poles. The remaining 70 to 80 streetlight poles stand alone, without utility wires attached to them. The town will now own and be responsible for maintenance of these poles, and the arm and light fixture attached to them.

“The town’s ROI—Return on Investment—will be about four years. The savings to the town [going forward] will be about $100,000 per year,” said First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr.

In addition, the town will receive an $81,000 rebate incentive payment from Eversource for making capital improvements that reduce the town’s energy usage.

As the new owner of the streetlights, the town will no longer pay Eversource $75,000 previously paid to the utility each year to maintain the streetlights. With the new LED fixtures installed, the system also will use much less electricity than before, because LED bulbs are much more energy-efficient than sodium-vapor bulbs, reducing the town’s annual energy usage and its costs.

Townspeople have already been introduced to the appearance of LED streetlight bulbs through an Eversource pilot project. That project, completed several years ago, converted streetlights on Sheffield Street and along Main/College streets to Saybrook Point from sodium-vapor to LED bulbs.

The town’s choice of streetlight bulb color and intensity will differ from those installed by Eversource. The town’s chosen LED bulbs will cast a slightly more yellow light than the blue-white cast of the Eversource LED bulbs. The town LED bulbs will cast a light similar in brightness and color to that of the sodium-vapor lights they replace.

The wattage of the town’s LED streetlights will vary, based on the light’s location. Busy thoroughfares will get brighter lights than residential streets. How bright an LED streetlight appears to viewers is a function of both its Kelvin rating and its wattage. LED streetlight bulbs of a lower wattage than a comparable sodium-vapor light can, however, provide a similar perceived level of street illumination.