Should Medfield own its streetlights?

The south coast town of Dartmouth may date to the 1600s, but in the 2000s it has been pursuing the most modern, smart, energy-saving technology. Town Administrator David Cressman adopted photovoltaics for Dartmouth’s municipal electricity. And in 2013, he converted all of Dartmouth’s streetlights to energy-saving LED fixtures.

Cressman had heard favorable reports about LEDs from neighboring Fairhaven as it began phasing them in along their roadways. So when Dartmouth’s maintenance contractor faced changing out many of the bulbs in the old high-pressure-sodium (HPS) fixtures, Cressman knew the time was right to make the change. He was able to complete all the steps to convert to LED technology in less than a year with the aid of recent regulatory and technological developments.

To make any changes to the old fixtures, the town had to first own them. Dartmouth had taken theirs over around 2000. (Since 1997, under MGL C. 164 s.34A, Massachusetts cities and towns may purchase their streetlights from their utility companies.)*

To purchase new LED fixtures, Dartmouth utilized State Contract FAC76 Category 6, which was put into place in 2012 by Massachusetts Operational Services Division in consultation with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. The contract provides a procurement path for an eligible municipal entity to purchase LED streetlight fixtures without having to go through a separate bid process.

Cressman worked with state contractor Fred Davis Corporation (FDC), a lighting products distributor with thirty years of experience in energy-efficient lighting. FDC proposed state-of-the-art Cree XSP LED roadway fixtures in five versions to replace the various fixtures that had been illuminating the streets of Dartmouth.

These fixtures bring the best in high-tech engineering to street lighting. High-quality LED streetlights offer extraordinary efficiency by using many small, latest-generation light-emitting diodes, each of which projects precisely the right amount of light in the right direction. Cree XSP fixtures exceed 100 lumens of directed light  per watt of electricity. Fixture efficiency of a representative HPS fixture is only 56 lumens per watt, and even much of that light is wasted.

FDC’s analysis projected overall electricity savings of 68% for Dartmouth’s new streetlights. The striking energy savings are even more remarkable considering that so many of the town’s old fixtures were already low-wattage types.

The proposal to adopt LED streetlights proceeded as would any project of its scale in the town, gaining requisite committee approvals from Capital Improvement, FinCom, and Selectmen. Final adoption came at Dartmouth Town Meeting in June 2013. Purchase, construction, delivery, and installation of the customized fixtures followed over the summer and fall.

The new fixtures come with a 10-year warranty and are rated to last much longer than that, whereas the old HPS fixtures had a life cycle of about six years, with even more frequent lamp and ballast replacements. Cressman was thus able to dramatically lower the cost of the town’s fixture maintenance contract.

The new LED streetlights promise major financial savings in electricity and maintenance. Add to that a substantial energy-efficiency incentive from NStar Electric, and the switchover is projected to pay for itself in under five years.

Residents are very pleased with the way the roads are illuminated. And town officials are thrilled with the cost-effectiveness of the project.

In just the last two years, the best-quality LED streetlight fixtures have dramatically increased in efficiency, and their price has come down at the same time. The Dartmouth project came in costing 30% less, and saving about 30% more energy, than the town originally anticipated.

Upgrading streetlights to LED technology has proven itself a smart opportunity for any city or town.