Streetlights LED Conversion

About the Program

Category: Transportation (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

With approximately 1,000,000 residents, Montgomery County, Maryland is a vibrant community day and night. The County is highly committed to the safety and security of its residents, and strives to address any such concerns throughout the County. For this reason, the County has, over the years, installed more than 29,000 streetlights in addition to the nearly 40,000 streetlights that are owned and maintained by utility companies throughout the County. As lighting technology evolved over the years, the County worked to stay current until finally switching to light Emitting Diode (LED) in 2016. While the switch to LED was a great start, the County already owned an inventory of over 25,000 High Pressure Sodium (HPS) streetlights. LED technology is far superior to HPS as it drastically reduces energy consumption and the associated carbon footprint. Long life is another key advantage of LED – while an HPS streetlight lasts 5 years on average, the useful service life an LED streetlight is approximately 25 years. Recognizing the advantages of the LED technology, the County had been interested in the technology for over a decade, but lacked the funding for the Countywide conversion of its streetlights to LED. However, as the technology evolved, its cost decreased sharply over time. Additionally, Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) extended its “EmPOWER” Maryland initiative beyond the residential and business sectors to also offer incentives to State and local governments for use of energy-efficient lights. Although the company’s incentive program had a $1,000,000 annual cap per account, the County worked with the company and managed to obtain pre-approval for the maximum incentive available (nearly $4.5 million for approximately 25,000 streetlights), conditioned on a conversion timeline not exceeding two (2) years. With the incentive secured, the County looked for ways to fund the balance of the conversion cost, estimated at $9 million. In 2018, the County issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) solicitation, intended to create an Energy Savings Performance Contract that would be funded through the savings in energy and maintenance over time. The solicitation required the interested bidders to perform an independent Investment Grade Audit (IGA) to validate the feasibility of the intended funding mechanism. The solicitation resulted in multiple proposals including one from Lighting Maintenance Incorporated (LMI). After thoroughly reviewing all proposals, the County selected LMI’s proposal, based on cost, materials, company resources/experience, and the overall service. LMI started the project on December 18, 2018 with a completion target date of September 30, 2020. The project is currently over 90% completed and expected to be 100% completed by May 2020. Based on prior agreement and understanding with PEPCO, the County has already received approximately 60% of the incentives and expects to receive the balance by July 2020. While the project is not totally complete yet and County/PEPCO records and databases are yet to be fully updated, the actual savings are greater than those projected.