BC cities seeing the light over LED street illumination

Burnaby completed its plan to replace 11,600 street lights with LED fixtures in 2019, Vancouver is at the start of its plan to replace 44,000 street lights with LEDs by 2026.

From the air at night, Boundary Road reveals a stark divide between Vancouver and Burnaby.

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Aerial photographs show that on the Vancouver side, the city's irregular cross-hatch of streets are traced out in almost garish yellow-orange light. On the Burnaby side, however, the streets show as a circuit board of cool bluish white.

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It's a sign Burnaby is further ahead in the municipal transition to LED street lighting from the old-school, high pressure sodium fixtures that have dominated North American cities for almost 60 years, though Vancouver is catching-up.

Burnaby completed its program to convert 11,600 street lights to LED lighting in 2019 at a cost of $4.8 million, according to the Burnaby Now. Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley expected to recover the expense quickly through an expected $750,000 a year in savings on electricity.

"Energy conservation like this makes sense on so many levels," Hurley said at the time.

Check out the lighting temperature difference between Vancouver and Burnaby. pic.twitter.com/2Yu5LWzs8v

Cost savings were also a big driver for the City of Vancouver's replacement plan, launched last October, to replace its 55,000 outdoor lights starting with a $26 million program to switch-out 44,000 street lights by 2026.

B.C. Hydro estimates LEDs use 70 per cent less electricity.

But there's another benefit.

Tests run by Vancouver in select locations since 2015 have shown a 46 per cent reduction in traffic collisions and a 27 per cent decline in pedestrian strikes at intersections where LED lights have been used.

The city has adopted standards to put LED lights with a cooler, whiter colour temperature at intersections, which is what has been shown to improve safety, said Eric Mital, director of the City of Vancouver's streets’ division.

And they’ve opted for a warmer and softer colour temperature closer to an incandescent-style light on side streets.

"Bottom line, the advent of LEDs in street lighting is just fantastic news," said Lorne Whitehead, a lighting expert and physics professor at the University of B.C. "They do render colours well. A person illuminated by a high quality LED street lamp looks human.

"In addition to that, the glare control (of LEDs) is superb," Whitehead said. "If you see some of the more brightly illuminated streets, especially intersections in Vancouver, it's just a magnificent improvement … in vision quality."

The longevity of LEDs is probably the next big advantage, according to Marty Metcalfe, president of Port Moody-based Metcalfe Lighting.

"We’ve had lights up since installation in 2015, eight years, and we haven't touched a light on the (car dealership) lot," Metcalfe said.

Metcalfe's company hasn't done major installations for municipalities, but car dealerships are among his bigger customers.

Metcalfe's general manager, Sunita Mistry, added that LED lighting can be directed in ways that high pressure sodium lights can't, which can enhance safety.

Plus, "car dealerships obviously want to make the cars look good," Mistry said.

LED applications have come with their problems. Vancouver, for instance, ran into a problem with LED lights delivered with a faulty coating that delaminated after installation in some of its tests between 2017 and 2019, leaving them with a purplish hue, Mital said.

Several major cities throughout North America suffered the same problem, but the manufacturer in Vancouver's case has committed to replacing all 350 of its lights under warranty, though supply chain problems have delayed some of the work, Mital said.

LED street lights have been available since the mid-2000s, though the real push for conversion didn't take hold until about 2014, said B.C. Hydro spokeswoman Susie Rieder in a statement.

Municipalities are responsible for most of the street lighting in B.C., with some 241,000 fixtures, Reider said. While she didn't have figures on progress being made to replace those, she added that Hydro has already replaced 90 per cent of the 90,000 street lights under its jurisdiction.

Rieder said B.C. Hydro estimates that once completed, its replacement plan will save about 32 gigawatt hours a year of electricity, enough to power about 3,000 homes.

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