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Manchester Making LED Streetlight Swap

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Flicker CC

The City of Manchester is halfway into replacing all of its streetlights with energy efficient LEDs.

The total price tag for replacing 9,000 street lights? $3.7 million dollars.  

But the savings, according to the city’s Deputy Public Works Director Tim Clougherty are “in the neighborhood of $550,000 dollars a year.”

The city says the upgrade will pay for itself in less than six years.

The city first started talking about swapping its outdoor light bulbs in 2013, but it first had to wrangle with Eversource Energy – then Public Service of New Hampshire – over the rate Manchester would be charged.

After reaching a settlement last year, and sorting through competing bids from Philips and Siemens, the city council voted for the upgrade, though it didn’t spring for the “smart controls” that would let workers monitor and control the lights back at HQ. Those controls would have added between $1.2 and $1.4 million.

“It would definitely make our lives easier from a reporting perspective,” says Clougherty, “but I don’t know that we could definitely say it would be cost-effective in the long run,”

Clougherty says the upgrade will be finished in September.

LED lighting has been rolled out in many major cities across the country. In some places the change has been met with complaints about theharshness of the light, while others have clamored for better lit streets. According to Siemens, which is installing the lights, Manchester is the first New Hampshire city to make the change, though according to its website the town of Durham did so in 2011. 

Sam Evans-Brown has been working for New Hampshire Public Radio since 2010, when he began as a freelancer. He shifted gears in 2016 and began producing Outside/In, a podcast and radio show about “the natural world and how we use it.” His work has won him several awards, including two regional Edward R. Murrow awards, one national Murrow, and the Overseas Press Club of America's award for best environmental reporting in any medium. He studied Politics and Spanish at Bates College, and before reporting was variously employed as a Spanish teacher, farmer, bicycle mechanic, ski coach, research assistant, a wilderness trip leader and a technical supporter.
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