Chamblee switching all street lights over to power saving LEDs

Chamblee City Hall. Image: Trey Benton

Chamblee, GA, February 7, 2017 – The Post Reports – The City of Chamblee says they are working with Georgia Power to remove old high-pressure sodium lights and install new LED roadway lights on all of its roads except its streetscape fixtures. “The installation of nearly 1,200 lights will begin during the next month and take approximately two to three months to complete,” the City said in a Tuesday release. “The streetscape lights are not being replaced at this time.”

The City explains that according to Georgia Power, technology improvements, coupled with marketplace acceptance resulted in lower pricing for LED roadway fixtures. They say the color of the light is beneficial because the white light provided by LEDs enable color recognition and a visible color contrast between objects and background that is superior to the poor color rendering provided by traditional high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting that has been used on roadways prior to the availability of LED lighting. “This also is a great help to the Police Department because the high quality light improves depth of field and peripheral vision without distorting color,” Chamblee adds.

Other benefits of the LED fixtures include:

• Energy efficiency
• Broad spectrum white light
• Improved small-target visibility
• Long life expectancy of the fixtures
• Non-hazardous materials
• Network lighting controls

On a networked lighting control system, the City notes, lights will turn on a dusk and off at dawn, to meter energy consumption as well as diagnose any problems with the lights from a remote location. The manufacturer says the high-power LEDs’ conservative lifetime estimate is 50,000 hours, and this translates to 11.4 years when used for an average of 12 hours per night.

“The great thing about this is residents and the city will not incur any charges to have these changes made,” said Jon Walker, City of Chamblee City Manager. “The city will actually see a small savings on our power bill, so it’s a win.”