The Clifton Park Town Board took the next step in the process of purchasing the streetlights located in Town this week. Siemens was selected as our private sector partner to shepherd the process. Through legislation that is a couple years old, NYS allows municipalities to purchase streetlights. Last week the NYS PSC included provisions in the recently approved rate case with National Grid, that streamlines the process and makes the purchase more attractive for municipalities.
You may not have heard about this opportunity before now. A project of this type has not been executed within our service territory. Clifton Park is now positioned to be among the first municipalities that will purchase streetlights and save millions of dollars.
Yes, the estimated savings is powerful. How does the process work? The Town will purchase the 600 plus streetlights from National Grid and NYSEG, immediately begin to replace the old bulbs with new LED technology and accept maintenance responsibility for the future.
Allow me to break this down. A small percentage of our lights are owned by NYSEG, but most are in the National Grid territory. Installing LED lights will result in 60-65% of energy savings for the Town, thereby reducing expenses for Clifton Park residents. Every municipality pays companies such as NYSEG and National Grid facility charges on the streetlights in addition to the energy consumed. These facility charges will be drastically reduced. We have a few options regarding maintenance. The Town can maintain the bulbs in the future after receiving training through Siemens. Once the bulbs are changed over to LED, there shouldn’t be many outages in the next 10 years or so. We could then have a contract with a private company to fix any damage that occurs to the arm of the streetlight. Or we can outsource all maintenance. This is a decision we will make in the coming months. A GPS system will be installed, which will alert the Town if a streetlight is out and maintenance is required. This tracking technology will ensure maintenance activities are completed quickly and efficiently.
Siemens has completed many of these projects in other states in the Northeast. Therefore, we are confident they have the necessary experience to assist Clifton Park in the process. We interviewed three very good companies and Siemens had by far the most experience. Since there is no experience in our service territory, we believe this is a particularly important factor when considering which company would be our best partner. Siemens personnel attended our recent Town Board Meeting and discussed the estimated savings and the future process. They estimate the Town could save more than $5 million over the next 20 years. This is real money!
Siemens also discussed that they will proceed with the lighting design using Dark Sky Compliance metrics to contain any light spillage associated with the new system. Siemens will now conduct a full inventory of the current lighting system and an energy audit. We will continue to provide updates as the process moves forward.
It is more important now than ever, that municipalities secure innovative opportunities to generate reoccurring revenue not derived from taxes and identify opportunities for cost savings. We have and will continue to find and execute initiatives that benefit our community. We recently announced the first year savings from the solar farm installed on the capped landfill was $50,000. We are currently working with Graybar on a LED lighting upgrade at the ice arena, which will result in significant savings. Speaking of the ice arena, the changes we instituted at the facility in the early 2000s has saved the Town about $1 million dollars in cash and much more when considering the cost the Town would have incurred without the stark change in direction we embarked upon.
We will continue to provide updates on the streetlight initiative as we move forward.
Clifton Park and Beyond 