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Citywide Lighting Project to Illuminate Albuquerque

LED lighting project to improve energy efficiency and public safety.

Video: Envision ABQ

Aug. 17, 2017

Albuquerque, NM- Mayor Richard Berry and the City Council announced the City is one step closer to converting street lights across Albuquerque to LED. On Monday, the Finance and Government Operations Committee of the City Council unanimously passed the project with recommendation to the full City Council for final approval. Citywide, there are 32,600 street lights owned by both the City of Albuquerque and the Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM). This project will convert more than 20,000 city owned lights with the remainder being negotiated with PNM.

Over the past 12 months the City and Citelum, the successful bidder, have worked together to engineer a custom "Lighting Master Plan" for the city, starting with a complete inventory of every street light. Each light was inspected, measured for light output, and then cataloged into a citywide database. The conversion to LED streetlights will be paid for through electrical savings and reduced maintenance costs and will not require fee or rate increases. The total cost of the initial 20,000 LED lights is $20M and will take approximately 12 months to complete.

As part of the contract, Citelum will maintain the lights for 15 years, guaranteeing both energy and maintenance cost savings as well as improved lighting with less light pollution to protect the night sky.

Project Benefits

The benefits of the project include:

  • Energy and maintenance lifetime cost savings of approximately $19M
  • Increased public safety
  • Increased roadway safety
  • Specific lighting controls for activity centers, major roadways and neighborhoods

By converting to LED, the City will reduces its offset of carbon dioxide by more than 123,000 tons over its 15 year lifetime, which is the equivalent of removing 12,999 single family homes energy use off the grid for one year.

Life expectancy of LED lighting far exceeds that of our current street lights. The ability to monitor real time data will allow for faster repair times and also exact location targeting, which will eliminate the time spent searching for non-operational street lights, further reducing our carbon footprint.

'Make Albuquerque Safer'

"This initiative will not only make our city more beautiful and energy efficient, but it will also improve public safety," said Mayor Richard J. Berry. "Crime does not like a stage and by strategically lighting up our neighborhoods we can make Albuquerque safer."

With the cost savings that will be generated through the energy efficiency, the City will also be able to implement additional lighting and other public safety tools in high crime areas of town.

About Citelum

Citelum will provide global lighting expertise and industry best practices, in coordination with our local knowledge to ensure that the City of Albuquerque will receive the most reliable and efficient LED and smart control upgrade as possible. By selecting Citelum, Albuquerque has partnered with a company trusted by other major cities such as Copenhagen and Paris. To date, Citelum has more than 2.5 million streetlights under their management.

The agreement between the City and Citelum is based on measurable and enforceable Key Performance Indicators that guarantee the City will benefit from a higher percentage of lights on (98% at all times), and faster response times in repairing outages (48 hours for standard repairs, excluding special order items). This improved design and service will directly benefit Albuquerque’s residents and visitors by providing them with a safer and interactive nighttime environment.