In late 2011, Mayor Bob Buckhorn announced a major agreement with Tampa Electric Company. The local energy provider was to install 8,400 new streetlights at a cost of $2.2 million over a five-year period. The “Bright Lights/Safe Nights” program was hailed by City Councilman Frank Reddick in particular, since the vast majority of those lights would be installed in underserved areas of the city most needed in his district, such as in East Tampa, Ybor City and Sulpher Springs.
But some of that enthusiasm was tempered by the fact that the city would be using conventional lighting (which in Tampa means light bulbs made of high-pressure sodium and metal halide) to provide that much needed illumination. Conventional lighting tends to decay in quality over time and have a shorter life when dimmed, instead of energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) street lights, which use less energy than conventional method. They also last much longer. While a typical street lamp has a life of four to six years, LED lamps last 10 to 12 years. So switching also reduces maintenance and material costs for the city.
But earlier this week TECO filed a petition with the Florida Public Service Commission to change its outdoor lighting options. If approved next year by the PSC, Tampa Electric will no longer exclusively offer old fashioned street lights or area lights – if requested by the customer.
TECO spokesperson Cherie Jacobs says that TECO is now offering LEDs frequently to replace street or “area” lights in their geographic area, which includes all of Hillsborough County and parts of Pasco, Polk and Poinellas, and has been doing so for the last year and a half.
“They’ve become quite popular with municipalities,” she says. There are approximately 250,000 outdoor lights serviced by TECO in their geographic area.
Jacobs says that upon the request of the city of Tampa, all of the conventional lights in the entertainment district part of Ybor City on 7th Avenue were replaced by LEDs just last month.
There are thousands of more lights to be installed for the “Bright Lights/Safe Nights” programmed, and Jacobs says some LEDs have been used in this program. How many is unknown, as officials with the city’s Public Works Dept. did not return a call from SaintPetersBlog this afternoon.
However there are no plans to convert TECO’s portfolio of currently installed street lights to LEDs. That’s contrary to the philosophy of cities like Los Angeles and Seattle, who for years have worked to fully convert their entire city’s streetlights; Baltimore did so as well in 2012, as did Portland in 2013.
(Fun fact: This reporter wrote a story about the “Bright Lights/Safe Nights” program back in December of 2012, examining why TECO wasn’t using LEDs for this major new project. In March of 2013, the PSC staff recommended (and the board ultimately) approved a new lighting tariff for eight LED lighting fixtures for roadway and outdoor lighting).
