PSE&G Partners With Four N.J. Cities to Test LED Street Lights

The Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) is testing Light Emitting Diode (LED) street lamps in partnership with the township of Verona and Essex County and the cities of Trenton, Camden and Elizabeth.

The six- to 12-month tests involving 24 LED street lights place PSE&G and the cities in which the tests are being conducted among a small, but growing, number of municipalities and utilities that are exploring application of LED technology to green public lighting.

“We are aggressively addressing the need to be energy efficient and environmentally sound across all areas of our business,” said Ralph LaRossa, PSE&G president and COO.

“At the same time, we are seeking approaches to help our municipal customers save energy and money and implement green technologies in their communities,” LaRossa said. “New street lighting technologies show great promise in delivering efficiency and improved reliability over existing technologies, and we are eager to examine those opportunities.”

The street lights being used for the PSE&G test replace traditional “cobra-head lamps” and were installed without charge to the communities, PSE&G said in announcing the program.  The utility will review the LEDs’ performance for energy consumption, reliability and light output and quality.  PSE&G also seeks community feedback on the lights.  

The LED street lamps are expected to reduce energy consumption by up to 70 percent while providing an equal or better illumination. They are also expected to last three to four times longer than high intensity discharge (HID) sources, such as high pressure sodium and metal halide.  

The purpose of our test installation,” said PSE&G spokeswoman Bonnie Sheppard, “is to determine whether these lights live up to manufacturers’ claims under real life conditions and not just in the lab – whether they hold up better in the winter than the summer, for example. The evaluation will take some time.”

PSE&G is New Jersey’s oldest and largest regulated gas and electric delivery utility. With 2.1 million electric customers and 1.7 gas customers, the utility serves almost three-quarters of the state’s population.

Ann Arbor, Mich., Raleigh, N.C., Austin, Texas, and Toronto, Canada, are among the cities that have embarked upon or completed tests of LED lights for street or public area lighting. 

Ann Arbor’s design and implementation project for LED street lighting received top honors in July 2007 at the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) – U.S.A. workshop in the group’s Climate Innovation Invitational. In October, Ann Arbor announced it would convert all of its downtown street lighting to LEDs, a two-year project that would make Ann Arbor the first U.S. city to fully convert its downtown lights to the technology.