Rancho Cucamonga plans to follow the example of other local cities that have converted to LED and assumed ownership of their streetlights.
Per its recent announcement, Rancho Cucamonga will be spending around $3m to adapt 15,000 streetlights to LED. The streetlights, purchased from Southern California Edison, will cost the city $9.7m, but the money saved in energy and maintenance costs by switching to LED will be $1.3m per year. The conversion of streetlights to LED will not begin until Rancho Cucamonga has assumed responsibility for all the lights; this will take place in stages of 1,500 – 2,000 each.
It is anticipated that the city will have taken full possession of all the streetlights by summer’s end or early fall. The money to buy all of Rancho Cucamonga’s streetlights is to come mainly from the general fund reserves and the streetlight maintenance districts. Ownership of the lights, along with their retrofit, is expected to save a total of $1.5m annually.
An estimated $1.1m of the $3m to be spent on retrofitting the lights will be supplied by Edison via utility rebates. Environmentalists working with a local printing company have an opportunity to raise awareness of the benefits of LED lighting. LED conversion of streetlights in Rancho Cucamonga is expected to reduce maintenance expenses by 80% and energy use by 66% annually.
