City continues switch to LED lighting
FILE PHOTO
Frank Swett of Phaze One Electric in Olathe, Kansas, installs a new-generation LED lighting fixture early this year on the ground floor of the Nodaway County Administration Center. The City of Maryville, which switched to LEDs at the municipal water treatment plant in 2014, will soon follow the county’s lead by installing LED fixtures at City Hall, Maryville Public Safety headquarters, the New Nodaway Humane Society animal shelter, and in streetlights around the downtown square.
The lights will soon be shining a little brighter — and a lot more efficiently — at City Hall and other municipal buildings following approval by the City Council this week of a lease agreement with Kansas City-based Brightergy LLC for installation of LED lighting fixtures.
In addition to City Hall, facilities on the list for lighting upgrades include the Maryville Public Safety headquarters and fire station, the street maintenance garage on North Newton, and 29 vintage-style streetlights on the courthouse square.
Also included is the New Nodaway Humane Society’s animal shelter on South Depot Street. The shelter is not a city-owned facility but does provide Maryville with animal control services and during the current fiscal year will receive a $60,000 municipal operating subsidy.
The lighting upgrade comes at an opportune time for the shelter, since a tight budget year forced the city to pare back the society’s subsidy by nearly $23,000.
City Manager Greg McDanel pointed out that LED lighting represents an additional $12,000 municipal investment in the shelter and will result in an estimated energy savings there of $2,800 a year. Energy costs are a major expense for the animal shelter, which must be either heated or cooled 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In moving to LEDs, the city is continuing a transition that began with an earlier Brightergy installation late last year at the municipal water treatment plant just east of town.
McDanel said at the time that new lighting at the plant “created a much safer work environment, literally a night and day difference.”
Installing LEDs at the water plant required a $4,650 investment by the city with an anticipated payback period of 2.6 years and a 10-year savings of $15,000. Half of the project’s $9,300 total cost was covered through a rebate offered by Kansas City Power & Light.
The regional utility company is offering a similar rebate for the newest city LED project, which McDanel said is expected to get underway by the end of the month. He said the new lights should be in place downtown and in all three buildings by the end of the year.
According to city documents, total cost for the LED upgrade is $108,000, nearly $53,000 of which will be covered by KCP&L. The improvements are expected to generate $187,000 in energy savings over the next 10 years plus another $55,000 in reduced spending associated with lower maintenance and bulb replacement costs.
The highly efficient lights are expected to cut the number of kilowatt-hours billed to the city by 58 percent.
According to its lease, the City of Maryville will make four annual payments to Brightergy of $13,900 each, for a total of $55,600. An energy audit indicated that the city should save $14,500 in energy costs during each of those years.
In addition to savings, city officials say LED lighting offers a number of other advantages, including longer service life; cooler illumination, which eases the strain on heating units; brighter, cleaner light expected to create a safer, more efficient workplace; and reduced environmental impact related both to lower energy consumption and longer fixture life.
In making the switch to LED fixtures, the city is following the lead of Nodaway County, which entered into a similar agreement with Brightergy last year.
LEDs were installed in all four county-owned buildings — the Administration Center, road and bridge maintenance garage, jail, and courthouse — at a total cost of just over $98,000.
The acronym LED is short for “light-emitting diode,” a device that releases energy in the form of photons and creates an effect known as electroluminescence.
Early LEDs were often used as indicator lamps in electronic devices, but recent technological developments mean clusters of LED bulbs are now capable of providing environmental and task lighting in homes, offices, and workshops.
