Makeover debate lights up in Oklahoma City
Some in city espouse using LED lights to cut energy costs, others say the product needs testing

And the success of that project has some wondering if Oklahoma City shouldn’t pursue a similar path as it begins a $115 million makeover of downtown that will include the replacement of 880 city streetlights.

By all accounts, LED, or light-emitting diodes, continue to be an emerging technology. Only a $630,000 grant made it possible for Ann Arbor to buy the expensive fixtures, but with that initial investment came an estimated energy savings of $100,000 a year. It’s a project that began with 25 globe lights retrofitted with LED in 2006.

"The first block was well received,” said Andrew Brix, Ann Arbor’s manager of energy programs. "In 2007 we started replacing all 1,000. We’ve done about 700, and we haven’t performed any maintenance on any of them, including the original block.”

Ann Arbor is seeing reduced maintenance costs, Brix said, and has cut the city’s energy bill in half.

Even as its sister city Tulsa considers letting some streets go dark to save money, Oklahoma City officials are uncertain whether to follow Ann Arbor’s lead. They were unaware of the LED lighting pursued by Ann Arbor and other cities before such efforts were first mentioned at a planning meeting Wednesday by local architect Rand Elliott.

Elliott is urging Oklahoma City to look at the LED City program — an alliance of cities like Ann Arbor and LED manufacturers and vendors led by Durham, N.C.-based Cree Inc.

"Before you make sweeping changes in Oklahoma City, we need to make sure the research proves it’s a good solution aesthetically, economically and functionally,” Elliott said. "The Cree program has monitored 11 cities in doing these LED lights. They have experience with it, so let’s contact them on how it might apply to Oklahoma City.”

Assistant City Engineer Laura Story, tasked with overseeing the streetscape program, isn’t arguing against the adaptation of LED streetlighting. But citing consultants’ concerns about shaky standards and a lack of warrantees, she questions whether the time is right to pursue the technology.

"The point of the downtown streetscape is not to invent a new technology, it’s to revamp our streetscapes,” Story said. "We don’t want to mislead people and say we’re into this. As soon as we do it wrong, we’re worse than not trying it.”

Those advising the city to delay consideration of LED streetlighting until a later time include Jereck Boss with design consultant The Office of James Burnett, with further caution against rushing into LED lighting being voiced by Zack Zanolli, associate prinicipal with Fisher Marantz Stone, one of the country’s leading architectural lighting design firms.

"One of the things we’re hearing from lighting manufacturers is they’re just not there yet,” Boss said. "We’re seeing other cities stepping back, waiting for the technology to catch up and instead are looking for fixtures that can be retrofitted. They don’t want to be the guinea pig, they don’t want to be stuck with 10,000 lights they won’t be able to use in the future.”

Boss said that one city, Oakland, Calif., discovered the savings were not as generous as expected.

"This is not a technology that isn’t going to catch up,” Boss said. "But the question is when?”

Zanolli’s work includes a 14-year stint as lighting director at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he designed lighting for more than 200 exhibits ranging from 4,000-year-old Egyptian textiles to extremely light-sensitive photographs.

"The basic design premise of an LED is it’s a digital indicator light,” Zanolli said. "It’s not by definition or invention a source of illumination. For that reason, you’re trying to take a toaster and make it a microwave.”

Zanolli criticizes LED lighting for casting a "terrible color rendering” and an efficacy rating (efficiency in light produced) that is substandard to a standard fluorescent lightbulb.

"It’s not good enough to be considered a standard,” Zanolli said. "It’s a new idea that’s not been proven yet.”

Deb Loving, a self-described "LED guru” with LED City, suggests some utilities are reluctant to rush forward with large-scale LED streetlighting because it could affect their bottom line.

"If you look at it from a utility’s perspective, we’re going to be reducing energy consumption by 50 percent at least, so that’s 50 percent less being paid,” Loving said. "I run into this a lot — what is the revenue model for investor-owned utilities if we reduce the energy consumption by 50 percent and remove the need for maintenance for a large number of years? It’s not necessarily that they don’t want to do this, but they’re looking for a new business model to replace this.”

Loving said her organization is ready to prove to Oklahoma City that LED streetlights do have a proven track record, and two manufacturers reported Friday they can provide warrantees of up to seven years. Brix said Ann Arbor, meanwhile, is planning to host a conference on its experience next spring, has a white paper on the project online, and would be happy to share details with Oklahoma City.

Elliott said federal funding may be available to Oklahoma City if it seeks to take a longer look at the pros and cons of LED streetlights.

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