Under a program from National Grid, the villages of Altamont and Voorheesville as well as the town of New Scotland could see significant savings for street lighting.

The program would allow each municipality to significantly lower its street-lighting bill, through and combination of energy, maintenance, and lease cost savings.

“The way it kind of originated is,” said Richard Straut, a Voorheesville trustee, “I look at the bills every month and I got talking with our clerk about it, and we totaled everything up and she said, ‘Yeah, this is a big bill.’”

In Voorheesville, Straut said, the annual energy cost is about $19,000 for street lighting; the maintenance and leasing cost of the street lights is about $62,000 per year.

“I’ve been aware that there’s a lot of LED lighting change-outs that were happening, and I started exploring,” he said of the more energy-efficient light-emitting diodes.

LED street lights use 45- to 70-percent less energy than high-pressure sodium street lights, which account for close to 90 percent of street lights currently installed in the state, according to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Straut said that a little over a year ago, he viewed a National Grid webinar that was encouraging people to swap out the lights under National Grid’s lease program.

“So, I did some calculation and I realized, if we did it that way [the lease program], we’d save a little bit of money — not a lot of money.”

“I started thinking,” he said, “there’s a lot more money to be saved here.’”

Swapping out street lights began as a safety issue for New Scotland Supervisor Douglas LaGrange,

“A couple of years ago, I was up in Clarksville,” he said. “One of the big problems in Clarksville has been the walkability of the hamlet.”

“Route 443 — Delaware Avenue — is extremely busy; it goes right through the center of the hamlet and so, there used be old sidewalks there that have since been abandoned,” said LaGrange.

“The whole thing was: How do we make it safer? And someone said to me, ‘Well, have you ever seen the lights?’”

LaGrange went to Clarksville one night and found a few of the street lights were out. “In my opinion — at best — it was unsafe.

“We started looking into opportunities and options,” he said. “Soon after, I was included in a National Grid webinar.” This was the same webinar Straut had seen.

Straut approached LaGrange to collaborate on the project, LaGrange said.

Altamont was later approached to join, Straut said.

“One of the reasons we’re talking about doing it together,” Straut said, “is because we think that by doing it together, we’ll get better buying power for the equipment we’d have to purchase, and be able to help get the cost as low as possible.”

Voorheesville has around 300 streetlights in Voorheesville; Altamont has around 200; and New Scotland has close to 100.

According to New Scotland’s budget, the town pays about $14,000 annually in total street-lighting costs; in Altamont, according to its budget, the village pays $22,500 in total street-lighting costs per year.

Voorheesville

As a village trustee who is working on the streetlight project, Straut was able to explain how much Voorheesville could save.

Under a leasing agreement with National Grid, Voorheesville pays about $19,000 annually for street lighting and around $62,000 for leasing and maintenance.

“If we owned this, we might be able to save more,” said Straut. “And I found that, yes, we can save a lot more money.”

Straut said that preliminary numbers — he stresses preliminary — show that by switching the current streetlights to LED, the power portion of the energy bill could go down by as much as $12,000.

The big savings would come from owning the streetlights.

“That’s where the bulk of the savings is — owning it,” Straut said. “And then paying for maintenance directly.”

If the village were to own the streetlights, Straut estimates that the village might be able to contract out the maintenance for around $20,000, instead of the $62,000 it now pays annually to lease and maintain the streetlights. Again, these are preliminary estimates.

For the village the cost would go from around $81,000, which also includes $19,000 for power, to an estimated $27,000, a 66-percent decrease.

“With those kind of financials, we think that the switch out would pay for itself in about seven-and-a-half years, in Voorheesville,” Straut said. “And, after that, we’re just saving that money every year.”

Altamont and New Scotland would have similar savings, but the payback period would be little longer, Straut said. In New Scotland, it would be about 12 years, and, in Altamont, it would be about 10 years.

Kerry Dineen, mayor of Altamont, wrote in an email about the savings her village would see: “The preliminary assessment the Village Board was presented with estimates Altamont's energy savings around $4,000 a year with a maintenance savings of over $18,000 annually.”

Altamont would see those savings after the 10-year payback period.  

To “pay for itself,” means that there are capital costs associated with owning the streetlights.

“We’re going to have to outlay, we think, about $250,000 to buy out National Grid,” said Straut

The village would have to buy the existing lighting from National Grid, said Straut, as well as new LED lamps and some new poles.

If a pole is dedicated solely to a streetlight, the village would have to purchase new poles but if a streetlight is on an existing pole that carries power lines, the village would have to lease the right to have its lamp on National Grid’s pole.  

NYSERDA offers grants to municipalities that are installing LED street lights.

“I’m hoping so, but we don’t have any kind of commitment there,” Straut said about getting a grant.