http://blog.vertography.com/2008/07/31/led-cities/ Simplifying the green life Fri, 03 Jun 2011 07:45:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://blog.vertography.com/2008/07/31/led-cities/comment-page-1/#comment-96 Moschops Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:55:35 +0000 http://blog.vertography.com/?p=138#comment-96 While investigating LED lighting last year I was surprised to find out that Oakland had actually done its own LED street lighting study. Unfortunately they concluded that while LED lighting was far superior from a quality of light perspective, the savings were too long term to be viable in retrofitting current lights. The study http://www.fypower.org/news/?p=2314 estimated 20-25 year payback time for retrofit, or 10-11 years for new lights. After reading the study I realized they had forgotten to account for increasing costs in electricity. I contacted the people who did the study pointing out the error and they came back with the pretty lame "well we wanted to keep as many things constant in the comparison". Strangely they accounted for future costs of just about every factor and since the savings are largely based on electricity saved and reduced maintenance it was weird to keep electricity costs constant... While investigating LED lighting last year I was surprised to find out that Oakland had actually done its own LED street lighting study. Unfortunately they concluded that while LED lighting was far superior from a quality of light perspective, the savings were too long term to be viable in retrofitting current lights. The study http://www.fypower.org/news/?p=2314 estimated 20-25 year payback time for retrofit, or 10-11 years for new lights. After reading the study I realized they had forgotten to account for increasing costs in electricity. I contacted the people who did the study pointing out the error and they came back with the pretty lame “well we wanted to keep as many things constant in the comparison”. Strangely they accounted for future costs of just about every factor and since the savings are largely based on electricity saved and reduced maintenance it was weird to keep electricity costs constant…

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