ALL 7,485 of the city’s streetlights have been replaced by light-emitting diode (LED) lighting fixtures as of this month, cutting down the city’s energy bill.
The P112 million project worked on replacing the city’s old conventional lighting fixtures with superior LED fixtures, which have higher efficiency, better luminosity, and are in a better color than the old sodium yellow lights.
Based on data from the year 2020, the city’s 7,485 streetlights, 94 percent of which are spread across the city’s 128 barangays, cost Baguio some 529,000 kilowatt-hours worth of electricity.
With the city’s average rates of P9.09 per kilowatt-hour, the average monthly bill of the city for lighting its various roads and streets amounts to P4.8 million, P4.5 million of which is spread throughout the city’s barangays.
City Engineer Edgar Victorio Olpindo said that the Benguet Electric Cooperative Inc. (BENECO) has already acknowledged that the shift will see an overall decrease in the city’s regular electricity bill.
The lifespan of the old high-pressure sodium lighting fixtures is only two years, in comparison to the new LED fixtures’ ten years of expected lifespan, with a five-year replacement warranty.
The LED lights, according to the City Engineering Office, also require less upkeep and will therefore incur fewer maintenance costs.
The LED replacement project will have a second phase in 2023 to provide additional light posts along alleys in the city’s different barangays.
Olpindo said a total of 1,846 posts have been requested by the different barangays ahead of time, and the total number is expected to increase as the department continues its inventory in the remaining barangays.
