It’s not often that thousands of people get together just to celebrate a street. But that’s exactly what will be happening Saturday in Raleigh, NC, when the city hosts a street celebration festival for Hillsborough Street.
The “Live It Up” Street Opening Celebration is meant to unite neighbors, business owners, students and other Raleigh residents to salute the recently-renovated street. And while most eyes will probably be on the performers, beer garden and farmers market set up to celebrate, we lighting geeks will be looking up at the new LED street and pedestrian lights that have been installed.
LED street lights shine down on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, NC, adjacent to North Carolina State University.
The city of Raleigh replaced the energy-wasting metal halide lights that used to line the street with energy-efficient LED lighting manufactured by BetaLED, a Wisconsin-based company that uses Cree LEDs in its lights. Here’s what got replaced:
- 15 metal halide street lights consuming 370 Watts each were replaced with 15 183-Watt LED street lights.
- 40 metal halide street lights consuming 289 Watts a piece were replaced with 40 79-Watt LED street lights.
- 85 metal halide streetlights consuming 190 Watts each were replaced with 85 55-Watt LED pedestrian lights.
In addition to saving energy and maintenance costs, the new LED lights have also improved visibility for pedestrians and drivers, says Bob Henderson, technical lighting consultant for Progress Energy, the city’s energy provider.
City officials had to jump through some hoops to get the LED street lights installed, including convincing the North Carolina Department of Transportation (which owns the road) that it was the right move. Raleigh’s Assistant City Manager Dan Howe talks about the process in this video:
Howe says the city is going to continue to evaluate LED street lighting.
“We’ve done a couple of little pilot projects and they were successful, but this is a major public corridor and it’s working,” Howe said. “So what we’re going to try to do from this point out is to test the viability of LED lighting in a variety of street light settings around the city: Residential street lights, commercial streets in industrial areas, commercial streets in downtown and some other retail areas.”
Howe said the city still has a bit to learn about things like proper spacing of lights, the best height for the poles and more, but that these test installations will help the city determine some best practices before tackling even bigger street lighting projects.
The difference with the LED street lights on the right is obvious. The LED lights provide clean, white light compared to the orange high pressure sodium lights on the right.
To see more examples of LED lighting in Raleigh, take a look at this Raleigh LED City tour.
And for more information about Saturday’s Hillsborough Street celebration, which Cree is sponsoring, check out the schedule of events.
