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Town considers move to LED street lighting
NORTH HAMPTON — The Select Board plans to ask the Energy Committee to review a new proposal to convert the town’s streetlights to energy-efficient LED streetlights.
The main advantage of adopting LED streetlights are the financial savings due to energy conservation, up to $180,446 in 20 years according to the proposal.
The idea of finding taxpayer savings in streetlights was visited several years ago in an audit by the town’s Energy Committee, but resulted in no conclusive action.
“This sounds like something that would be suited for their review,” said Selectmen Chairman Jim Maggiore, “perhaps that would be the next best step.”
Initiating the presentation to the board was John Hubbard, director of Public Works, who was joined by Steve Lieber and John Branagan of Affinity Lighting from Dover.
North Hampton currently has approximately 137 streetlights which could be converted to LED in a two- to three-day time frame.
According to information in the proposal by Affinity, if all streetlights were converted to LED the total cost for the town would be $33,000. A move to LED would bring an incentive from Eversource of $13,700, dropping the net cost of a full town-wide conversion to $19,300.
When the initial annual energy savings of approximately $9,000 are factored in, the final cost to convert all streetlights to LED would be just over $10,000.
Moving forward, the town would realize an annual savings of 45 percent from the present energy costs of $20,000, and future annual savings of approximately $9,000 a year.
“Financially I think it’s a no-brainer,” said Hubbard. “It’s a proposal to think about if we get to the end of the year with some money to use, or in a warrant article for next year.”
Other features of the LED lights are they would be dark sky compliant and come with a 10-year warranty. The LED lights have been made by Affinity in Dover since 2016.
“Across every single community that we have installed the product from a component perspective – we haven’t had a single failure out there,” said Lieber from Affinity, who promised close to 20 maintenance-free years for any new lights.
If completed North Hampton would join 30 other towns across New Hampshire who have completed the conversion including neighboring Hampton, Portsmouth and Greenland.