Thousands of street lights across Dublin are set to undergo a massive upgrade as part of a Dublin City Council project.
The €55million euro initiative will see almost 50,000 lights being switched from sodium to LED lightbulbs.
The upgrade will also significantly reduce “sky glow,” meaning the orange glow around Dublin’s night sky will fade and bring the capital closer to having dark skies above street level.
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The four-year plan to replace some 40,000 old street lights will commence this year, and will include the replacement of up to 4,000 “lighting columns” or lamp stands.
Public lighting accounts for 24% of Dublin City Council's total energy usage, with energy costs currently at €4million per year.
The change to LED lights has been called "the end of an era" by the council's senior engineer Martin Maycock.
Mr Maycock said: “It’s an exciting project that’s going to deliver a lot of benefits to the public.
“From an environmental point of view the LED lights are far superior, but the resounding feedback we get is they give a greater feeling of safety.
"If you have an old orange light, everything is just orange and brown, but with the LED you have colour variation and far greater clarity," he added.
In the latest update on the project, the council's senior engineers recently told the Transport SPC at its June meeting that the Lighting Upgrade Project will help to reduce energy consumption by 50% or more by replacing 40,000 lights with LED bulbs, address safety concerns by replacing 4,000 lighting columns, allow all street lights to be remotely managed and controlled, and to facilitate Smart City Applications.
Dublin City Council's public lighting vision is to "provide high quality public lighting that enhances people's experience in the city and their sense of civic pride and safety".
So far around 9,000 of the 44,000 street lights in Dublin have seen their sodium lightbulbs swapped for LED bulbs.
A tender process is currently ongoing with the council hoping to start working with all the other lights this summer.
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Read more: 'End of an era' for Dublin's street lights as part of massive €55million upgrade
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