Barbara Oksińska, reporter for Business Insider Polska: Local governments will be able to count on guaranteed maximum electricity prices, but they will still be higher than the rates paid this year. How can replacing lighting help them cut costs?
Mariusz Ejsmont, Vice President of LUG: Let’s start with the fact that, in my opinion, freezing energy prices, especially in areas where it is possible to reduce electricity consumption, is not a good solution. It’s like giving a fish, not a fishing rod. In such a situation, there is no impulse to save. We must strive, not only in Poland but also in the world, to reduce electricity consumption and use it more efficiently. We should not introduce tools that will delay local government investments in energy infrastructure by several years. A much better solution would be if local governments investing in solutions that improve energy efficiency, such as modernizing lighting infrastructures, could count on lowering electricity prices. It would be beneficial for both local governments and socially responsible people. It would increase the country’s energy, road and road safety and lead our country to a new level of technological progress.
So maybe the advantages of hard numbers are worth showing. How much can the municipality save by replacing the luminaires with LED ones?
Local governments owning the lighting pole will pay PLN 1.2-1.3 thousand for a simple replacement of the bulbs with LED ones. PLN per item. This will save around 462 kW on the appliance, or around 500 PLN per point per year. With more powerful appliances, this amount can increase up to PLN 1,000. In this way, local administrations can count on a reduction in energy consumption of about 70%. This is what happened, for example, in Warsaw, where modernization has led to 72 percent. savings, expanding the illuminated area. However, there are municipalities where savings can be as high as 95%. With current electricity prices, such an investment will pay for itself in about two years. I think there is no need to convince anyone to make such an investment worthwhile.
Vice President of LUG Mariusz Ejsmont
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Mateusz Wlodarczyk / Forum Polish Photographers Agency
However, local governments have to find the money for it.
I don’t think money is the main problem. The savings from replacing the lighting are so great that the funds for it would surely be found in every municipality. We have solutions that can be useful for the poorest local governments, for example the ESCO model, or the financing of savings. I see another problem here, and that is the proprietary structure of street lighting in Poland.
Imagine that in most locations, about half of the lighting fixtures are owned by energy companies. There are also cities where companies control the vast majority of this property. Therefore, local governments cannot independently make decisions on replacing lighting with energy-saving ones. They have to come to an agreement with the energy company on this matter, and it’s not always easy.
If the municipality wanted to build a completely new pole, it would have to allocate around PLN 8,000 for one point. Investment costs are rising and payback times are significantly longer, and most municipalities cannot actually afford such large investments. The ownership structure of the infrastructure can therefore stand in the way of good solutions, yet modern lighting, LED technology is a good and effective way to save energy.
Some local governments save differently. They stop lighting the facades of buildings or turn off all or all other lanterns. Are these good ideas?
I understand the need to lower the electricity bill, but I absolutely advise against such ideas. While giving up lighting on building facades only affects aesthetics, turning off street lamps completely is extremely dangerous for road users and residents of a given city. On the other hand, for example with a luminaire switched on every third, the decrease in road safety is also noticeable, despite the impression of brightness. The human eye quickly gets used to bright lighting, but the process of adapting from light to dark takes a relatively long time, so when driving from light to dark areas, the eye gets tired and cannot see everything. For the driver of the vehicle, the perception of obstacles and people on the road could be worse than the situation in which we would not have any lighting.
After all, modern LED street lights can be dimmed programmatically or use motion sensors that will activate the appropriate lighting level after detecting the presence of vehicles or pedestrians. In addition, the latest intelligent lighting control systems even allow you to adapt the degree of illumination to weather conditions, traffic intensity, etc. If regulations were created that allowed municipalities to have easy access to lighting infrastructures (poles and power lines), they could freely finance the replacement of lighting and this change would happen much faster. There is another important aspect to this matter.
What?
Many local administrations do not know how to deal with the issue of lighting in their own territory. It does not know what possibilities smart technology offers it, it does not have its specialists who would be able to evaluate the benefits of change. Fortunately, the area of infrastructure lighting is becoming professional and the best specialists are able to help local governments understand their opportunities and calculate costs, and even help find financing.
So what should standard lighting be like in the municipality?
It should be LED, energy saving, ensuring the safety of road traffic and the safety of residents. Reference lighting should be smart, or at least be ready to become smart in the future.
What does this mean in practice?
We must realize that the pole can be used not only to mount a lighting body on it. It can be an ideal place to locate monitoring or environmental pollution sensors. But provided that such a pole is fed 24 hours a day, and not just at night, as it has been until now. At the moment, the lighting infrastructure is idle for exactly six months, because it is simply not powered by energy. A clock or a twilight sensor switches on in the evening and switches off all lighting circuits in the morning. To change this, we need to mount a smart device on the pole, i.e. always powered and connected to the management system that decides when and with what intensity to start the lighting.
And this is just the beginning, because today we don’t know exactly what the concept of a “smart city” will look like in 20 years. We only know that smart lighting, which is the most evenly distributed network in the entire city, powered by energy around the clock, will underpin the entire urban ecosystem of lighting, monitoring, sensors and information systems. This is why it is so important to take the “smart” aspect into account when replacing lighting, as these are decisions with a horizon for the next 20-30 years. We can see this because we often replace lighting fixtures from 30 years ago. If we decide to invest in new lighting, we install the most effective and efficient one.
Unfortunately, this cannot be done by buying the cheapest appliances, but you have to invest in smart or “smart ready” appliances. We have to spend a little more, but we are opening up spaces for the future. If we do, we will be able to add more elements of this ecosystem over the next few years. Perhaps soon there will be the possibility to recharge bicycles or electric scooters from the lantern. Of course, today any modernization is better than no modernization, but it is worth doing it right.
