Politics & Government

Horsham Switches to LED Lights

The township has begun replacing its incandescent street lights with LED lights.

Reducing the carbon footprint while saving money and energy will be as easy as flipping on a light switch. 

Quite literally as Horsham has begun switching out its incandescent street lights for LED lights. 

In all, Horsham Township Manager Bill Walker said 64 lights would be converted this year, saving 27,715.69 kilowatts of energy per hour and costing $2,200 less annually. 

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For this year, Walker said $25,000 has been budgeted in the township’s street light fund and would cover the light conversions in the eastern end of town from County Line Road and Moreland Avenue and Meetinghouse Road to Blair Mill Road. 

“Initially they’re more expensive,” Walker said of the lights and why the switch will be carried out over the next four or five years. “It’s a budget issue.”

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Any savings realized from reduced energy costs would be filtered back to the street light fund to cover the cost of installing LED lights in subsequent years, according to Walker. In all, Horsham has 467 street lights, he said.

Before embarking on the incandescent-to-LED conversion, Walker said township staff spent 18 months researching different types of street lights.

“There’s more than just LED out there,” he told the Horsham Township Council during a recent presentation. “It’s an evolving technology. LEDs are expected to outpace the other technology in the future.”

As part of the research, Walker said staff visited nine towns that have switched to LED at night to check the brightness and to see where lights had been installed. Some towns, he said use them only in parking lots, for instance.

Overall, town officials from Montgomery, Abington and Lower Merion townships shared that they experienced 50 percent or more in savings, according to Walker.

Besides saving money, Walker said switching to another type of light was necessary because many of the street lights in the older section of town are obsolete.

If, over time, the township finds more cost effective lighting technologies, Walker said something other than LED lights could illuminate the town.

“As technology evolves we can change,” he said.


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