New LED Street Lights are Coming to the Mid-Hudson Valley

A $790,000 program will convert old street lights in the Mid-Hudson region to energy-saving LEDs.

On Wednesday Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that $790,000 is now available for cities, towns and villages in the Mid-Hudson Region to convert their old streetlights to LEDs. The program is projected to reduce electricity costs by up to 65 percent in each community where to new lights are installed. The energy savings for our area could total more than $6 million.

During the announcement Cuomo said,

This funding will play a critical role in helping New Yorkers in the Mid-Hudson Valley transition to cutting-edge, 21st century lighting technologies that are essential for building more sustainable communities, while also cutting costs and reducing burdens on local property taxpayers.

The LED conversion is available to all 249 municipalities in Ulster, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Columbia, Greene and Westchester counties, regardless of whether the municipality or the utility owns the lights.

A study conducted in 2014 found that if street lights were changed to LEDs throughout all of New York, it would save an estimated $97 million and 524 gigawatt hours of electricity. That would be enough energy to power 74,000 homes.