LED Lighting Trail of BBE LED, GE, Osram and RUUD in City of Sydney, AustraliaIn an Australian first, City of Sydney is installing 250 sustainable street lights across the Sydney CBD and city villages as part of an LED street lighting trial. The City of Sydney could potentially reduce energy consumption by 50 per cent – saving millions of dollars in electricity and dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
One third of the City’s annual electricity use, and a large part of its greenhouse gas emissions, result from public lighting. The City of Sydney is one of the largest street lighting utilities in NSW. There are approximately 20,000 street and park lights across the City of Sydney – 12,000 are maintained by Energy Australia and 8,000 by City of Sydney. In 2008/09 the City spent $3.5M on electricity for the 20,000 lights and $2M on maintenance and upgrades of the 8,000 it maintains. Currently, all City street lighting and electricity use is powered by 100% GreenPower, government-accredited renewable energy. However, as part of its Sustainable Sydney 2030 implementation program, the City of Sydney is investigating LED street lighting that has the potential to cut the cost, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions of street lighting. The six-month Sustainable Lighting Trial, an Australian first, will help determine community acceptance of the lighting and investigate aesthetics, operational issues, energy use, and capacity to meet the relevant lighting standards. The City is also conscious of the impact of excessive energy use, light pollution (both into the night sky and resident’s properties), and glare. Types of lightingThe City’s existing street light lamp sources include Incandescent, Fluorescent, High Pressure Mercury, High Pressure Sodium, Metal Halide, and Compact Fluorescent.
Following request for tender, four companies have been invited to work with City of Sydney to trial sustainable LED lighting in the CBD and City villages. Much of the technology is so new it has yet to be trialled and tested on mass in an urban environment. The City of Sydney will be trialling multiple technologies in four separate locations to measure effectiveness and energy savings. The various types of street light technologies will be clustered in groups. Installation sites with different environmental conditions around the distribution network have been selected e.g. residential, commercial and locations with high lightning activity. The trial will monitor the quality and type of lighting, compliance with Australian Standards for public lighting, as well as ongoing operating costs, energy efficiency and durability. The trial will not look at the design or aesthetics of the street lights – these matters will be considered at a later date if the trial is successful.
Data from the trial will be collected, with information on the performance of various lighting technologies, under a range of environmental and network conditions, captured. Lamp failures, potential causes of lamp failure, as well as the light output performance of the lamps throughout their life willbe monitored. The trial will measure, log and deliver information including:
At the conclusion of the trial, data will be analysed and a final report examining operating costs, lamp life, energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions will be produced. About the TenderManaging the selection process.
For more info. about this LED Lighting Trail project, pls feel free contact us. Jason Yang |




