£32 million project to replace Derbyshire’s 90,000 street lights finishes a year late - but a million pounds cheaper

The county council started the mammoth endeavour of upgrading nearly 90,000 street lights across the county in 2016. It now says it has around 2,000 lights left to upgrade with LED replacements and says work to date is due to save the authority £6 million a year in energy costs.

The scheme is said to have reduced energy consumption by the equivalent of boiling 4.8 million kettles for an hour – 14,500,000 kilowatts. This is because the new LED bulbs last for around 25 years, while the current ageing bulbs last around four years.

Council papers appear to show that although some of the costs of resources have increased, the scheme appears to be due to come in under budget, to the tune of £1.6 million.

The budget of £32.1 million was approved in 2015 and the current spend so far is £27.7 million with the final portion of the scheme now set to finish in the 2023 to 2024 financial year, coming in at £30.5 million.

Council papers reveal the remaining parts of the scheme are mostly “large whole asset replacement”, such as replacing whole heavy duty lighting columns on higher speed roads fit to withstand collisions.

The authority says the scheme has “so far proven to be an incredible success” with 86,500 LEDs installed to date. It says that if the project had not been started, the energy “liability” for street lighting would be £6.1 million per year.