The New York State Public Service Commission recently announced that it had approved separate requests to sell utility-owned street lights to three municipalities: the Village of Horseheads (Chemung County); Town of West Seneca (Erie County); and the Town of Clarkstown (Rockland County). 

With the change in ownership, the municipalities take control of the lighting on their own streets and have the opportunity to install their own “state-of-the-art, energy-efficient lights to lower costs to taxpayers and protect the environment, if they so choose,” the commission said in a news release. The move is an effort to help lower municipal energy costs across the state.

About 1.4 million municipal street lights across the state have the potential to be addressed by a strategic street-lighting strategy, the commission contends. This number includes both utility- and customer-owned street lights. A recent study on the latest energy-efficiency lights, known as LED or light-emitting diodes, found that LED technology uses significantly less energy than traditional street lighting. The adoption of LED lighting can save municipalities up to 60 percent of their electricity costs for street lighting, the release stated.

In its decisions, the commission approved New York State Electric and Gas Corporation’s sale of its street lights to Horseheads for $79,385. 

Public Service Commission said that if all of the state’s street lighting was converted to LED fixtures, the energy-savings potential is estimated to be enough electricity for 75,000 average-sized houses. Financial savings could be as great as $28 million per year. Given the opportunity for savings, municipalities across the state have been showing interest in either buying utility-owned, street-light facilities with the idea of converting to LED to save money and energy, or that utility-owned street-lighting tariffs be created to do the same.