NY Finally Begins Roll Out of New Streetlight Design

The streets of New York are potentially about to get much brighter in the near future, assuming the city government doesn’t take as long as it did to approve the project. Four years after launching the City Lights Design Competition in 2004 to find a better method of street lightery, the Department of Design and Construction has selected the firms The Office for Visual Interaction and Lighting Science Group to begin installing and testing six LED streetlights in miscellaneous parts of the city starting in the spring of next year (because it’s only been four years, why rush things?). Here’s a bit about the lights:

There are more than 300,000 streetlights in New York City, the majority of which are based on high-pressure sodium technology. Replacing a commonly used 150W high pressure sodium lamp with the proposed LED lighting solution will reduce the energy consumption by 25-30% to an estimated 105 W per LED module, LSG says.

The winning design developed by OVI combines hi-flux LED technology with state-of-art lensing optics in a small oval-shaped profile, which provides the structural framework and heat sink for the LED modules.

If you’re hungry for more, NY1 has this video up about the new lights.