First, the Sundre Arena. Next, the whole town.
Following recent upgrades at the arena that was outfitted with LED lights, the municipality is also poised to have new LED street lights installed courtesy of FortisAlberta.
The projects are not actually related or connected in any way, but they do represent a progressive path forward.
Not only do LED lights consume less energy, but they also provide far superior directional lighting compared with traditional systems that tend to spew light in every direction, Stan Orlesky, FortisAlberta stakeholder relations manager, told town officials during the Nov. 7 meeting.
“For many years now, councils — both urban and rural — have been asking us ‘When are you guys going to get LED lights?'” he said during his presentation to council.
“Well, (I'm) hear to tell you we finally got a program where we have LED lights. It took us a number of years because we wanted to ensure that the lights that we would put into your communities were the proper lights.”
A few years ago, FortisAlberta ran a couple of pilot projects — including one in Airdrie — that resulted in dozens of lights that were emanating a green colour within weeks, he said.
“So we thought, ‘Let's wait until something is financially good and reputable.' And we believe that we're there now,” he asserted.
Since then, six communities — Bellevue, Canmore, Okotoks, Devon, Wetaskiwin and St. Albert — have successfully hosted pilot projects, paving the way forward to further implement LED lighting throughout the rest of the province, he said.
“With the exception of probably five or six individuals in all of those communities — because it's change and people don't care for change sometimes — everybody has been very, very pleased with the results so far.”
There are about 80,000 lights in FortisAlberta's service area that will be included in the program before the company is satisfied its work is done, he said.
“The only light that we're changing at this time though is the cobra head. That's the light that's in your community — you have 408 of them. They're the big, ugly light that's got the glass dome hanging down that sends light everywhere.”
The annual energy savings represented by upgrading to LED lights are equivalent to removing 24 cars off the road, operating 22 homes for a year or planting about 5,100 trees. To further reduce waste, the former lights that will be removed are to be recycled and any still-functional parts will be reused, he said.
“We're virtually going to put nothing into the landfill.”
Additionally, LED lights have no uplight, no backlight and no glare, he said.
“If you want a dark sky friendly community, this is going to give you that too because the light shines straight down. The light does not go back into people's yards.”
However, the new lights — which are white rather than yellow — will be more reflective than the current standards when it comes to bouncing light off of, for example, a wet road or snowy surface, he said.
“How are we going to pay for these? You guys aren't going to pay for them. You're actually going to end up saving some money per light per year.”
Any maintenance issues that might arise from the lights will be the responsibility of FortisAlberta, which merely required an acknowledgement letter from council expressing support for the project, he said, later adding the company hopes to have the upgrades well underway by next year.
Regardless of whether Sundre got on board, FortisAlberta plans to phase out its old high-pressure sodium light standards in favour of the new, so any units that fail in town would be replaced with an LED light anyway, he said.
Coun. Verna McFadden inquired whether the LED lights would be installed in phases or all at once.
“Once we come into Sundre, we would do all the lights at the same time,” said Orlesky.
The presentation was provided as information to council, which later voiced its support for the proposal.
“We did discuss it later in the meeting and passed a motion to sign the paperwork documentation and move forward with that,” Mayor Terry Leslie told the Round Up last Wednesday.
