LED lights coming to the City of Ryde

Published on 08 August 2022

Do you know that there are over 7,800 streetlights in the City of Ryde? These lights account for around 46% of electricity bills for the City of Ryde. Many of these inefficient lights have been in place in the City of Ryde since the 1970s and are costly to run and maintain.

The new lighting technology named Light Emitted Diode (LED) lighting requires less power to produce the same level of light meeting Australian standards for street lighting. The LED light could save up to 80% energy consumption by streetlighting. This results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions and energy used by the City of Ryde. LED lighting technology has several advantages compared to mercury vapour lighting including a longer life span of 10-20 years, less maintenance required and lower failure rate of lights, less glare and better visibility. More importantly, around 95% of LED light elements can be easily recycled.

The City of Ryde has signed up with Ausgrid to accelerate the replacement of older residential streetlights with LED since November 2018. Since then, 99% of streetlights in the pedestrian category roads have been replaced with LED lights (1,817 as of 1 June 2022). Electricity consumption of street lighting has reduced by 16% in the 2021/22 financial year compared to 2017/18 financial year (before the program).

The City of Ryde continues working with Ausgrid to expand the program to cover vehicular category roads as well as compact fluorescent lights (CFL) on pedestrian category roads which were not included in the existing program. The street lighting replacement program is one of the key identified actions that could help achieve Net Zero emissions for the City.