Recently, Municipality announced that Anchorage participated in the LED City program and appropriated $2.2 Million for First Phase Installation of LED Roadway Lights. Cree, Inc, a market leader in LED lighting said this is to promote the deployment of energy-efficient LED lighting.
As we know, in Anchorage, approximately 85 days a year see less than eight hours of daylight. So lighting is absolutely critical to daily life. It is significant that this community is at the forefront of adopting energy-efficient lighting. Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich announced his city's participation in conjunction with an energy-related initiative calling for the retrofit of all 16,000 municipal roadway lights with high-efficiency LED fixtures. He noted the appropriation of $2.2 million to enable the city to purchase LED fixtures to change out roughly one-quarter of Anchorage's streetlights, according to the new lighting technology extensively over the past several months to validate energy and maintenance cost savings, they also conducted a lighting conference and public survey in March of this year that showed our residents overwhelmingly approve of the new white LED lighting.
Cree and the other LED Cities welcome Anchorage into the program and look forward to learning from this large-scale installation as the city pushes forward for energy and maintenance savings with LED lighting.
It's reported that the LED fixtures from BetaLED are expected to use 50-percent less energy than current streetlights, which could save the city $360,000 annually at today's energy prices. The LED fixtures, based on performance-leading Cree XLamp LEDs, typically last up to seven times longer than high-pressure sodium fixtures, allowing Anchorage to better utilize maintenance resources.
About LED City
The LED City is an expanding community of government and industry parties working to evaluate deploy and promote LED lighting technology across the full range of municipal infrastructure to save energy, protect the environment, reduce maintenance costs and provide better light quality for improved visibility and safety.
LED City program participants include Raleigh, NC; Toronto, Ontario; Ann Arbor, MI; Austin, TX; Tianjin, China; Torraca, Italy, and now Anchorage, AK.
About Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage (officially called the Municipality of Anchorage) is home to some 282,813 municipal residents, making it Alaska's largest city with more than two-fifths of the state's total population. Because of Anchorage's latitude, summer days are very long and winter daylight hours are very short. Anchorage is often cloudy during the winter, which decreases the amount of sunlight experienced by residents.
About BetaLED
BetaLED, a brand of Beta Lighting, was established to dedicate resources to the emerging use of LED technology for general illumination. Beta Lighting, a division of Ruud Lighting, Inc., provides the lighting market with high-quality, specification-grade luminaires for exterior lighting applications.
About Cree
Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and setting the stage to obsolete the incandescent light bulb through the use of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting retrofit solutions, and semiconductor solutions for general illumination, backlighting, wireless and power applications.
