Recently, more than 300,000 street lights and every 40 years or so runs an international design contest looking for ways to improve upon those lights in New York. The winner of the most contests was just announced.

It's an LED street and optional pedestrian light post designed by the Office for Visual Interaction (OVI). It not only looks cooler and is more environmentally-friendly than the current model, but developers say they should eliminate dark spots commonly found in between current light posts.

It's made possible by both diffusing the light more efficiently and since many little LEDs would take the place of the one high-pressure sodium bulb used today, each LED can be aimed to beam light at a wider angle. The LED developers at the Lighting Science Group Corporation say while the bulbs will have the potential to change color, that's not in the immediate plans, but they will be greener in one sense.

To get an idea, they can reduce energy consumption at each street lamp by about 25 to 30 percent immediately. That's just one-to-one comparison. They also have the energy savings because of the control systems. Turn it on, turn it off, and dim it down as the ambient lighting increases or decreases.