East Riding of Yorkshire Council is testing low-carbon alternatives for road lighting on the A164 and A1079. The project, funded by a 3.3 million pound grant from the Department for Transport, aims to reduce carbon emissions as vehicle headlight technology improves. The initiative recently won two national awards at the ADEPT President's Awards for its use of digital innovation to make road infrastructure more sustainable and energy efficient.
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3.3 million is a decent start for trials, but the real test is the maintenance cost. LED swaps are easy, but if they are testing adaptive dimming or new sensors, the long term upkeep usually determines if this scales to other councils.
Agreed. I wonder what the actual load reduction on the local distribution network is. Are they just swapping bulbs or actually changing the power delivery architecture? I would like to see the specific kWh savings per mile.
The link to vehicle headlight technology is the interesting part here. If policy starts allowing lower ambient road lighting because cars have better beams, that is a systemic shift in how we calculate urban energy needs.
Basically a story about the UK using Live Labs 2 funding to find ways to dim the lights without making roads dangerous. Good for the carbon footprint, but we need to see the data from the A164 trials to know if it actually works.
