The traffic lights
hanging above Wilkes-Barre streets are a little greener
than they once were, not that it will help any impatient
drivers stuck in left-turn lanes below.
The city is in the final stages of a nine-month energy
use audit and infrastructure upgrade that officials say
will significantly decrease power usage, replace aging
equipment and ease the strain on already stretched
coffers.
“It became necessary for the city to make some facility
and equipment upgrades, and the energy audit provided an
environmentally conscious way to do so,” Mayor Tom
Leighton said.
CLT Efficient Technologies Group began the $2.3 million
project in April, counting light bulbs and monitoring
power consumption.
The changes most
visible to city residents are new pedestrian signs and
LED lighting in parking garages and traffic lights.
The bunches of pencil-eraser-sized light-emitting diodes
last longer and are more energy efficient, or green,
than their incandescent ancestors.
Less apparent to most are the modern heating and cooling
systems in city hall that have replaced window units and
the aging boiler, and revamped lighting, including
high-efficiency bulbs and retrofitted fixtures in city
buildings.
CLT estimates the city will cut its annual power usage
by about 1.5 million kilowatt hours. A single-family
home, by comparison, uses about 1,000 kilowatt hours of
power every year.
Before the audit, the city spent about $450,000 to power
its buildings, streetlights, traffic lights and
everything else electronic, excluding parking garages.
Traffic signals in the city, which cost nearly $40,000
to run every year, will be 63 percent more efficient as
a result of the LED installation, and city buildings,
about 16 percent. City streetlights were the subject of
a previous energy audit.
The savings for the city will, at first, be minor —
about $207,000 over the next 15 years.
“You do have maintenance savings immediately,” said
Finance Officer John Koval. “You have better lighting,
heating, new light bulbs.”
During that 15 years, the city will be paying back the
$2.3 million project loan. CLT guarantees, however, the
city’s power bill and loan repayment will not add up to
more than what the city would have paid for power
without the project.
After the loan is paid back, the city’s annual savings
will climb to about $168,000, Koval said.
The increased efficiency will also lessen the blow to
the city when electricity rate caps expire on the last
day of the year. When rates are allowed to move with
market forces, consumers’ bills in the commonwealth are
expected to jump an estimated 30 to 67 percent.
