Cleveland Gets LED Lights from General Electric to Light Up to Landmarks

The City of Cleveland is getting an LED makeover, thanks to a donation of more than $200,000 worth of LED lights courtesy of General Electric Lighting. The new energy-efficient lights will provide illumination to two of the city’s historic landmarks, the West Side Market and Public Square, with the goal of reducing current electricity costs.

The addition of energy-efficient lights coincides with the current sustainability initiative led by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson. He notes that GE’s history of community service in Cleveland and their commitment for innovating technologies in lighting make them the perfect figure to help initiate the city’s sustainability drive.

Initiative Overview

The mayor first launched the initiative in 2009, with the goal of preserving the environment and reducing energy consumption, as well as to promote economic growth through the introduction of sustainable technologies.

Since then, the company has held regular annual summits to tackle different sustainability issues, such as lighting, which was discussed in the earliest of these meetings.

According to Cleveland chief operating officer Darnell Brown, the installation of new LED lights won’t just help make the downtown area brighter and more attractive, it’ll also help reduce maintenance costs. He notes that while conventional lights have a rated lifespan of just 6 to 12 months, LEDs last for decades.

Cleveland Rich in Lighting History

The installation of LEDs in the city is appropriate, given how the City of Cleveland was a leader in street lighting. The city’s Public Square was one of the few areas to get the first electric street lights in the country in 1879.

Likewise, LEDs are a pioneering technology, which GET says generates a more uniform light, less shadows and dark spots associated with conventional fixtures like high-pressure sodium lamps.

City Hall Park in Los Angeles Switches to LED Lights

As proof of how aggressive LED lighting has been in the medium-scale to large lighting projects sector, another lighting project has just been completed, this time in the City Hall Park of Los Angeles.

The park surrounding Los Angeles City hall has just been outfitted with multiple LED lights, as part of a medium-scale renovation project that’s estimated to cost around 1 million USD, with the goal of making City Hall more energy efficient.

India Looks to Provide Incentives for LED Light Buyers

Move over compact fluorescent lamps—there’s a new darling in town.

The Delhi government is currently promoting light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as a competing lighting product against compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), which have been shunned by some consumers due to their toxic components. Touted by the government as a superior alternative, LEDs are praised not just for being more energy efficient than CFLs, but for also being easy and safe to dispose and recycle since they contain no traces of mercury.

The high prices of LEDs in India have stifled efforts for consumers to seriously consider them as viable lighting solutions at home (they cost up to 5 times more than the average CFL in India) but the government is looking at offering tax breaks to consumers in an effort to entice them to buy LEDs.