Converting these lights has many benefits for the City of Concord and we are happy to have this project come to fruition. This project supports our renewable energy and emissions reduction goals while also providing a return on investment for many years to come.
Main project details
As the largest conversion project in Unitil’s New Hampshire service territory, the city of Concord took advantage of incentives to lower costs and reduce environmental impacts by switching from traditional bulbs to LED streetlight fixtures.
The project involved street-by-street audits to custom design lighting specifically for each neighborhood, which resulted in low-level lighting for residential areas and higher levels of lighting for commercial and high traffic areas.
Energy efficiency incentives totaling $285,448 were provided to reduce the cost by more than half in addition to a zero-interest loan of $262,459.73 to on-bill finance the remainder of the project over a five-year period.
The more energy-efficient lighting is expected to slash the city’s energy usage by 672,364 kilowatt hours annually, resulting in an estimated carbon emission reduction of 551.6 tons per year. As a result of the new lighting, the city is projected to save more than $700,000 on energy costs over a 10-year period, with the potential for additional savings as advanced control systems are introduced and installed.
Unitil worked with the city and RealTerm Energy of Montreal, Quebec, which was the lead vendor for the project, and installing contractor Dagle Electrical Construction Corp. of Wilmington, Mass.
