On the week Council approved $3 million in the capital construction budget to replace every streetlight with LED lights, Mississauga was featured in the news .
They also were changing their street lights to LED. It was costing that municipality $26.5
million. for the switch. The project is expected to be complete next year.
It gives one a sense of the size of us in the overall scheme of things.
But that's not all it tells us.
A glitch has emerged in the program.
The major merit of the exercise is to conserve energy. The lights turn on and off with the sun.
Only they don't.
They stay on.
All day.
During daylight hours.
By rule of thumb then, they burn three times longer than they should.
That would mean , the energy conservation argument is a leaky bucket.
But all is not lost. The video clip showed a town employee with a hand-held app and a stylus,
apparently pin-pointing the lights that need to be turned off and on manually.
Of course , there's nothing to say the problem can't be fixed. But it's awkward.
Maintenance reduction was an argument in favor of the switch.
So...you say... if Mississauga can make a mistake ...what price progress?
That's true. All it costs is money.
Led lights are a new product on the market. Unproven ....so-to-speak.
Product prices are always substantially higher in the beginning. As manufacture grows the price comes tumbling down.
Design flaws are discovered and corrected.
But we shouldn't wait for that.
Oh Dear Me No...
We must be ahead of Markham
It seems the lights generate a lot of heat. The effect of that is yet to be discovered.
But not at the Council table.
Everything is cool,dude
Saturday 1 February 2014
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11 comments:
This is a typical decision of this Council, be it as a result of a staff recommendation or not.
There might have been a little study, a teeny tiny one, a consultant's opinion obtained, and then based on incomplete or inaccurate information a decision taken.
Only to find out that the decision was flawed and that the new lighting system will not work as envisaged.
The solution now requires human input and ongoing time to be spent by staff to correct something that should have been known in advance.
This is a further poor reflection on this Council and makes one wonder what other little screw-ups they have wrought.
Well, if they burn longer and produce heat, one has to assume that they will be finished well ahead of their expiry date. So will cost more rather than less.
But Aurora won't let that stop them. We have tried with the software system and residents have actually asked Council not to increase lighting in some areas. It's like water off their backs, or our money down the drain.
All these “Energy Savings” products end up costing consumers much more in the long run. I’ve found that anything that claims it’s going to save you money….It doesn’t in the long run. I’ve bought LED bulbs claiming a rated life span up to 50,000 hrs . I got approx. 5000 hrs on one and almost 5500 on the other. Front loader washing machines may save you on your water bill but not on your electricity bill when it takes almost double the time for a washing cycle. And those tankless water heaters that take forever to heat your water when you first turn on the faucet….You don’t even want to know what the bill is for a service call. All this “Energy Saving”, ECO friendly products along with, Solar, Wind technology is just a new industry created to make money. It’s sad when consumers truly wanting to conserve energy and in turn suppose to save money, are not. And the only people benefiting from these products and services are the ones selling them.
We tried to be as good as possible with re-cycling. Now we are just going back to the usual sorting. It only remains sorted until it hits the truck.Not buying this clear bag thing for one minute. Markham can have the honours. Ballard is out of luck on this one.
Cllr Ballard always tries to find a target. First it was the Bell tower, then the man with the 3 trees. Loves his trees. He went after Power Stream until he realized they didn't have to listen to him & then became the champion of pounding the garbage collectors. When he challenged a fellow councillor to a sabre duel, he might even have been serious.
" Let the games begin. "
The only ones we listen to are the firemen when they come to talk about smoke detection.
Ballard is done as a councillor. He wants Klees job as a Liberal. That’s why he ran for council in Aurora; it was just a stepping stone for that MPP’s position. That goes the same for Maddie DiMuccio in Newmarket. She’s eyed that Conservative position before she ran for councillor. It’s going to be one heck of an interesting year with elections this year in all levels of government.
"He went after...until he realized they didn't have to listen to him"
Hey, that reminds me of the fellow with the great hair (and its concomitant great responsibility).
From the City of Mississauga
"During the LED installation process, temporary communication gaps between the LED lights
and the gateways may arise and result in the LED lights staying on during the day. As a safety
measure, the LED lights are programmed to turn themselves on when they lose communication
with the gateways. This is done to ensure illumination of the roadway at night. This condition is
temporary and will be corrected once all the street lights within an area are converted to LED
lights and the network is completed"
If that's true and the situation is temporary then the "LED lights burn all day so why bother installing them" argument doesn't wash.
Has anyone asked staff to clarify or confirm whether or not Aurora will experience the same temporary problem?
We all should know better than to blindly subscribe to every "sounds great" green initiative that comes down the pike but we should also be fair in our criticism.
22:19
I don't know what will happen with Ballard as there does not appear to be a clear idea of who will run to replace Klees. I'm a Liberal usually but will be looking really carefully for an alternative to the Cllr.
As for Ms Maddie, she already has some decent opposition.
Councillor Ballard joined the Legion yesterday according to his site. Getting those ducks in line.
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