You may be interested in the fact that we don’t own our parking lot lighting – we lease it from DTE. Via a program provided by DTE Community Lighting, we pay a monthly rate covering all the lights’ maintenance costs.
Starting in the late summer or early fall of 2020, the mismatched and outdated 175 W mercury vapor (MV) lamps and fixtures in our parking lot will be replaced with 136 W LED fixtures. These fixtures provide 17,400 initial lumens (at a 4000 K color temperature), more than double the estimated 7,700 initial lumens of the existing fixture.
This will be done with nearly zero net change to our monthly bill (as we already lease fixtures). A five-year commitment to the program has been made to qualify for no up-front cost.
Furthermore – the “lumen maintenance” (how bright the bulb remains over its lifetime) is substantially better with LED than MV. This means that we’ll use less energy and get far more light output over the life of the fixture. The new fixtures are mounted on six-foot arms, and we expect the parking lot’s resulting coverage will be improved.
We’ve also negotiated the pole replacement for the south fixture, as the existing pole (original to the 1967 installation) is quite crooked. You may have noticed that a new pole was dropped off on our front property (as of mid-August), awaiting installation.
