Carpinteria, Calif., a small oceanside city east of Santa Barbara, has completed its retrofit project of replacing all city-owned high-pressure sodium (HPS) decorative street lights with energy-efficient LEDs housed in pendant lamps.

The lights are located on several blocks of Linden and Carpinteria Avenues in the downtown area and include lights on the Amtrak rail platform and its adjoining public parking lots.

After testing the LEDtronics LED30HPS-600-SIW-002-BU pendant lamp for two months, the city applied for funds and received $74,117 from the California Energy Commission under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program from the U.S. Department of Energy, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The bulbs are certified “Made In USA.” The total project cost was $78,580.

According to the city’s calculations, each of the 199 HPS lamps at 138 watts each consumed 604.4 kWh annually—a total of 120,284 kWh and an energy cost of $15,035 (at $0.125 per kWh, 12 hours of operation each evening). With the switch to the brighter and more directional 29-watt LED bulbs (LEDtronics), the annual energy cost is expected to be only $3,160, a dramatic 80 percent savings.

The retrofit will also reduced maintenance costs, as the LED bulb life should be four to five times longer than the replaced HPS bulbs.

In addition to the $11,600 savings on its annual energy bill, this reduction in power usage by 96,000 kWh decreases the city’s carbon footprint each year by an estimated 33 tons of CO2.

“I like the results very much,” said Matthew Roberts, director of the Carpinteria Parks and Recreation Department that installed and maintains the streetlights. “The lamps fit into the existing light fixtures with only minor modifications and look great. I think the consensus is that the new bulbs produce fewer glares, are easier on the eyes and have a very appropriate color temperature for our needs.”