City extends contract to switch all streetlights to LED

Dec. 6—After switching out about 1,100 of its more than 2,000 streetlight fixtures in Santa Fe this year from sodium vapor to LEDs, Public Service Company of New Mexico will switch out its remaining lights in the city in early 2025.

The Santa Fe City Council voted to amend its contract with PNM for the streetlight conversion at a meeting last month. The project is expected to begin in January, Santa Fe traffic operations engineer Michael Dalmolin said, and will use the same contractors, Titan Electric.

He said the project was “going to go very quickly and smoothly.”

The city converted all of the 3,500 streetlight fixtures it owns to LEDs in recent years in a controversial project that raised the ire of dark sky advocates who noted the potential for increased light pollution if the new lights were too bright.

After facing pushback against the light conversion, the city formed a steering committee in 2021 to consider concerns from the public and make recommendations on what would become an effort to switch 5,500 streetlights from high-pressure sodium bulbs to energy-saving LEDs. The committee members’ names initially were kept secret due to what city officials described as “aggressive” correspondence from project opponents.

More than 2,000 sodium vapor fixtures owned by PNM remained in the city until earlier this year. Over the summer, the city entered into a contract with PNM for $568,511 to convert about 1,100 of its light bulbs. With the extension of the contract, all of PNM’s light fixtures will be converted.

The amendment increases the city’s contract with PNM by up to $480,000, though Dalmolin said it may cost less than that. The additional money came from a slew of one-time funding allocations the City Council made over the summer, Public Works Director Regina Wheeler said in a recent interview.

“We had set aside funds for PNM to do their lights way back when we started the project to convert our own lights,” she said. “So we spent that money that was set aside at the time, and then we had to find some more, and then the one-time appropriation provided the opportunity to fund the rest of the conversion.”

Along with energy efficiency, the project was intended to ease an ongoing problem of burned-out bulbs that had raised frustrations among residents who complained the darkness was creating dangers.

In January 2019, the driver of a city-owned snowplow struck two pedestrians as they tried to cross Galisteo Street at Paseo de Peralta, a downtown intersection darkened by streetlight outages.

Dalmolin said the completed streetlight conversion is expected to pay for itself in four to five years due to lower energy costs.

“It obviously helps the city’s budget, and also makes sure that streetlights are lit, because the LEDs last over 10 years,” Dalmolin said. “The reason why we save money is because PNM doesn’t have to go fix them as much because they’re far more reliable.”

The city will save $135,000 every year in energy and maintenance costs with the new light bulbs, according to estimates previously provided by PNM.

Dalmolin said the first phase of PNM’s conversion was uneventful and took about two months, a time frame he expects to be similar for the second phase.

The city offers streetlight shields upon request to prevent unwanted light from encroaching on properties and received about two dozen requests after the first phase of the PNM conversion, Dalmolin said. Requests need to go through the city and not PNM; those who want one can reach out to Dalmolin directly at mrdalmolin@santafenm.gov or to the city’s Constituent Services Department at santafenm.gov/city-clerk-community-engagement/cs.

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