Lumecon, Relume to supply 1000 LED street lights to Ann Arbor

Relume Technologies, a developer of LED lighting engines and fixtures, and Lumecon, sales and marketing arm for Relume, have won a contract with The City of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to supply more than 1,000 LED light retrofits for the city's conversion to 100 percent LED light for its downtown streets.

The project was announced in October, when Relume also joined the LED City program (see LED streetlights to take over downtown Ann Arbor).

The Relume LED retrofit engine is based on Cree XLamp LEDs. The contract was awarded by The City of Ann Arbor following a 25-fixture evaluation that showed a 50 percent energy savings and 3.8-year payback on initial investment.

"Lumecon and Relume worked closely with Ann Arbor officials for 24 months to perfect this LED retrofit to the city's existing globe streetlights," said Mike Bergren, City of Ann Arbor assistant field operations manager. "This solution allows Ann Arbor to realize the significant energy and maintenance cost savings and utilize the beautiful globe street light structures already in place."

"Each LED fixture draws only 56 watts and is projected to last 10 years. They will replace bulbs that use more than 120 watts of power and last two years. With savings like this any city can choose LEDs over traditional light sources."

Bob Hahn, general manager of Lumecon said, "Ann Arbor has always been on the leading edge of conservation and this LED project is a giant leap forward towards saving energy and reducing the city's carbon foot print."

Full implementation of LEDs is projected to cut Ann Arbor's public lighting energy use in half and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2,425 tons of CO₂ annually, the equivalent of taking 400 cars off the road for a year. Detroit Edison, Ann Arbor's local utility provider, will meter the new LED streetlights with the intent to gather sufficient information to develop new LED-based tariffs.