BAGUIO CITY – The Baguio Government needs at least P113 million to replace the more than 7,485 unmetered high-pressure sodium (HPS) streetlight fixtures to the environmentally-friendly Light Emitting Diode (LED) fixtures as part of the city’s energy saving initiatives.
Based on the presentation of the draft terms of reference for the city’s barangay streetlighting project, the City Engineering Office (CEO) said the proposed replacement of the HPS streetlight fixtures to LED can be realized within a year as they found a supplier of LED fixtures to provide a 5-year warranty period for the fixtures to be procured by the city once the same will be bided out.
With this, the City Government can save about P2.4 million per monthly once the HPS fixtures are converted to LED compared to the over P4.1 million currently being spent by the city for the monthly consumption of the unmetered streetlights in the 128 barangays.
Under the City Government’s barangay lighting project, the 70-watt, 150-watt and 250-watt HPS fixtures will be replaced by 30-watt, 60-watt and 120-watt LED fixtures saving over 63 percent energy costs in the city’s monthly power consumption for streetlights alone.
Earlier, the City Government earmarked some P18 million for the purchase of more than 1,500 LED fixtures to replace the HPS fixtures along major roads and parks in the city.
The 120-watt LED fixtures will be installed along major roads in the city, the 60-watt fixtures will be installed on minor roads, while the 30-watt fixtures will light alleys to ensure the illumination of the barangays.
The Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) has returned to the City Government the maintenance and operation of the city’s unmetered streetlights in February last year as it was no longer financially feasible for the electric cooperative to do the maintenance and replacement of the busted streetlight fixtures.
Currently, the City Government is spending more or less P4.2 million annually for the city’s unmetered and metered streetlights with 94 percent earmarked for unmetered streetlights while only 6 percent is allotted for metered streetlights.
According to the computations of the CEO, the City Government can save more than P17 million annually on its power bills once all the unmetered HPS fixtures will be replaced with LED fixtures aside from shifting to metered streetlights for the city to pay the actual power consumption with the electric cooperative.
Moreover, the City Government will be coordinating with BENECO for the possible retrieval of the meters previously detached from the streetlights after the city shifted to unmetered billing so that the same will be used after undergoing calibration for the planned conversion of the existing unmetered streetlights to metered upon the completion of the barangay LED lighting project.
By Dexter A. See
Photo by: Armando M. Bolislis