Durham Joins Cree’s LED City Initiative

Durham is in the process of retrofitting three City-owned parking garages with 573 new LED lighting fixtures. The City’s Department of General Services selected energy-efficient LED lighting as part of the City’s overall effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “We identified several City projects where we could incorporate LED lighting technologies into the building upgrades and we felt these parking garages were a perfect fit,” said Joel Reitzer, director of the City’s Department of General Services. “Using LED lighting is not only going to save us in operating costs, but it’s also going to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from power generation, getting us closer to meeting our 50 percent reduction goal by 2030.”

Cree’s LED City program is an expanding community of government and industry parties working to evaluate, deploy, and promote LED lighting technology across municipal infrastructure to save energy; protect the environment; reduce maintenance costs; and provide better light quality for improved visibility and safety.

Durham joins a growing global community that is switching to LED lighting for significant energy and maintenance cost savings. “Durham has been Cree’s home for more than 20 years, and we’re thrilled our hometown is joining municipalities around the world in achieving significant energy and maintenance cost savings through the use of energy-efficient LED lighting,” said Neal Hunter, president of Cree LED Lighting. “The Bull City has set an aggressive goal of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 for government institutions, and by being bullish on LEDs, Durham can conserve energy while saving its taxpayers money.”

The first project is the Corcoran Parking Garage Repairs Project, which is utilizing 2005 bond funds to address deferred maintenance repairs as well as upgrades that include an LED lighting retrofit. The scope of the LED retrofit includes changing approximately 200 metal halide fixtures with 200 new LED lighting fixtures. These new fixtures will use one-fifth of the energy previously used by the old fixtures. The budget for the repairs is
$2,492,396, of which approximately $160,000 was allocated for the new LED fixtures. This deck repair project began in September 2009 and should be complete in June 2010.
The second project is the renovation of Centre Garage and also includes LED lighting upgrades. The project budget is $8,834,500, comprised of 2005 bond funds and installment sales, of which approximately $259,000 is allocated for the purchase and installation of 373 new LED lighting fixtures. The LED retrofit scope of work replaces all original metal halide fixtures with LED fixtures. This project, scheduled to be completed in June 2010, is the result of a public/private partnership agreement for the garage renovation between the City of Durham and Craig Davis Properties.

The final project is the Church Street Parking Garage Lighting LED Upgrade Project, which is being implemented as a part of the Energy-Efficiency Conservation Block Grant (EECBG). This block grant request was submitted by the Durham City-County Sustainability Office and uses funds provided by the federal government as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The scope of this project includes design and installation of an LED lighting system that improves lighting while reducing energy costs. This project budget is $508,000 and is currently in the design phase, due to be completed in fall 2010.
Other participants in Cree’s LED City Initiative include Raleigh and Chapel Hill, N.C.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Austin, and Fairview Texas; Anchorage, Ala.; Tianjian and Huizhou, China; Torraca and Apecchio, Italy; Toronto and Welland, Ontario; Indian Wells, Calif.; Gwangju, South Korea; Danville, Va.; Boston, Mass., and Bremen, Germany.