Galway Bay fm newsroom:
Galway County Council has, this week, passed a motion to proceed with a 6.2 million euro LED lighting retrofit project.
The project is part of the national LED retrofit programme, and will be headed up by Mayo County Council as the lead authority for the North West region.
County Councillors passed a motion this week for the project which will see over 11 thousand public lights retrofitted with LED bulbs.
Most of the street lights in the county are currently high pressure sodium lanterns which are considered inefficient in terms of energy use and are becoming increasingly difficult to find replacement parts for.
In order to carry-out the retrofit, the Local Authority has agreed a 6.2 million euro loan from the Housing Finance Agency, which will be paid back over 15 years.
The annual estimated repayment on the loan is 480 thousand euro per annum.
The County Council's lighting budget for this year stands at 1.4 million euro including 300 thousand euro for LED upgrade works.
The Local Authority has stated that by using the current LED lighting budget together with savings that will accrue once the full programme is completed, it is considered that the programme can be funded without a significant increase in the revenue budget provision over the next number of years.
