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Message
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Cllr David Alston
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Tuesday 25 May 2010 11:06:16 am
How else could we reduce our energy costs? [Topic now closed]
We have 48,850 street lights across the highlands, and currently spend £3.9m maintaining street lighting, traffic lights, and illuminated road signs. The electricity costs are £2m. Potential savings up to 2013 are up to £1.1m. We are seeking your views on options for reducing our energy costs.
- Dimming street lights between 12 midnight and 6am would involve fitting new lamps at a cost of £350 per unit. Overall costs to implement this proposal are estimated at £17m, with annual savings of up to £1m depending on the level of dimming.
- Turning off some street lights between 12 midnight and 6am, based on switching off selected lighting groups in rural areas with less than 100 columns, this would cost £50k to implement, with annual savings of up to £100k.
- Turning off all street lights between 12 midnight and 6am would cost £500k to implement, with annual savings of up to £1.1m. However a 100% switch off may not be achievable for safety reasons.
- Turning off every second street light would cost £200k to implement, and produce up to £1m in annual savings. There would be further costs for the removal of redundant lighting columns.
Which of these options would you prefer?
How else could we reduce our energy costs?
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John Boocock
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Wednesday 26 May 2010 1:45:34 pm
Computing Power Reduction
As part of the IT Procurement exercise what attention was paid to green computing in terms of equipment and usage of existing machinery. Are all the authority's PCs set at the optimum for power usage? Are they all connected to energy saving adapters which switch peripherals on only when the computer is on?
Best practice which should be disseminated to all end users is: Don't leave computers on standby, switch them off when you are not using them, overnight at weekends and during long breaks. You should also consider making it council policy to switch off monitors and leave computers on standby or in hibernation when end-users are away from their desks for a long time during the day. Boot times these days are often fast enough to justify this and to make a big energy saving here. You should also think about making someone responsible for switching off printers overnight
I wonder if Fujitsu Siemens can match the green credentials of the PCs produced by Very PV ( see http://www.very-pc.co.uk/ for details)
I'm off to the Green IT expo in November in London ( see http://www.greenitexpo.com/ ) if you're really nice to me I'll give you a presentation on what I saw and I'll do it for free if you promise to take me seriously 
John B
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Liz V
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Thursday 27 May 2010 10:19:53 pm
Reducing energy costs
Lighting: Turn off every second street light between midnight and 6am
Energy usage: Install solar thermal water heating in council buildings.
Reduce heating in council buidings to a maximum of 18 degrees.(provide staff with sweaters if you have to!)
Use video conferencing instead of travelling and where travel can't be avoided only pay an allowance for small, efficient cars; if bigger cars are chosen, then the owner pays the extra costs.
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Guy Newson
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Friday 28 May 2010 1:06:41 pm
Saving energy costs
I have a bit of a personal dislike for the over use of street lighting - especially the modern trend to extend this to rural villages. As well as the cost, street lights interfere with nocturnal wildlife and prevents any appreciation of the wonderful clear night skies that North Scotland has. In Norway, outside of cities, blanket use of street lights is rare. Street lights are placed at corners and crossings and then perhaps occassionally down streets. Children are taught at school proper safety behaviour (they have longer winter nights than us) and issued with reflective clothing and other reflective devices that dangle around. Home owners may leave on a discrete outside light but no-one uses these flood lights you see on some houses here.
So my conclusion is if a program of removing a lot of street lights is carried out in conjunction with appropriate teaching for children there are no safety issues and lots of benefits.
Guy of Murkle
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Donald McKinney
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Saturday 29 May 2010 9:12:42 pm
Street Lighting
Here in Caithness many villages have lights blazing all night. Surely this is madness. In the USA some large towns (up to 20,000 residents) have opted to switch all lights off. There is some data, I believe, that suggests that this actually reduces street crime.
Donald McKinney
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Cathy Wratten
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Tuesday 01 June 2010 11:32:01 am
Street lighting
I Totally agree with Donald McKinney, it's ridiculous the amount of street lights in Caithness, when we first bought our plot of land there weren't any streetlights in our area and we were highly delighted, we love star watching and were looking forward to watching the milky way and other stars visible at that time. By the time our house was built and we moved in there were streetlights everywhere we just couldn't beleive the waste, why on earth Caithness needs so many streetlights is totally beyond me, if you look at a night time satellite view of Caithness it shines as brightly as some of the big cities, Save money and turn them off completely!
Cathy W
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D MacLeod
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Tuesday 01 June 2010 11:35:36 am
reducing street lighting
I feel that if it is considered to be cost effective, then reducing street lighting during the night hours is a very good idea.
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Jennifer Maxwell
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Tuesday 01 June 2010 6:01:55 pm
Reducing street lights provision
It must be obvious to everyone, not just stargazers amongst us, that running street lights all night is a complete waste of money. In particular I have no idea why the entire road from Maryburgh roundabout to Dingwall is ablaze with light - surely joggers and dog-walkers don't do it all night? Before the mad explosion of H&S excesses we all just got on and took care, or a torch, or accepted that's life in rural areas. I live about a mile from the nearest street light for which I am truly thankful, awesome night skies with no light pollution and no ghastly beams of light all night in one's bedroom disturbing sleep patterns. As for security issues, it has indeed been proven that turning off street lights between midnight and 5.30am led to a drop in crime, data from a trial in Essex, study results available online.
Jennifer Maxwell
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