The New York State Public Service Commission has approved a new lower-priced tariff option for Central Hudson Gas & Electric that would encourage municipalities to install LED-based street lights.

Most street lights are not metered for actual power usage. The new tariff would allow the utility to correctly calculate the energy used by LED street lights and a municipality to pay a lower price for energy used for lighting.

In August of 2010, Central Hudson filed tariff revisions to add an LED rate option. The utility applied for the revision to support several municipalities’ stimulated funds to install LED street lights.

A leader of the Commission said, “A major operating cost municipalities face was the cost of operating and maintaining street lights, the key advantages of state-of-the-art LED street lights over traditional street lights were lower energy costs, improved night visibility, significantly longer life spans, reduced maintenance costs, and a much lower environmental impact. Installing more energy efficiency lighting devices was the wave of the future.”

In Fargo, the replacing project saved 40-60% energy and reduced maintenance costs. Also, Millerbernd together with Minneapolis-based-manufacturer Lumagine custom installed Philips Lumileds Luxeon Rebel LEDs to replace the acorn-style luminaries.