The future of Prairie Village, a city in Johnson County, Kansas, may look even brighter later this year.
The Prairie Village City Council recently approved the plan to purchase 1,736 new
LED street lights from Philips Lighting that will be installed citywide.
Back in 2010, the city began testing out the more energy-efficient LED street lights as part of a pilot program conducted by Kansas City Power and Light Company (KCP&L). Since then, approximately 300 of the standard high pressure sodium (HSP) lights have been replaced with LED fixtures.
(Photo Credit: Prairie Village Public Works)
In further cost-saving move, the city council agreed to purchase all of the street lights across the city from KCP&L in 2016. As part of the purchase, the council also determined to upgrade the light heads to LED ones at the time of purchase.
During the selection process, Philips Lighting had the low bid for the contract at US$ 334,323. Contractors then installed 5 new LED lights at 79th Street and Reinhardt earlier this year as a test run that proved to be acceptable.
In earlier pilot projects, the city used LED lights that have a color temperature of 4000 Kelvin, which means these lights contain more blue wavelengths so they look brighter than conventional street lights.
However, in 2016, the American Medical Association issued a recommendation that street lights should have a color temperature no greater than 3000 Kelvin ( meaning the color of light tends to appear as a warm yellow). This is because blue lights can disrupt the human body’s biological clock.
That is why the Prairie Village decided to bid for LED lights that have lower color temperatures and selected those with a color temperature of 3000 Kelvin.
Prairie Village Public Works Director expects the street light fixtures to arrive in four to six weeks, with another two months for installation.
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