Lighting proposals for Grassington
Owing to the vast increases that the Council has now to pay for the street lights with regard to the electric supply, difficult decisions have had to be made. The cost of the electricity supply is more than double to what it is now costing the Council and, with the high probability of even further increases. The lighting stock is very old, completely out of date, both worn out (they are always needing repairing) and very environmentally inefficient. To keep the lights working, (there are 62 in Grassington) and constantly repairing, accounts for nearly half of the precept and which is now unsustainable.
The alternatives are to 1) keep as they are (not viable), 2) switch off and not use (for general health, safety and welfare of the residents, not an option, or 3) They can be upgraded to a modern standard with LED lighting which would be in keeping with present day issues of being much more efficient and at the same time being beneficial to the carbon footprint and Dark Skies principles of the area.
The equipment required and the work upgrading will cost approximately £30,000 which is one of the reasons why the Council Precept is to be increased for this year. However, it will be extremely cost effective in that the power used will be much less than is presently being used. For example, most lamps are rated at 125 watts (there are a few larger wattage lights) but these 125’s will be reduced to mainly 10 wattage lamps. Therefore, the power used is 12.5 times less so consequently the electricity charges will be much reduced from even the present charges. So much so, that the costs of updating the system should pay for itself within approximately 3 years even at the present costings of the electricity. This is a one-off payment and is not an additional yearly payment.
There should also be an additional large cost saving in that because of the work, most of the installations will have been fitted with new wiring, electrical boxes, lanterns and lights etc., that there should be very few repairs needed for the foreseeable future thus again saving a quite considerable expense to the Council, that is residents of Grassington.