Cities To Invest $64 Billion In LED And "Smart" Streetlights By 2025

WASHINGTON, April 28, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- There are currently more than 2,000 LED and smart streetlight projects globally. With these infrastructure projects, cities and municipalities across the world modernize their streetlights with more efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lights. They are also deploying sensors, communications and analytics software throughout their street lighting infrastructure and creating "smart cities." This is a key segment of the emerging "Internet of Things." Rapidly falling costs and clear benefits have led to a sharp increase in the number and scale of LED and smart streetlight projects in the past year, according to a new study published today by Northeast Group, LLC.

"With LEDs approaching cost parity with legacy streetlights, their energy and maintenance savings make the business case a no-brainer. By 2025, LED and smart streetlights around the world will save 97,900 GWh annually, the equivalent of $12.9 billion in electricity costs per year. Smart street lighting will also pave the way for additional 'smart city' applications such as smart parking meters, environmental sensors and video monitoring," said Ben Gardner, president of Northeast Group.

Of the more than 2,000 current LED and smart streetlight projects across 90 countries, Northeast Group analyzed more than 800 projects. It found that cities are now undertaking larger-sized deployments. In just the past year, Madrid began the largest single-city project with 225,000 streetlights, Los Angeles announced it would network the 140,000 LED streetlights it recently deployed and the utility Florida Power & Light set plans to network 500,000 streetlights.

As deployments accelerate globally, diverse vendors are all competing for a piece of the growing market. Increasingly, partnerships between vendors across the value chain provide complete smart city solutions. Acuity, Bridgelux, Cooper, Cree, Echelon, Elster, GE, Itron, Osram, Philips, Schreder, Sensus, Silver Spring Networks and Toshiba are among the major vendors in the market.

Northeast Group's Global LED and Smart Street Lighting: Market Forecast (2015 – 2025) Volume II study is 150 pages long, with 130 graphics. A dataset of 17,000 data points is available with market forecasts for 125 countries. To order a copy of the study, please visit: www.northeast-group.com or email Ben Gardner at: [email protected]

ABOUT: Northeast Group, LLC is a Washington, DC-based smart infrastructure market intelligence firm. www.northeast-group.com

SOURCE Northeast Group, LLC