By ZEINAB NAJM
Times-Herald Newspapers
HEIGHTS — The city and DTE Energy have discussed a project to convert city streetlights to LED lights, saving energy and money.
DTE Account Representative Debra Cain made a presentation to the City Council during an April 13 virtual study session where she laid out benefits of the project.
About two weeks prior, Mayor Bill Bazzi and Department of Public Works Director John Salmi went over the proposal with Cain. Salami had reached out to DTE several months ago then approached Bazzi about the project of which Bazzi said he wanted to make the council aware.
“(Cain) mentioned that some of the lighting we have — you know other cities have participated in the program with DTE,” Bazzi said. “They upgraded all the city lighting to LEDs and actually we looked at it and went through all the details.”
The presentation included information on engineering about the different lightings that were available.
“We want to make sure that we upgrade our lightings,” Cain said. “I know a lot of residents are complaining about some areas with poor lighting. It’s dim or there’s no lighting in common areas of the city.”
Currently, the city has 3,657 lights under the billing Option 1, which covers repair of all outages; makes streetlight locations safe after accidents 24/7; and preventive maintenance including post inspections, night patrols, LED washing.
“The discussion started with that there are still a lot of mercury vapor lights in the city,” Cain said. “Annually we take a look at what communities have a lot of mercury vapor lights, they’re the most expensive lights in our product offering. Very old technology and worst of all they’re very expensive for you and for us to maintain.”
In 2021, DTE completed the conversion at the city’s Department of Public Works yard and proposed a city wide LED conversion which includes city hall.
There are 2,459 streetlights that are optimal for LED conversion and the city is currently paying DTE $826,761 annually.
Cain said if converted to LED, spending annually would go down to $509,300 for a $317,460 annual savings as well. The cost to do the project would be $692,373 with DTE contributing $103,230 in labor costs and a rebate of $82,368 for the city.
According to the numbers, the final cost of the project would be $506,775 with a 1.6-year payback.
“What we get out of is — we’ve been doing this for 10 years — less maintenance and less of all of that stuff that I talked to you about,” Cain said. “We’ve converted over 50,000 lights in our territory.”
The new streetlights were described as brighter, better distribution of the light and proven safer compared to the current lights Dearborn Heights has.
In 2017, former Mayor Daniel Paletko signed DTE’s first contract for LED lighting conversion with the city in a subdivision south of Joy Road near Telegraph Road.
During the presentation, Cain did not include Warren Avenue lighting plans, but did have separate numbers for the Tax Increment Finance Authority district, which was presented separately to the city council.
She said there are 407 lights for conversion and that the city could also save $48,079 to complete that district. The cost to convert would be $79,513 with a DTE labor contribution of $16,554 and rebate of $13,231 for the project.
TIFA Assistant Administrator Tom Rosco said he would be recommending to the TIFA board to include entire final cost of the TIFA district— $79,513 — in its upcoming budget.
Cain said the next steps for the city following the presentation is for DTE to do a city wide audit of all the fixtures so data can be collected before moving forward.
(Zeinab Najm can be reached at [email protected].)