Albufeira City Council has already replaced 325 light bulbs, distributed in some of the city's main arteries, with LED technology.
Some of the places where this exchange has already taken place are the streets of the Municipality, Miguel Torga (from Rua do Município to Rua de Dunfermline), Santa Eulália, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Bartolomeu Dias and Avenidas dos Descobrimentos and Sá Carneiro (South) .
With this initiative, the municipality intends to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption in the municipality, contributing, on its own scale, to the achievement of the goals defined at national level, recommended in the Action Plan for Energy Efficiency (PNAEE) 2020, which forecasts an overall reduction of 9% for the country compared to 2014.
This is just the first phase, says José Carlos Rolo, vice-president of the Albufeira City Council and responsible for public lighting, noting that «the 325 units that have already been replaced by LED technology represent 5,2% of the 6200 conventional luminaires existing in the city and only 1,6% of the total equipment installed in the entire area of the county».
The mayor emphasizes that "the work already carried out involved a municipal investment in excess of 90 thousand euros and represents an annual saving of around 32 thousand euros, with a return on investment in less than three years".
In this first phase, high-power or obsolete lamps, mixed traffic areas (vehicles and pedestrians) and those with greater lighting deficits due to the natural depreciation of the technology used (high pressure sodium vapour) were selected.
Thus, in the medium term, «the full or mostly replacement in the urban area, where the investment is municipal, is expected, a situation that will take a little longer in the other areas of the municipality that depend on EDP».
Overall, with this measure, the Municipality aims to improve “the night safety of pedestrians, increase the quality of public lighting, since with LED technology more than 70% of the colors are visible at night, and double the energy efficiency in relation to conventional equipment», explains the municipality of Albufeira.
Added to this is «increasing its efficiency, through better light control, optimizing or correcting the luminotechnical indices of some roads, reducing carbon dioxide emissions sent to the atmosphere, in addition to reducing the expense spent on public lighting , in the order of 70%”, he concludes.
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