In 2014 the Department of Energy established the Better Buildings Outdoor Lighting Accelerator (OLA) as a means of providing technical assistance to municipalities and other public agencies, in order to overcome the particular set of barriers each faced in upgrading their street lights to modern, high-performance systems. Partners included states, cities, and regional energy networks that have upgraded street lighting systems or at minimum assessed the feasibility of a conversion project.
The goal of the OLA was to work collaboratively with partners and other stakeholders to mitigate or remove technical, financial, and regulatory or utility tariff barriers to broad scale deployment of the preferred high performance technology using light emitting diode (LED) street lighting systems and controls. Numerous municipalities have already converted and their results are bearing out the technology’s claimed advantages. However, while many others are similarly interested, a variety of barriers impede their moving forward. A compendium of tools and resources to help municipalities with street lighting conversion planning and implementation can be found in the OLA Toolkit.
The OLA concluded in December 2016, and these partner profiles briefly describe conversion experience and reports on the progress of these efforts to date. A summary of the OLA Accomplishments describe what partners were able to achieve during the OLA period and a more detailed assessment of barriers have been captured in The Outdoor Lighting Accelerator: Lighting the Way Forward.