Energy efficiency in street lighting - experience in the city of Rosario

Abstract

What do we understand by efficient lighting?, are saving and efficiency the same? These are usual questions which are important to know how to interpret; when we talk about saving, we mean a significant decrease in consumption. To do so, we could think about a dramatic reduction in street lighting but, what does a poorly lit city of millions of inhabitants means in practice?. It is necessary to foresee that a city in the dark presents more serious security problems, accidents, nightlife decrease, and stores with limited opening times, etc. And, if we translate all these inconveniences into monetary terms, certainly, the expenses demanded by services such as security, assistance, emergency as a consequence of lighting reduction will highly exceed the economic saving achieved by the turn off of street lighting, without taking into account users’ opinion, which who will certainly be against this measure. So, we confirm that saving does not necessarily mean efficiency. When we talk about efficiency, we interpret that we must achieve and ensure the necessary levels to develop night life with the lowest energy consumption.