Shropshire to see 70% of street lights turned off overnight
Councillors at a Shropshire Council cabinet meeting today approved plans to switch off 70% of Shropshire's street lights in middle of night over next 4 years.
Under the plans street lights will be turned off between 12am and 5.30am. Street lights in areas considered high crime risk will not be switched off, such as most urban areas.
Shropshire Council, say their electricity bill would be cut by over £160,000 a year if some street lights are switched off.
Across the Shropshire Council area it takes 8.7 million kilowatt-hours of power (and 4,750 tonnes of carbon) to run 18,500 street lights, illuminated signs and traffic signals every year, which is the same amount of power used by 2,600 homes in a typical year.
Some areas of the country including Telford & Wrekin already switch streetlights off in the early hours of the morning.
From Saturday some lights will be switched off between midnight and 5.30am in Church Stretton, the plan is to gradually roll out the scheme to the rest of the Shropshire over the next four years, starting from April 2012.
Converting the lights to part-night lighting, which is the technical term for the ability to switch themselves off for a period of the night, will cost about £100,000 a year over the next four years. The £162,000 annual saving will be year-on-year, and is likely to increase in the future as energy prices rise.
