Bayernwerk is gradually converting its street lighting to more efficient LED luminaires

Source: Energy & Management Powernews , December 23 2022

Bayernwerk has put its 400,000th LED street light into operation in Ingensdorf in Upper Franconia. According to its own claim, the Eon subsidiary is in this respect the largest service provider.

The Eon regional subsidiary Bayernwerk with headquarters in Regensburg operates in about 1,200 municipalities of its network area the street lighting and is with a total of 660,000 light points of the largest service provider in this area in Germany according to its own information. For several years the plants are converted step by step to LED enterprise.

Bayerns environment minister Thorsten Glauber (free voters) pointed with the start-up date in Ingensdorf to the climatic neutrality of the Free State in the year 2040 aimed at and explained: With the re-equipment of the street lighting to more efficient LED lights the municipalities with support of the net operators make an important contribution for the reaching of our ambitious climatic protection goals." Bavaria has issued the goal of becoming climate-neutral five years before the federal government.

Bayernwerk CEO Egon Leo Westphal: "We have now achieved an LED quota of around 60 percent in street lighting. This puts us well above the national average of around 40 percent. This also shows that we are putting our sustainability strategy into practice with particular vigor in Bavaria." At the same time, he highlighted the company's goal of converting a full 99 percent of its 660,000 light points to LED technology by 2025.

The ecosystem also benefits

Compared to the previous street lighting operation, almost 600 million kWh of electricity have been saved as a result of the LED conversions to date, according to calculations by Bayernwerk. This is roughly equivalent to the annual consumption of a city with 100,000 inhabitants. "The further potential is 50 gigawatt hours per year. We want to raise that by 2025," said Westphal.

As Daniel Pangerl, lighting expert at Bayernwerk, explained, LED luminaires generally also have an additional self-sufficient night setback of 50 percent. Thus the already small energy consumption is reduced again for 4 to 7 hours by further 50 per cent.

At present the enterprise tests also hybrid lights, thus LED solar lights with low-voltage connection. This enables energy savings of up to 90 percent. "This is particularly suitable in new construction for service roads and cycle paths, but also for the conversion of existing luminaires," says the expert. A similarly high savings potential is offered by the smart solution, i.e. a conversion to LED luminaires with motion detectors.

Apart from the high energy efficiency, LED street lights also offer an ecological advantage: they attract fewer insects.

Author: Günter Drewnitzky