[Durham INC] Durham Joins Cree's LED City Initiative

[Blalock, Amy]

CITY OF DURHAM

Office of Public Affairs

101 City Hall Plaza

Durham, NC 27701

 

 

News Release

 

For Details, Contact:

Amy Blalock

Sr. Public Affairs Specialist

(919) 560-4123 x 11253

(919) 475-7735 (cell)

Amy.Blalock at durhamnc.gov

 

For Immediate Release:  May 20, 2010

 

 

Durham Joins Cree's LED City Initiative

Durham Third City in North Carolina to Join Global Community Switching
to LED Lighting

 

DURHAM, N.C. - The City of Durham is joining the Cree LED City(r)
program, an international initiative that promotes the deployment of
energy-efficient LED lighting.  

 

Durham is in the process of retrofitting three City-owned parking
garages with 573 new LED lighting fixtures.  The City's Department of
General Services selected energy-efficient LED lighting as part of the
City's overall effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  "We
identified several City projects where we could incorporate LED lighting
technologies into the building upgrades and we felt these parking
garages were a perfect fit," said Joel Reitzer, director of the City's
Department of General Services. "Using LED lighting is not only going to
save us in operating costs, but it's also going to prevent greenhouse
gas emissions from power generation, getting us closer to meeting our 50
percent reduction goal by 2030."

 

Cree's LED City program is an expanding community of government and
industry parties working to evaluate, deploy, and promote LED lighting
technology across municipal infrastructure to save energy; protect the
environment; reduce maintenance costs; and provide better light quality
for improved visibility and safety. 

 

Durham joins a growing global community that is switching to LED
lighting for significant energy and maintenance cost savings.  "Durham
has been Cree's home for more than 20 years, and we're thrilled our
hometown is joining municipalities around the world in achieving
significant energy and maintenance cost savings through the use of
energy-efficient LED lighting," said Neal Hunter, president of Cree LED
Lighting. "The Bull City has set an aggressive goal of cutting its
greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 for government institutions,
and by being bullish on LEDs, Durham can conserve energy while saving
its taxpayers money." 

 

The first project is the Corcoran Parking Garage Repairs Project, which
is utilizing 2005 bond funds to address deferred maintenance repairs as
well as upgrades that include an LED lighting retrofit. The scope of the
LED retrofit includes changing approximately 200 metal halide fixtures
with 200 new LED lighting fixtures. These new fixtures will use
one-fifth of the energy previously used by the old fixtures. The budget
for the repairs is $2,492,396, of which approximately $160,000 was
allocated for the new LED fixtures. This deck repair project began in
September 2009 and should be complete in June 2010. 

 

The second project is the renovation of Centre Garage and also includes
LED lighting upgrades.  The project budget is $8,834,500, comprised of
2005 bond funds and installment sales, of which approximately $259,000
is allocated for the purchase and installation of 373 new LED lighting
fixtures.  The LED retrofit scope of work replaces all original metal
halide fixtures with LED fixtures. This project, scheduled to be
completed in June 2010, is the result of a public/private partnership
agreement for the garage renovation between the City of Durham and Craig
Davis Properties.  

 

The final project is the Church Street Parking Garage Lighting LED
Upgrade Project, which is being implemented as a part of the
Energy-Efficiency Conservation Block Grant (EECBG).  This block grant
request was submitted by the Durham City-County Sustainability Office
and uses funds provided by the federal government as part of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The scope of this project
includes design and installation of an LED lighting system that improves
lighting while reducing energy costs. This project budget is $508,000
and is currently in the design phase, due to be completed in fall 2010. 

 

Other participants in Cree's LED City Initiative include Raleigh and
Chapel Hill, N.C.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; Austin, and Fairview Texas;
Anchorage, Ala.; Tianjian and Huizhou, China; Torraca and Apecchio,
Italy; Toronto and Welland, Ontario; Indian Wells, Calif.; Gwangju,
South Korea; Danville, Va.; Boston, Mass., and Bremen, Germany.  To
learn more, visit www.ledcity.org. 

 

To learn more about Durham's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
and other energy conservation related stimulus projects, visit the
Durham City-County Sustainability Office Web site at 
www.greenerdurham.net.

 

About the City's Department of General Services

The City of Durham's Department of General Services provides timely,
cost-effective and high quality services in nine core business
functions: Administration/Business Services, Cemeteries, Deferred
Maintenance, Facilities Operations, Keep Durham Beautiful, Inc.,
Landscape Services, Project Management, Real Estate, and Urban Forestry.
For more information, visit www.durhamnc.gov/departments/general.

 

###

-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3070 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20100520/92d4c9f9/attachment.jpeg>