Angus Council’s controversial street light dimming strategy is seeing huge savings on its energy bills.
A new report shows that despite a 22% increase in energy prices since 2010/11 the energy saving measures means that street lighting costs have increased by only 3% over this period.
Lights in the region operate at full power from 6am to dawn and dusk to 10pm, but during the night from 10pm to 6am the lights only operate at 66%.
This has helped the council surpass one of its 10-year energy targets in only four years.
Across Scotland, there are nearly 900,000 street lights costing local authorities £41 million in annual electricity charges.
A report by the council’s head of technical services Ian Cochrane states: “The work will continue, in accordance with the policy, to further reduce both the energy and carbon impact of our lighting and provide resilience against future price rises.
“The processes set out in the policy have provided savings over the period including a budget reduction of £314,000 in 2015/16.
“The policy will continue to deliver by monetary and carbon savings.”
Since 2011 there is an annual saving of over 1,800,000 kW of electricity hours, some 19.7%, surpassing the 10 year target of 15%.
The carbon footprint has been reduced by more than 1,000 tonnes each year since 2011.
This is equivalent to a 20.7% reduction over the four years, which approaches the 25% 10-year target.
There around 22,000 street lights in Angus managed through the Lighting Partnership with Tayside Contracts.
The lighting stock in the county has actually increased by 4.1% over the past four years.
In 2010/11 the local authority paid for 9,134,836 kilowatt hours, down to 7,476,937 last year.
Year on year, the carbon footprint has reduced from 4,908 tonnes in 2010/11 to 3,890 in 2014/15.
Further savings may be in the pipeline as the Scottish Futures Trust has developed a toolkit that could save between 60 and 70% of their present electricity costs.
Trust chairman Sir Angus Grossart said: “I am sure that this will attract strong support from Scottish local authorities, who share SFT’s anthropological sense of thrift, and seek efficiency.”