Street Lights

Street Lights

Now that it’s time for the ghosts and goblins to come out, we’re starting to notice it’s getting dark earlier. Just wait a couple weeks. It will be dark when you get home from work when we do the spring forward, fall back thing. It makes a person appreciate having streetlights on these dark, gloomy nights.

The City of Alliance has 2,767 streetlights within the city limits. The portion of the city’s electric bill just for streetlights is about $7,500 a month. According to our contract with Ohio Edison, the streetlights are to come on one-half-hour before sunset and go off one-half-hour before sunrise. That totals an annual operation of about four thousand hours per light.

Ohio Edison maintains most of the streetlights under an agreement with the city. When a streetlight goes out, Ohio Edison is the one to call. When you call, they may want the pole number. It might be handy if you brave the ghosts and goblins and go outside with your trusty flashlight and read the number on the pole. If the little tag with the pole number on it is missing, just give them the closest street address to the pole. You can reach them at 1-800-633-4766 or online at www.firstenergycorp.com to report a light out. Ohio Edison generally owns the poles, the lights, and the wires. There are a few poles owned by Ameritech but not many.

There are a couple different types of lights on the poles. There are 866 high-pressure sodium lights, which give off a warm glow and are the light of choice for energy efficiency and bulb life. There are 1901 mercury vapor lamps, which have more of a bluish, harsher light. The sodium lights put out more lumens (light) than the mercury. When the bulbs start to go bad, you can tell which ones you have by the way they act.

The high-pressure sodium acts like a motion detector light and goes on and off quite a bit. It will go into a death spiral of on, off, on, off, then just stay off. The mercury type bulb will act differently. It will slowly fade into the sunset like a bad western movie, just getting dimmer and dimmer. The time to call Ohio Edison is when you start to notice this behavior. You don’t have to wait until the light goes out completely.

A couple years ago, Ohio Edison began a program of replacing and fixing all the streetlights in the city. They are now continuing that process with the relamping (replacing) of all the needed bulbs. They are putting in new bulbs and photocells and washing the globes. They are also cleaning out the wasp’s nests, bees nests, bird’s nests, and whatever other debris has accumulated up in the street light. The strangest thing they have found is a marble inside one of the globes. Maybe a bird carried it up there.

If you see yellow tape hanging from a street light, that means the whole thing needs replaced or repaired and they are waiting on a part. You don’t need to call about that one. They already know about it and will get to it as soon as possible. There are about 40 fixtures like that.

Streetlights are a convenience and a safety factor in our neighborhoods. The relamping and clean up job Ohio Edison is doing is going to make our whole town look brighter. You can do your part also. If you see a light going bad on your street, call Ohio Edison and ask them to fix it. It’s for the good of the neighborhood and the city.