Residents of Windsor Square might have noticed crews from the Bureau of Street Lighting in the neighborhood recently. It turns out they are replacing the historic high voltage street light bulbs with safer and more energy efficient low voltage LED lights.
We noticed workers in the neighborhood a few weeks ago and contacted the the Bureau to find out just what they were up to and learn more about their work. Miguel Sangalang,  Executive Director and General Manager of the Bureau of Street Lighting in the City of LA’s Public Works Department told the Buzz that the City has been replacing old lights with new LED Lights for quite some time, as part of their LED Conversion Program to implement green energy technology.
“There are over 220,000 lights in our system,” explained Sangalang. “The bulk of those lights (upwards of 90%) have already been converted to LED over the past 20 years resulting in savings of nearly $10 million a year for the city. The LED lights last longer (the failure rate is about 1%) and use less electricity.”
The historic street lamps like those in Windsor Square are among the last to be updated because city engineers were waiting for better technology to allow them to do the upgrades, explained Sangalang.
Several weeks ago, Â contractors for the city installed replaced the old wires under each of the lights with new wires in the circuit area of Arden and Lucerne between Third Street and Wilshire Blvd. This new wiring is now low voltage, so it’s safer, more energy efficient and should reduce the failure rate of the lights. It was the first step in the process for before crews could implement the new LED Lights. According to Sangalang, crews are working on about 67 lights in they circuit area.
This morning, the Buzz met up with James Masud, Division manager for Field Operations at the Bureau, who was kind of enough to introduce us to the crews working on a section of Arden Blvd this morning. Masud and electricians Llovany Garfias, Daniel Ancencion, Shawn Barry and Jimmy Miranda explained how they replace the lights.
Why doesn’t the city put the lights from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Light
in Windsor Square or some other neighborhoods that need them?
I’ve always enjoyed the look of the 1920’s street lamps in Windsor square. I live on the 600 block of North Windsor and wondered why the charming lights end at the corner of Clinton and Windsor. My block has two ugly industrial street lights. What would it take to get the vintage street lights on my block