Kelowna, BC is getting a shiny new set of solar powered LED lights at their city hall, as well as a bunch parks and transit facilities. Thanks in part to a nice big $500,000 grant from the Canadian Federal Government, and Carmanah, the makers of the lighting technology being used, more than matching that with about $530,000 worth of lights….considering the city is only putting up the installation costs(quoted at $128,000), that’s a pretty nice deal. According to Carmanah, the EverGen solar-powered area lights they will be installing, use batteries with a five to six year lifespan, and LED light fixtures with 10 year lifespans. Pretty good investment, since I’m sure they’ll pay for themselves pretty fast.

It will be interesting to see exactly how much the city saves in power consumption over the next few years (and what they’ll do with the savings). Maybe just the sort of case study needed to catapult solar lighting into wider use for towns and cities all over the place.

I’d love to see projects like this popping up all over the place, and hopefully will soon. I wish they’d bring something like that into this area, the street light across from my house went out a few days ago…

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