Toshiba International Corporation (TIC), Houston, recently announced a pilot project with Stratford, Ontario, to evaluate replacing existing streetlights (potentially as many as 4,000 units) with energy-efficient Toshiba LED fixtures and assist with the City's smart community initiatives. This public-private collaboration helped earn Stratford the title of “Top Seven Intelligent Community for 2012” by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) a New York-based think tank dedicated to studying the use of information and communications technology to create the community of the 21st Century.
Toshiba's LED roadway and area lighting fixtures are a direct replacement for conventional high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting such as high-pressure sodium or metal halide fixtures. The fixtures have a rated life of 60,000 hours or 12 to 14 years — six times as long as metal-halide and twice as long as high-pressure sodium products. As a result, LED lighting provides one of the lowest life cycle costs of any lighting technology. Toshiba said in a press release that Stratford stands to save up to 30% in energy consumption for street lighting, as compared to their currently installed conventional HID luminaires.