A public lighting upgrade scheme will see thousands of LED lights retrofitted across numerous counties in Ireland.

Twenty-one local authorities, including the lead authority Cork City Council and partner authorities in Waterford, Clare, Kerry and Limerick, are taking part in the National Public Lighting Energy Efficiency Project (PLEEP) which will see 77,000 public lights retrofitted to LED in the Southern region.

The primary objective of the project is to maximise energy savings, reduce CO2 emissions and enhance efficiency across the public lighting network by replacing the traditional light fittings with LED luminaires.

Projected energy savings of 50% will be made through the retrofitting program and 786 tonnes of CO2 emissions will be saved per year.

Throughout County Waterford, Le Chéile Lighting Specialist has been contracted to carry out the public lighting works.

The company stated: "The works in the most part will present little or no disruption to the public or businesses within your area, and power will not be interrupted.

"Some deployment of temporary traffic management may be required in areas of high traffic volume or narrow roads to facilitate safe access to streetlights for work crews."

The process of retrofitting 10,000 public lights across Waterford city and county began in August last year and is anticipated will be substantially completed by August this year.

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Fergus Gleeson, Director of Services, Waterford City and County Council said: "Waterford has set out an extremely ambitious strategy in its Climate Action Plan and this project aligns closely to the goal of establish Waterford as a decarbonisation zone (DZ) by 2040.

"The implementation of PLEEP copper fastens our commitment to reducing energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions. The project will also reduce the incidences of lighting outage when complete and reduce excess lighting with over designed installations.

"With advances in LED technology, the improved public lighting will add to enhanced public safety and an improved visual environment over traditional public lighting."

A secondary objective of the PLEEP in Waterford is to survey and collect data on the condition of the public lighting infrastructure to enable the region’s local authorities to strategically plan and invest in the upgrading of the public lighting underground infrastructure.

This survey work has identified a number of infrastructure issues that need to be addressed before retrofit to LED can be carried out.

Deregulation within the electrical industry in 2009 resulted in local authorities taking over ownership from ESB Networks of underground cabling infrastructure servicing public lighting columns.

This included concentric cables which had been installed since the 1950s and represents around 15% of Waterford City and County Council’s public lighting cabling inventory.

Concentric cabling doesn't comply with current electrical standards and where cable faults occur, the cabling must be replaced in full. As this cabling is at the end of its service life it is prone to faults.

While Waterford City and County Council will make every effort to ensure a timely repair is carried out, the time required to restore these cable faults can be considerable given the necessity to provide new ducts and cables and excavate pavement and footpaths to reinstate same.

The work is site specific and timelines for repair can be more than 3 months because the work is dependent on availability of funding and a specialised contractor. Technical human resources in the private sector are constrained at this moment in time.

In the short term to ensure public lights are repaired as faults occur, Waterford City and County Council will continue to maintain all public lighting and endeavour to keep the incidents of non-functional lights below 2% at any given time.