Energy & maintenance is eating the budget We can't improve safety without headcount We can't fund it
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The pain · energy & maintenance

Your streetlights are burning 12 hours a night and failing one in five a year.

Streetlights are commonly 40% of a city's electricity bill. Work out what yours actually cost — and what's recoverable — with every assumption visible and editable.

What are your streetlights costing you?

1 · Estimate 2 · Refine 3 · Report card
That's the only number needed for a first estimate.
Refine the assumptions ↓
US commercial average is about $0.13.
A 150W HPS lamp draws roughly 165–190W with ballast.
Dusk-to-dawn photocell averages ~4,100.
Vendors claim up to 30%. We default to 20%.
HPS lamps last ~5 years; spot repairs are a subset of that.
Crew time, vehicle, traffic control. Two visits per repair is common — one to find it, one to fix it.
$0 recoverable per year
Energy saved
$0
Maintenance saved
$0
Per light, per year
$0

Not all of that is financeable — and mixing it up is how a business case gets discounted to zero

1
Verified energy & maintenance savings
Countable today. Repayable under an energy savings performance contract, so it can finance the project itself.
$0
2
Contracted pole revenue
A signed 5G small-cell lease or EV charging agreement. Real, but only once it's contracted.
Not modelled
3
Parking, data licensing, future apps
Genuine upside. Never underwrites the deal — and carries its own political exposure.
Upside only
—
Carbon credits
A project that pays for itself generally fails the additionality test. Don't underwrite anything on these.
Excluded
These are industry defaults, not your numbers. Your rate, your wattage, your crew, your failure history — every one of them moves this result, and some move it a lot. That is exactly why a defensible business case starts with your baseline rather than a vendor's slide. What's above is an estimate good enough to decide whether to look further. It is not good enough to take to a council meeting.

Why it costs what it costs

The pain, its causes, and the measures underneath — before anyone mentions a product.
The problem
Difficult maintaining current and future levels of city services with existing resources.
Causes
  • Growing unfunded mandates and declining state funding support
  • Escalating energy and infrastructure costs on ageing HPS streetlights
  • Photocell control means the same burn time every night, regardless of need
  • Spotters monitor lights for failures — roughly 20% fail per year
  • Outages found by patrol or citizen complaint, then a second visit to repair
Measures — what a controller is judged on
  • City light hours and KW cost per hour
  • Maintenance and repair: 3 FTEs at ~25% of time
  • Crew management — scheduling, logistics, parts: 1 FTE at ~25%
  • Cashflow impact and tax impact of the capital decision

Has anyone actually proved this?

A calculator gives you your number. These are documented cases where the number survived contact with reality.
Smart city · before & after

CIMCON Lighting / Jamaica

A product tour losing to no-decision, rebuilt into a value case — and a nationwide award for 35,000 controls seven months later.

Read the case study →
Sample deliverable

Earned Value Report Card™

What the finished assessment looks like: line-item baseline, the cost side included, and a matched actual at eighteen months.

See the specimen →

Turn the estimate into a report card

We build the baseline from your data, model it against your rates and crew, and produce a documented assessment your finance office can stand behind — the kind that survives a bond disclosure and unlocks grant eligibility.

Start with your baseline →