Lighting up the Mildura region

Published on 12 February 2015

The Lighting the Regions street light changeover project commenced today in the Mildura region, with Red Cliffs being the first town to receive the better, brighter and more energy efficient street lights.

Sixteen local governments across north, west and central Victoria have formed the Lighting the Regions project partnership to implement what will be one of the largest street lighting partnerships in Australia. The project will replace up to 23,000 street lights from the old mercury vapour style street lighting to more energy efficient Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). It will also reduce energy consumption, saving up to 180,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and provide regional communities with savings of more than $57M over 20 years in energy costs.

The Mildura Rural City Council region will be have up to 4,221 lights changed, following the successful changeover of lights in the Hepburn Shire, Swan Hill Rural City Council, Ararat, Hindmarsh and Loddon Shire regions.

Mildura Rural City Council Mayor Glenn Milne said Council is very excited to to see the project getting underway in our area.

“This really is a win-win for our community, for Council and for the environment.  Better street lighting means less energy to operate the lights resulting in cost savings for Council.”

He hoped the project would encourage other organisations and even local residents to make energy efficient lighting changes at home and in the workplace.

Powercor is the Distribution Network Service Provider for the Lighting the Regions project and maintains and operates the street lighting infrastructure on behalf of the local government partners. As part of the project roll out Powercor installers will updated the older style mercury vapour lights to the more efficient LEDs.

The changeover in the Mildura region is the largest geographic area of the project and is scheduled by Powercor to be completed by mid April.

This collaborative project partnership will yield significant economic and environmental project benefits for the 16 local government Councils involved in the project, and will pull together the expertise, resourcing and financial resources required to take energy efficiency action together with their communities.

This $11.6M project, which covers nearly half of regional Victoria, includes $5M of funding from the Australian Government and will run until June 2016. Council joined with the Wimmera Mallee Sustainability Alliance and Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance who wrote the successful bid for this, world’s biggest street lighting changeover project. 

The local government partners in the project are: Horsham, Bendigo, Central Goldfields, Hepburn, Pyrenees, Loddon, Gannawarra, Mount Alexander, Buloke, Ararat, Northern Grampians, Hindmarsh, Yarriambiack, Swan Hill, West Wimmera and Mildura.

More information about the Lighting the Regions Project is available from http://lightingtheregions.com.au/

ENDS