To make neighborhoods safer at night and discourage copper thieves, a pilot program to replace the existing street lighting systems with battery-enabled, solar-powered lights was revealed in Van Nuys – with plans to go to other communities.
This initiative called the Los Angeles Solar Lighting Pilot Program, was unveiled Feb. 29 by city officials – including Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Imelda Padilla – at Children’s Community School. So far, 104 new solar-powered streetlights have been installed in Van Nuys with the goal of not only illuminating neighborhoods at night with greater visibility but also reducing the cost of repairing and maintaining these lights.
“By embracing solar technology, the Bureau of Street Lighting has found a way to maximize our resources and make our communities safe,” said Aura Garcia, president of the Board of Public Works. “This is the first installation in a neighborhood and in front of a school. We have other solar light panels installed in other parts of the city; however, this project here is the first in a populated area directly addressing our residents’ safety concerns.”
Miguel Sangalang, general manager of the LA Bureau of Street Lighting, added that the pilot project is an investment into the community that can now become much more sustainable.
“The fact that we deployed this new technology means that we are locally generating, storing and using the energy [means] the energy bill itself and carbon emissions are zero,” Sangalang said. He explained that a beneficial byproduct of this energy means that the city of LA is less reliant solely on the power grid.
“What I mean by that is resiliency,” Sangalang continued. “You can have, God, forbid, an earthquake, flood or another natural disaster – which can take out an electrical system – [but] you could look out your window and still see our lights on because of the fact that it can do everything by itself.”
Another issue that this pilot project seeks to address besides safety is the prevalence of copper theft. Copper wire thieves target the electrical boxes of streetlights for the valuable metal, which causes the lights, and the neighborhood, to go dark. And the issue has escalated in recent years.
“Just five, six years ago, we probably had 500 or 600 incidents per year. Last year saw an all-time high of 6,800, so a tenfold increase,” Sangalang said. “If you’re just talking about one incident, it’s essentially one light out. But in the case of theft and vandalism, it would take multiple lights out.”
The copper thefts have also resulted in a large increase in wait times for Angelenos trying to get the lights back on. What would take days to repair now takes months; Sangalang said there are some complaints of lights being out for up to a year. It hasn’t helped that there is a staffing shortage of electricians that the city of LA has at its disposal.
The solar lights, however, have no copper wire to steal. The hope is that – with added security measures to protect the lights – requests for repairs will decrease because there is little to no street value in the solar lights for thieves to take. Sangalang said that one of the reasons why the project started in Van Nuys is that the area had one of the highest incidents of lights going out due to theft and vandalism.
By the end of June, LA plans to have 500 solar lights installed in Van Nuys and other communities – and another 500 by the end of June 2025. The solar lights range in size and could take between one to two hours or three to four hours to install.
The city of LA will be collecting data on the solar lights for the next year to ensure they can operate in the long term. For example, one of the parameters they’ll be looking at is whether the lights can operate for at least two or three nights following cloudy or rainy weather.
The Bureau of Street Lighting is still working out where best to place the new lights. Since they are reliant on solar power, the lights have to be installed on poles that aren’t obstructed by buildings or foliage. They are also considering areas with a high number of copper thefts.
“The fact is that we have a quarter of a million streetlights in the city of LA, so ultimately if there were some other solution, we’d be looking for people to engineer it,” said Sangalang. “My challenge … [is] looking for people to hire. We’re looking for people to make some stuff for us to deploy out there to help their city. Whatever people can do, we’d be interested in looking at.”