Controller Cctv
Did you hear that Coventry City Council (UK) are going to dim all the street lights at night?
It's going to cost them - sorry us UK taxpayers around £125 million to replace 28,000 street lights. The good News is that they'll save around £700,000 per year on the electric bill. But the bad news is that it will take around 178 years to pay back. Did anyone hear that story on the Jeremy Vine show this afternoon? Human controllers will monitor CCTV and dim the lights when not needed.
Anyone with BBC Iplayer can click on the link and scroll to around 1:43 (last part of the show).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qsvv4/Jeremy_Vine_17_02_2010/
The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off LOL.
What do you think about that?
Different facts and figures in the Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7250979/Coventry-to-dim-citys-street-lamps-in-British-first.html
Why? What possible reason is there to spend this much money on such a scheme?
And if they really must have this scheme, why are they employing human controllers - why not just have motion sensors, which at least have a one off cost, rather than having to be paid by the hour?
It sounds like a serious case of local council departments not talking to each other. One decided 'oh we can save x by doing this' but didn't think to ask how much it would cost and how long it would take before you actually started saving money after paying off the original costs. Though this doesn't surprise me, given the general impression one gets that many local councils don't like to engage their brain cells too often.