Friday, August 14, 2026

LED Conversion Reaches Canyon Close Road, With 1,063 Streetlights Still to Go

Installing an LED streetlight fixture at Altadena Drive near Canyon Close Road. [photo credit: City of Pasadena]

The upgrade retires a high-voltage series system whose transformers are no longer made, part of a citywide conversion the city began in the 1990s

City crews finished converting the streetlights on Canyon Close Road, Fox Ridge Drive and Altadena Drive in July, retiring a high-voltage series circuit whose replacement transformers are no longer manufactured.

The old system had become increasingly unreliable and difficult to maintain, with aging wiring and transformer failures causing recurring electrical faults, according to the City of Pasadena. Crews installed new electrical feeds, underground conduits and wiring, access boxes and energy-efficient LED fixtures. Greg de Vinck, director of public works, reported the completion. The work was done jointly by Pasadena Water and Power and the Public Works Department, and the city said the replacement uses about one third of the energy of the system it replaced.

The three streets are one piece of a conversion that has been running for more than three decades. The city began replacing high-voltage post-top series circuits with low-voltage multiple circuits in the early 1990s, and the current Capital Improvement Program project, created in Fiscal Year 2016 and first funded in Fiscal Year 2017, continues that work.

Sixteen circuits carrying roughly 1,063 streetlights remain to be replaced citywide. The remaining portion of the project’s first phase covers two circuits and about 176 lights.

The engineering case is about failure behavior as much as efficiency. On a high-voltage series circuit, when a single light goes out, every light on that circuit goes dark. The replacement systems run on standard power inputs of 120, 208, 277 or 480 volts. Capital Improvement Program documents identify public safety and worker safety as the two strongest justifications for the conversion, and project at least 50% in energy cost savings from moving older incandescent bulbs to LED.

The work is tied to the city’s General Plan. Land Use Element Policy 6.7 requires that neighborhoods, streets and public spaces be designed to discourage crime through street-fronting uses, adequate lighting and sight lines, what the policy calls “eyes on the street.”

The scale of similar work nearby gives a sense of the savings involved. Los Angeles County Public Works has converted roughly 60,000 streetlights in unincorporated communities from high-pressure sodium to LED, cutting streetlight energy consumption by about half, or 18 million kilowatt-hours a year, enough to power 2,400 homes.

Pasadena Water and Power, which describes itself as a “community-owned utility,” shares streetlight work with the Public Works Engineering Division’s Street Lighting and Traffic Signal section, which handles design and upgrades.

Construction continues this fiscal year on the S-104 circuit along Linda Vista Avenue. Residents can report a faulty streetlight to the City Service Center at (626) 744-7311.