Lights out on logic

I WRITE regarding the City of Casey’s street light replacement campaign.
Just because someone has a feel good Greeny idea, it doesn’t mean that it is a good idea, or that it has any economic viability.
Mercury vapour lights are efficient compared to standard filament globes at 80 watts, the proposed 42 watt or 32 watt is not a 70 per cent less energy as claimed. Fifty per cent is more likely the figure.
Obviously no-one has bothered to work out the actual cost saving of electricity for such a huge outlay, $400 each.
Obviously no-one accepting this idea has been capable of doing this.
So now I will explain to you how to work out calculate the cost of running a light globe.
Let’s say it is a 100 watt globe and it is on for 10 hours every night. This is a total of 1000 watts or the same as 1kwh (one kilowatt hour). This council only pays 3.8 cents per kwh.
That globe only costs 3.8 per cent to run 10 hours every night. The 80w globe costs 80 per cent = 3.04 per cent every night. Multiply that by 365 days and it equals $11.10 p.a.
You will cut that cost in half. A pathetic saving of $5.55 pa for an outlay off $400-plus per light.
Seventh grade maths should not be too hard for council’s accountants to understand.
Then you have the serious problem of having to find $4 million-plus for a futile exercise that will not even cover 20 per cent of the interest bill.
This council recently suspended the $200,000 p.a. tree planting program to balance the budget. Where is their logic?
P. Werry,
Ex Telstra technician-builder,
Narre Warren.