LED Streetlighting · SE Pennsylvania & PJM Region
Convert the old stock.
Light the new.
Thousands of high-pressure-sodium and mercury-vapor streetlights in our region are past their design life — dim, orange, expensive to run, and increasingly impossible to maintain. We convert them to LED, and design new lighting for growing campuses and developments.
Led by leadership experience managing utility-scale LED conversion programs — the audits, the tariffs, the contractors, and the closeout paperwork.
One practice, start to finish
Start with an audit, or hand us the whole program — every engagement runs on ModernGrid's evidence-backed project discipline: every fixture inventoried, every commitment tracked, every dollar accounted for.
Lighting Audit & Conversion Roadmap
Field inventory of every fixture — wattage, technology, pole, and condition — mapped and matched to LED equivalents, with a savings analysis and a phased conversion plan your board or council can act on.
Request an audit →Owner's-Rep & Program Management
We run the conversion on your behalf: fixture specifications, contractor procurement, construction oversight, utility coordination, and rebate and closeout paperwork.
Talk through a program →Turnkey Conversion
Full delivery of the conversion — fixtures, crews, traffic control, disposal and recycling of legacy lamps — managed end to end under the same PMO discipline.
Scope a conversion →New Streetlight & Area Lighting
Photometric design and installation of net-new lighting for developments, college campuses, office complexes, and parking areas — dark-sky-conscious, uniform, maintainable.
Start a design →Safer streets, visibly
Lighting is a public-safety asset first. LED gets you light you can actually see by.
- True color at night. LED renders color at CRI 70+ — drivers and pedestrians can distinguish a person from a shadow. HPS renders at CRI ~25, in monochrome orange.
- Instant on, instant restrike. After a power blink, HPS lamps go dark for 5–15 minutes while they cool and restrike. LED is back at full output immediately.
- Uniform coverage, fewer dark spots. Photometric layouts put light on the road and sidewalk instead of hot spots under poles and shadows between them.
- Dark-sky and glare control. Full-cutoff fixtures, warmer color-temperature options, and house-side shields keep light off bedroom windows and out of the night sky.
- Fewer outages. LED fixtures are rated to ~100,000 hours versus roughly 24,000 for an HPS lamp — fewer dark lights, fewer night patrols, fewer truck rolls.
- Mercury vapor is end-of-life. Federal law ended manufacture of mercury-vapor ballasts in 2008. Every MV fixture still in service is running on a shrinking parts supply.
The economics do the convincing
Typical conversions cut lighting energy 40–65%, and the maintenance savings are often just as large.
| Existing fixture | Typical LED replacement | Energy cut |
|---|---|---|
| 175 W mercury vapor | 40–60 W | ~70% |
| 100 W HPS | 40–55 W | ~60% |
| 150 W HPS | 60–80 W | ~60% |
| 250 W HPS | 90–120 W | ~60% |
| 400 W HPS | 130–180 W | ~60% |
Existing wattages understate the real load — ballast losses add 15–25%. Typical equivalents shown; final selections come from a photometric design, not a rule of thumb.
- 15–20 year fixture service life — group relamping cycles disappear from the budget.
- Rebates and joint procurement. Pennsylvania Act 129 utility rebates and regional joint-procurement programs can offset a meaningful share of project cost.
- 4–8 year payback is common on energy and maintenance alone — before rebates.
- The audit pays for itself. Most inventories we see are 10–20% wrong — you may already be paying for lights that don't exist, at wattages you don't have.
Who owns your lights changes everything
It's the first question in every conversion conversation — and we've worked both sides of it.
You own the fixtures
Municipalities, colleges, and office complexes that own their lighting keep every dollar of savings. The conversion is a straightforward capital project: audit, convert, and watch the energy line item drop from the first bill.
The utility owns the fixtures
Under flat-rate lighting tariffs, converting doesn't automatically lower your bill — the savings live in the tariff, not the meter. We help you navigate the real options: petitioning for an LED rate, negotiating the utility's conversion schedule, or evaluating a system purchase.
Free · No obligation
Request a lighting assessment
Tell us what you're working with and we'll come back with a preliminary read: what your system likely costs you today, what a conversion would save, and the sensible first step.
- Within 2 business days: a preliminary savings read on your system
- No inventory? No problem. A rough fixture count and your monthly lighting bill are enough to start
- Utility-owned lights? We'll tell you what your options actually are before you spend anything