So far I have contacted my city by email and made a request to consider low voltage shielded lighting. I got an email reply from the electrical engineer from the town who replied that they would look into this when doing street lighting projects. I also posted to the Chiefland Astronomy Village Yahoo group and the kind folks have given me several leads. Chiefland Astronomy Village is a premier dark sky community here in Florida.
My early research finds that Ocala has about 8,725 street lights. Many of these lights are 250 Watt high pressure sodium cobra style lights, as well as many open globe lights employing the 100 Watt High pressure sodium light. I calculated (AS A VERY ROUGH ESTIMATE) the city could save roughly $400,186.00 if the existing lights were changed to 35 Watt shielded lighting. This was based on if the town used 175 Watt lights burning 4,100 hours a year at .08 cents a KWH (175 Watt x 4100 hours x .08 cents = $57.00 a year for one light. $57.00 x 8,725 lights in town = $500,000.00). There is a financial gain to changing the lights!
I have joined the local astronomy club, the Alachua Astronomy Club.Inc and hope to meet with some folks that may have been working on this already and can offer some help. I have also been in contact with the Managing Director of the Internation Dark-Sky Association who has been a great help with offering advise and direction.
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