By 2012, over 40 percent of the 80,000 streetlights in Detroit were not functioning, leaving the troubled city mired in darkness. To compound the problem, much of the grid relied on a series of outdated circuits—if one transformer went out, every light in the series went dark.
Flush with the resources needed to execute his vision, Jones’s team has outpaced expectations—the Authority is well over halfway to its goal of relighting the entire city, and has replaced more than 42,000 lights. Localized engineering studies have given the team the resources to discourage copper theft by switching to aluminum wiring, and the PLA is moving away from the faulty series circuit system. The new bulbs being installed are 150-watt equivalent LEDs—more energy efficient and two times brighter than the archaic high-pressure sodium bulbs they replace.
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