Early street lights in New Zealand were first installed in major cities in the 1860s with Christchurch recording having 152 gas lamps throughout the city.[1]
In 1888, Reefton (population about 2,000)[2] became the first place in New Zealand to light its streets and buildings with electric lights.[3]Reefton Power Station has been listed as a Historic Place Category 2 by Heritage New Zealand.[4]
Approximate position of electric street lamps in Wellington, 1890.
Wellington introduced electric street lighting in 1889, becoming the first city in New Zealand to do so, and possibly the first city in the Southern Hemisphere to have electric street lighting. Water-driven generating stations were built in Panama Street and Manners Street to power 500 incandescent lamps installed around the city.[5] A lamp post commemorating the introduction of electric lighting to the city stands at the intersection of Featherston Street and Lambton Quay.[6]
New Zealand, like much of the industrialised world, has been expanding the installation of LED lights, and has seen large savings.[7][8][9][10]
In 2017–2018, 17,000 new LED street lamps were installed in Wellington.[11][12] Reasons for the change were given as lower maintenance costs and longer lifespan, reduction of 80% in energy use, better colour differentiation and visibility, and the ability to dim or brighten lights remotely as needed.[11] By 2019, Wellington City Council realised it had a problem: adaptors on the lamps were failing and causing lamps to droop or fall to the ground.[13] The adaptors, which were not supplied, recommended or approved by the lamp manufacturer,[14] allowed the angle of the lamps to be adjusted to reduce glare onto people's homes. They had been stress-tested under static conditions and should have been able to hold 60kg (130lb). However the adaptors had not been tested in vibrating conditions to imitate the effect of Wellington's sometimes strong winds. By April 2023, Wellington City Council admitted that 17 of the 11kg (24lb) lamps had fallen off their poles, and at least 161 were drooping. All 17,000 lamps needed to be checked and have the faulty adaptors replaced.[13] All of the adaptors were removed by February 2024 at a cost of about $6 million.[15][16]
Environmental concerns
In modern times communities in New Zealand have turned their street lights off for multiple reasons including to save energy, reduce light pollution and help protect local wildlife.[17][18]
For example, in 2003 Dunedin City Council decided to turn street lights off 15 minutes earlier in the morning and turn them on 15 minutes later in the evening, in an effort to save power.[19]
Light pollution from street lights, signs and other sources is an increasing problem around the world. DarkSky International recommends that street lights should be 3,000K (kelvin) or less, but at least 77 per cent of street lighting in New Zealand is cool, blue-white LEDs with a colour temperature of 4,000K. Conversion to LED lighting was funded by the NZ Transport Association and 4,000K became the norm.[20] Researchers from the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology found that light pollution in New Zealand increased by 37.4 per cent from 2012 to 2021.[20] A number of places in New Zealand have made efforts to reduce light pollution and have chosen lighting between 3000K and 2200K LED.[20]
The Westland petrel is a migratory bird which arrives each March from South America to breed along an 8km (5.0mi) stretch of coastal forest near Punakaiki, a village on the West Coast. Fledging petrels sometimes dive onto the road, attracted by street lights. Local people believed that the problem got worse after blue-white LED lights were installed in 2019, since the birds mistake the blue lights for bioluminescent fish. In 2020 NZ Transport Authority agreed to turn off 15 streetlights along a 3.4 km stretch of State Highway 6 during the fledging season, which appeared to reduce the number of birds injured by crashing on to the road.[26][27]
In 2023, NIWA announced the results of a four-year project to determine whether LED lighting affected flying freshwater insects. Researchers found that streetlight intensity and colour spectrum influenced insect attraction to the lights. Many flying insect species "were more attracted to blue-white LEDs that emitted more blue light (a higher colour temperature), or to those that emitted no blue light (yellow LED), than the commonly installed [dimmer] 4,000K LED streetlights". Researchers were surprised that "conversion from HPS [high-pressure sodium] streetlights to 4,000K LED generally reduced insect attraction".[28] In another study, bat scientists experimented with 4,000K LED floodlights illuminating trees and discovered that local critically endangered long-tailed bats avoided the area when lit. Popular theory says that night-time light attracts insects, which attract bats, but as the NIWA study showed, insects were not particularly attracted to this type of light.[20]
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