MOUNT PLEASANT - Ruud Lighting is heralding the onset of LED streetlight production, and the City of Racine is the local company's first customer.

Ruud invited media in Tuesday as it celebrated the first light-emitting diode, or LED, streetlight fixtures to come off its assembly line.

After keeping the first fixture for Ruud's own company posterity, lights Nos. 2-21 were destined for the City of Racine. The city is buying them to replace existing streetlights scheduled for replacement.

Mayor Gary Becker was on hand Tuesday to see those first LED streetlights come off the line. He said Racine will soon have plenty of company as other cities start switching over to LED streetlights. LEDs use half the electricity of traditional alternatives and will last 20 years or more without maintenance.

"Other mayors," Becker said, "have nothing but questions - when will they be ready; when can we get this stuff?

"Mayors are leading the fight on climate change," he added.

Racine has already installed Ruud Lighting LED lights on one level of the Civic Centre parking structure, but these are the first LED streetlights available.

"It's more of a demonstration than a test; we know they work," Becker said about the current purchase. He said the city will include replacement LED streetlights in its capital improvement projects budget going forward.

Although each fixture now costs $150 to $400 more than traditional fixtures, their payback time in electricity savings can be as little as two years, Ruud officials say. Becker said the City of Racine spends more than $1 million a year on electricity just to run its streetlights.

After Racine gets its LED streetlights, Ruud will begin manufacturing the first 4,000 lights - and a total of 16,000 - for the city of Anchorage, Alaska, company founder and President Alan Ruud said Tuesday. Anchorage's mayor recently said the city will replace all of its roadway lights with LEDs.

Lighting revolution

Ruud said LED, invented in the late 1960s, was the first new lighting technology since the fluorescent, metal halide and high-pressure sodium lighting were all invented in the 1930s. But it took this long to get the LED ready for this use. Last August, it shipped its first LED products, but Tuesday marked the start of LED streetlights for Ruud.

Ruud said company representatives are talking to interested officials at cities representing millions of streetlights, not just in this country, but in Europe and Australia.

And he said the company just applied for its 100th LED lighting patent. For any other company to make headway against Ruud Lighting in LEDs, it would have to infringe on those patents, Ruud said.

The new LED fixtures were designed for ease of assembly, said Ruud's Russ Schultz, new products engineer.

"These are probably one of our easiest fixtures we have ever assembled here," he said.

"From now on we'll focus on LEDs - no more on old technology," Schultz said.

The new streetlights have another advantage, Becker noted: Unlike standard streetlights, which can be shot out with bullets, LED fixtures consist of many individual lenses. It's nearly impossible to do more than slightly dim one with bullets.

Ruud officials showed reporters how the company uses a combination of robotics and human labor to assemble the LED fixtures.

"We looked at the high-volume way to get this going - and this is it," said Christopher Ruud, a company executive vice president and son of Alan Ruud.

For LED lighting in general, he said, "Every month we almost double our sales levels."

Ruud Lighting is so far ahead of the competition on LED streetlights, Christopher Ruud said, that that can actually be an obstacle to a sale if a municipality is required to get bids from three different sellers.

"There aren't three companies in the market that can give you a comparable products right now."

Streetlight Installations

The City of Racine's first 20 LED streetlights, from Ruud Lighting, will be installed later this month at these locations:

* 21st Street and Tayor Avenue (four lights).

* Hayes Avenue from Washington to Wright avenues (six lights).

* Hayes Avenue parking lot (two lights).

* Spring Street from State Street to Root River bridge (two lights).

* South Memorial Drive from 16th to 18th streets (six lights).