Toshiba International Corporation announced its collaboration with the City of Stratford, Ontario, to initiate a pilot project to evaluate replacing existing streetlights (potentially as many as 4,000 units) with energy-efficient Toshiba LED fixtures and assist with the City's smart community initiatives. This public-private collaboration helped earn Stratford the title of "Top Seven Intelligent Community for 2012" by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) a New York-based think tank dedicated to studying the use of information and communications technology to create the community of the 21st Century. Stratford shares the kudos with communities having populations and economies many times its size: Austin, Texas; Oulu, Finland; Quebec City, Quebec; Riverside, California; Saint John, New Brunswick and Taichung City, Taiwan. All seven communities were feted last week at ICF's annual "Building The Broadband Economy" summit conference in New York City. The goal of the awards program is to increase awareness of the role that broadband communications and information access technologies play in shaping the economic and social development of communities worldwide. "We celebrate this win with Mayor Dan Mathieson and other community and business leaders of Stratford and applaud them for having the vision and courage to take on innovative endeavors such as this. We look forward to the solutions we create together that can serve as a model for other communities throughout North America," said Ken Honeycutt, Senior Vice President at Toshiba International Corporation and the Chief Venture Executive for Toshiba LED Lighting Systems Division. The pilot project also involves TIC working with the City to test communications-enabled fixtures that tie into the City's Smart Grid network. TIC recognized the benefits of piloting this technology in the small, but highly innovative, city after visiting Stratford and meeting with the Mayor and other community and business leaders. "Our relationship with the City of Stratford is a step forward in realizing our vision, as we work together to develop integrated solutions that save energy, reduce carbon, lower costs and realize the greatest flexibility in lighting systems for municipalities and DOTs across North America," added Honeycutt. Toshiba's LED roadway and area lighting fixtures are a direct replacement for conventional high intensity discharge (HID) lighting, such as high-pressure sodium or metal halide, which requires frequent maintenance and high-energy consumption. In contrast, Toshiba's LED fixtures have a rated life of 60,000 hours or 12 to 14 years - six times as long as metal-halide and twice as long as high-pressure sodium products. As a result, LED lighting provides one of the lowest life cycle costs of any lighting technology. As a result of installing the innovative fixtures, Stratford stands to save up to 30% in energy consumption for street lighting, as compared to their currently installed conventional HID luminaires. With a 120-year lighting heritage in Japan, Toshiba Corporation is one of the largest lighting companies and LED lamp manufacturers in the world and is focused on developing innovative lighting solutions that capitalize on the possibilities that LED technology provides. www.toshiba.com/ind
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