Northern Illinois is brighter today, as ComEd has completed the installation and upgrade of all 131,600 ComEd-owned streetlights to Smart LED light fixtures. In addition to enhancing public safety as a result of clearer, brighter and more reliable light, the switch will save more than 79 gigawatt-hours of energy annually, the equivalent of removing more than 67 million pounds of carbon emissions from the atmosphere or planting 37,250 acres of trees. The Smart LED Streetlight upgrade program has been a five-year endeavor to upgrade ComEd-owned streetlights in 575 communities across northern Illinois. Part of ComEd’s award-winning Energy Efficiency program, the streetlight upgrade will improve the reliability and performance of the light fixtures, with new LED bulbs consuming one-third of the electricity and lasting 2-3 times longer than the previous high-pressure sodium or metal halide lights, while providing higher performance at lower operational cost. This $75 million Smart LED Streetlight investment by ComEd will lead to $2.6 million in annual operational savings for the electric company. ComEd’s Smart LED Streetlights allow the utility to proactively monitor equipment to address outages or other issues in real time using ComEd’s AMI mesh network.