One of the collaborative SmartPGH projects that the City of Pittsburgh and the SmartPGH Consortium members took on with partners DLC, the state DOT and Carnegie Mellon was a roughly $12.4 million contract to convert some 36,365 streetlights to LED technology.

“These types of partnership conversations are the result of us setting the collaboration table and bringing everyone to it,” Ervin explained.

In addition to providing substantial energy savings of 60 percent (or about $650,000 a year), the streetlights LED conversion project also will provide a platform to support other SmartPGH initiatives.