The city of Moline is trying to find ways to cut into their $2-million dollar budget deficit. And the public works department had a bright idea. They will try a new way to save energy and money. The plan is to see how much the city can save by using LED lights.

A few years ago the public works department put the energy saving lights in all traffic signals and it saved a bunch of money. "Approximately a 150-thousand dollars a year on just traffic signals alone," says Mayor Don Welvaert, Moline, Il.

With so much money being saved city council decided to green light using more LED's. They'll do an experiment where the energy saving lights will replace burned out high pressure sodium ones used to brighten up streets. "They can save between 50 to 70-percent of the energy savings over a high pressure sodium light, again depending on the public utility and where you're at throughout the country," adds Welvaert.

2 intersections will be used as test models, to determine if the savings are worth using LED's in all street lights. "We'll be able to monitor the performance of those lights and hopefully in the future be able to cut our energy costs significantly."

To pay for the project, the city is turing all this scrap metal from old lights into cash. "The old streets light from the avenue of the cities are no longer of use to the city, so we are going to scrap those out."

The money made will pay for the entire experiment. Which is a huge help in these tight times. "We're always looking for ways we can gain efficiencies in operating the city and again this is one of those thing's that's environmentally friendly."

The LED street light test will last about a year. Then the city will determine if they want to replace all the current lights.