DETROIT (WXYZ) — The city of Detroit's Public Lighting Authority filed a lawsuit on Tuesday claiming thousands of the city's LED streetlights are dimming ahead of life expectancy.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Michigan, is against Leotek Electornics USA Corp., which has manufactured about one-third of the city's LED streetlights.
According to the city, the 20,000 streetlights had a 10-year life expectancy but have started to dim prematurely, but they aren't going out.
The city claims that the issues are tied to a design flaw that doesn't allow for heat to dissipate when the light is shining. That heat, the city says, builds up and causes the lights to burn, crack, or become charred.
According to the city, the light will continue to illuminate for a while, but the quality will deteriorate, changing from white to yellow with a reduced beam and eventually fail.
The city said that Leotek had said there was a design flaw that resulted in "a higher number of reports of failures of this luminaire," and also said that the problems were for specific models.
According to the city, the Public Lighting Authority will begin replacing faulty bulbs right away instead of waiting for a settlement in the case. Instead, they are asking the company to pay for the cost and labor cost of buying and replacing the lights with non-Leotek ones.
“Detroit has come a long way in the last five years, when more than 40 percent of the city’s streetlights did not work and it could take years to get a broken light fixed,” said Beau Taylor, executive director of the PLA. “We quickly identified a problem, and we are getting out in front of it. And to honor our commitment to keeping Detroit’s streets properly lit, we are taking action now to remedy the situation.”
The city also said that it hasn't experienced problems with streetlights from other manufacturers, and that Detroit isn't the only city experiencing problems with Leotek lights.
The issue was found when the lighting authority received an "excessive number of calls" about malfunctioning lights, and during routine service, inspectors found unusual deterioration and burnout rates from the lights.
According to the city, there are Leotek lights throughout but a majority are on the city's west side.
We have reached out to Leotek for a statement and will update the story when we get it.
