Partially turning off the street lamps was not enough: instead of dropping the electricity bill, it increased by three thousand euros. And in the face of this dramatic race, Limana has decided a further crackdown: other street lamps will be turned off and in Sampoi, where the plant is old and wastes energy by burning burst light bulbs, the public lighting will be turned off completely.
The announcement of the crackdown comes from the municipality of Limana itself: the forecasts of higher expenditure for electricity and heating amount to over 170 thousand euros for the last quarter. Sums that are not there. For elementary and middle schools, the expected cost of electricity and gas is 76,500 euros; over 14 thousand euros of expenditure are foreseen to illuminate and heat the library, while the Palimana, in the month of December alone, could cost 30 thousand euros. If in 2021, finally, 5,700 euros were enough to heat the town hall, this year, according to forecasts, 24,000 will not be enough.
“So we must run for cover,” say the administration led by Milena De Zanet. «From next week it will be necessary to further limit public lighting. Despite having almost halved consumption (from 98 thousand kWh to 54 thousand kWh) in the period April-August with the shutdown of about half of the light points in the area, however the bill has grown from 23,700 to 26,700 euros: an increase of 3,000 euro concentrated almost entirely on August ».
“Therefore, street lamps will be turned off again and timers installed where possible so that the lamps that remain on will go out from 11 pm onwards”, say the Municipality. “In the morning, only those on the access roads to the industrial areas and those on the main street in the center will be rekindled.”
The mayor Milena De Zanet
In Sampoi the situation is even more critical: “old cable ducts and obsolete lamps are already dispersing over 1,000 kWh of energy per month and continuous breakdowns, on which municipal workers and external companies have intervened in vain throughout the summer, have burned in a few weeks dozens of lamps leaving only a handful active. The slightest benefit that derives from this does not justify such a waste ».
“We apologize to the citizens for the inconvenience they will suffer,” says Mayor De Zanet, “but failing to resolve the faults, there is no other choice but to deactivate all the lines and thus turn off all the street lamps”.
The tender for the assignment of the management of the public lighting network to an external company is in any case at the final stages and this will allow to modernize the systems and solve the problems encountered so far.
Energy saving measures will also be carried out shortly on heating systems to achieve savings of up to 25% on consumption. This, before the surge in prices, would have allowed the municipality to reduce the average annual expenditure from 81 thousand euros to around 61 thousand. However, the expensive bills will cancel out the savings. The Municipality foresees that it will also be necessary to contain the consumption of sports facilities as much as possible, in collaboration with the companies that have been informed by the administration of the difficulties.
“We will have to take measures that are as drastic as they are necessary,” says De Zanet. «The primary goal is to safeguard the well-being of children in schools, so we will cut elsewhere first. We realize that a complex autumn and winter await us, so we ask for the understanding and collaboration of citizens to overcome it ».