The city of Los Angeles is fighting copper wire streetlight vandalism with solar-powered streetlights that are not tied to the grid. This upgrade could save Los Angeles and other similar cities millions of dollars in streetlight repairs while significantly reducing carbon pollution, Canary Media reported.
About 27,000 miles of copper electrical wiring tie Los Angeles' more than 200,000 streetlights to the electrical grid, according to the L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting. For opportunistic, electrical-minded individuals, this represents a massive cash-grab opportunity that has required countless repairs by the city.
A single streetlight repair involving copper wire theft costs the city between $750 and $1,500 to fix, according to Miguel Sangalang, executive director of the L.A. Bureau of Street Lighting, according to Canary Media. Since 2020, Los Angeles has already spent $100 million repairing streetlights damaged by copper wire thefts.
Unfortunately, streetlight vandalism isn't unique to Los Angeles.
In July alone, San Jose had about 1,000 streetlights damaged from copper electrical wire theft. Clark County in Nevada spent over $1.5 million on streetlight theft repairs over two years. St. Paul, Minnesota, spent over $2 million in 2024 to address streetlight vandalism.
Cities are fed up with fixing the streetlights, only to have thieves attack days later.
The new solar-powered streetlights that Los Angeles is gradually rolling out will reduce copper wire theft and the necessary repairs to fix streetlights after they've been tampered with.
Running on solar power, these streetlights will not be tied to the electrical grid and thus, will not have wiring components for thieves to steal. In addition, these solar-powered streetlights will help reduce energy consumption as they no longer pull from the electrical grid, which will significantly reduce the city's heat-trapping gas pollution.
In emergency situations, like blackouts, these lights will remain functioning, keeping the city lit and safe.
Solar and battery storage systems have also eased the strain on regional power grids in New England during extreme summer heat, when residents' air conditioning use drove up energy demands.
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Los Angeles doesn't plan to immediately replace all 220,000 streetlights at once. Instead, the city is currently focusing on high-theft areas, with about 1,100 of these new streetlights installed so far. The city plans to install another 400 of these lights this fiscal year.
"It's been tremendously successful," Sangalang says of the city's new solar streetlights, according to Canary Media. "We see ourselves going into it much harder and much faster in the near future."
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