The River Walk, considered to be the wealth of San Antonio and one of Texas' fascinations, would be radiant this festive season with over 1.76 million colorful light-emitting diode (LED) lights draping the trees and marking the street bridges in the river banks.
This energy-efficient lighting, besides attracting the tourists along the River Walk, adds up 20 times more lights to the region, consuming a reduced amount of energy nearly half of conventional incandescent lighting aiding prolonged sustainability.
Energy efficient LED lighting illuminates San Antonio's River Walk this Holiday Season. (Credit: City of San Antonio, Darren Abate)
In the beginning of this year, the City of San Antonio changed about 85,000 incandescent lights to 100% LED lights in view of the current River Walk Holiday Lights festivity. By employing over 1.76 million LED mini-bulbs almost 33,000 kWh of energy can be conserved. This lighting is long-lasting and has a life time of about 10 years, compared to that of incandescent bulbs which needed annual substitution.
Besides using minibulbs, the environment-friendly lights give a mixture of colorful festive lighting effect on the entire 22 street bridges at the River Walk. The lights would adorn almost 170 trees of 60 feet height, which line the river. To improve the festive mood, 26 iconic trees will have the up-lighting feature.
The improved LED lighting plan is similar to Mayor Julian Castro's inaugural Light Up Downtown Holiday Lighting Contest, which displays artistic holiday LED lightings at the street level. Both these initiatives are aimed at attracting visitors to downtown San Antonio this festive season and also at promoting sustainable lighting.