Huntsville, Alabama, at the southern end of the Tennessee Valley, has a long history of industry and commerce. During the town’s first century, it grew steadily as a major center for cotton growing, cotton gins and railroading. All that changed when at the dawn of the space age, Huntsville became the home of American rocket science.  In 1960, President Eisenhower dedicated the NASA Space and Rocket Center, and to this day Huntsville is known as “Rocket City USA.” The Space Center, among its other accomplishments, developed the Saturn rocket that flew on the Apollo missions, and later opened a Space Museum and the famous Space Camp for kids.  Huntsville has more engineers per capita than any city in the USA, so it should come as no surprise that this booming technology town of 298,000 takes pride in a progressive approach to public services.  Huntsville Utilities, publicly owned and non-profit, provides water, gas and electricity to the Huntsville metro area. Like most other utilities, Huntsville is constantly seeking ways to improve service and reduce costs, and it found a way to accomplish both with the EYE Ignitron High Pressure Sodium Lamps from EYE Lighting. 

“We take the lighting of our streets and roads very seriously… we try to keep every light burning,” declared Bobby Cooper, Operations Superintendent for Huntsville Utilities. “A few years ago we were having problems with bulb replacement and service call-backs.  It was an ongoing problem and was costing us a lot of money.”  “From the start, they were very interested in Ignitron’s unique, patented internal ignitor. It eliminates the need for an external ignitor inside the fixture, a part that has to be maintained frequently,” said Christine Thomas, EYE Lighting Utility Sales Manager. “It was clear Ignitron could save Huntsville money on labor, and the 30,000 hour lamp life helped their decision. And because Ignitron has a lead-free base and very low amounts of mercury (it meets EPA TCLP criteria as nonhazardous waste), Ignitron helps them meet their sustainability goals.”

After some initial field testing, Huntsville began to install EYE Ignitron lamps to replace old HPS technology in its 35,000 fixtures.  The primary corridor into town, Interstate 565 which runs by the Space Center, was the first to become 100% Ignitron. “There’s no lamp that could have performed better, it’s a top product,” declared Jamie Patterson, Distribution Engineer for Huntsville Utilities.  “Our budgets are being squeezed like everyone else, but we would never take a step back when it comes to performance. We never hear any complaints about the quality of our interstate lighting, so we’re very satisfied with Ignitron from EYE.”

Huntsville is so committed to EYE Ignitron that it now orders new street lighting fixtures without a pre-installed ignitor. This also has increased their savings according to Patterson. “Our crews report that maintaining lamps and fixtures is easier, and new installations go much more quickly.” Prior to EYE Ignitron, dark pole maintenance averaged 250 every two weeks. Now it’s down to about one per day - a 94% reduction!

EYE Ignitron is now used exclusively for the Huntsville system’s 168,000 customers, including general roadway lighting, security lighting and subdivision lighting. “It’s hard to measure maintenance and new installation savings because of our growth,” declared Cooper, “but I believe it is more than 10% overall. And since we get such responsive service from EYE - including working together on product improvements - we remain very pleased with our decision to standardize on EYE Ignitron for Huntsville streets and roads.”