Driving You Crazy: Why has the City of Aurora not upgraded its old sodium streetlights to LED?

AURORA, Colo. — Ethan from Arapahoe County writes, “What's driving you crazy? Why has the city of Aurora not upgraded its old sodium streetlights to LED? Most cities surrounding Aurora have but the city still has its mismatched, broken, and dim streetlights. This would directly help so many of the safety issues we see on Aurora roads. It's almost 2026 and Aurora still has no plan to get this done to save money and have safer streets! What’s going on??”

When driving around Aurora you might assume the street lights are all owned and maintained by the city. That is not the case. Nearly all of the older streetlights across Aurora installed before 2018 are owned and maintained by Xcel Energy. Xcel then charges the city a monthly fee to operate and maintain each and every streetlight. I have been told that Aurora pays Xcel close to $20 per month for each of the just over 20,000 streetlights they own around Aurora. At those numbers, that comes out to about $400,000 per month paid to Xcel for streetlight operations. I reached out to Xcel asking for the exact fee amount they charge Aurora. They refused to provide that specific information, telling me they cannot share customer billing information.

For years, city leaders have been looking for ways to reduce the annual streetlight power bill. City council has been working on and off for at least 20 years to purchase the streetlights from Xcel. The Aurora Sentinel reported in January 2017 that city council started looking at this issue 10 years earlier before they voted 8-1 to approve an ordinance granting the city the right to purchase all streetlights within one year if the city did not come to an agreement with Xcel before that. A deal was never reached.

I reached out to several members of the Aurora City Council to answer my questions about why it has been so tough for the city to decouple their streetlights from Xcel. Ward 1 Aurora City Council member Gianina Horton told me she is interested in looking into the possibility of purchasing city streetlights from Xcel because she said there are some very old streetlights all over Ward 1 that are not well maintained. Horton shared a story with me from when she was running for the Ward 1 seat on city council. She says a resident asked her why the city hasn’t purchased the streetlights from Xcel.

“I totally forgot about that idea until you called me about this," Horton said. "I think this is an opportunity for the current city council and city leadership to revisit and reexamine our relationship with Xcel.”

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Horton, who is also the chair person for City Council’s Transportation, Airports and Public Works committee, told me she is still learning about how the streetlight contract works with the city and Xcel.

“I don’t yet have the depth of information to have an informed opinion but says this is an opportunity for the city to work with Xcel to identify areas where there can be improvement,” Horton said.

Dave Zelenok, a licensed civil engineer and former Public Works Director in Colorado has worked with cities trying to understand the procedures they can take to buy back streetlights from Xcel. He told me because of the large amounts of money involved, Xcel has no incentive to sell off streetlights they currently operate. “Xcel has the most to lose by far. They’ve been charging almost $20 per light per month and providing maybe $4 in power per streetlight. With an LED conversion, maybe $2 per light per month. Worse yet, when a pole gets knocked down, the city pays to replace it then pays (a second time) Xcel to, well, keep raking in millions. Crazy.”

Xcel Energy confirmed to me that Aurora has expressed an interest in potentially purchasing the streetlights and that they are open to continuing conversations with the city on either a purchase or renewing their purchase agreement and converting all of the older style high-pressure sodium vapor lights to more energy efficient and longer lasting LED streetlights through their LED Street Lighting Conversion Program.

“Municipal customers could see energy savings of about 50% by converting to LED lights,” says Sydney Isenberg, Xcel Energy Media Relations Representative. “We offer two options to customers who wish to participate. Option A offers no upfront cost, as the conversion costs are embedded into the monthly rate. Customers must elect to change at least 90% of their lights to be eligible for this option. Under Option B, customers would pay all upfront costs for labor, material and any other changes. The customer can choose which lights they want to convert and would see a lower monthly rate compared to Option A. Most of our customers opt for Option A.”

While the city hasn’t yet agreed to this offer, almost three years ago, the City of Aurora and Xcel Energy agreed to switch to LED outdoor lighting in public alleyways in northwest Aurora. Xcel said the project would upgrade and replace roughly 800 alley lights with more reliable, longer-lasting, sustainable lighting that is brighter, improving visibility for increased safety.

Aurora is not the only metro area city moving to take ownership of street lights away from Xcel. In October, 2024 the small northern metro area town of Erie purchased their streetlights from Xcel. During the public meeting where the proposal was presented to Erie City Council, Sustainability Manager Eryka Thorley showed what the total energy use was (444,721 kWh) as well as the total cost for that usage ($134,334) of all their streetlights at that time. Those numbers equate to a rate of about 30 cents per kilowatt hour paid to Xcel for electricity and maintenance of the streetlights.

Thorley said if instead the town owned the streetlights, converted them to LED and used United Power as their electricity provider, the total kilowatt hour use would drop to 202,520 kWh at a cost of just $12,022. When adding in $24,096 for the estimated cost of city maintenance, that would drop the total kilowatt hour rate to just under 18 cents, a 60 percent savings from the Xcel rate.

During that same council meeting, former Erie Mayor Justin Brooks said, “We expend a lot of kilowatt hours to light these streetlights that also take a long time to get fixed when they do go out. From both an economic and sustainability standpoint, it just makes sense for us to get this done.”

Erie said the total cost for the purchase of the streetlights from Xcel was $827,426.

I asked Xcel why they think so many cities including Greenwood Village, Arvada, Littleton, Golden, Windsor, Boulder and Centennial have purchased streetlights from them. Isenberg told me, “We serve about 100 communities with their outdoor lighting needs, and less than 5% of our customers have purchased their streetlights. We will refer you to the municipalities for more information surrounding their decision.”

In March 2025, the City of Boulder announced they purchased over 4,400 streetlights from Xcel Energy and converted them to more efficient LEDs. The city reported that they will save an estimated $1 million per year in operational and maintenance costs instead of paying Xcel Energy for streetlight services and that city ownership of streetlights should pay for themselves within seven years.

The City of Centennial posted on their webpage that they are now responsible for maintaining streetlights previously owned by Xcel Energy within city boundaries and listed the benefits of city ownership as: Reduced utility rates, energy efficiency as they transitioned to LED lighting, proactive maintenance, improved community aesthetics and new revenue opportunities as the city can now generate additional revenue through small cell attachments, electrical vehicle station mounts and other technologies.

Aurora is also interested in tapping into those kinds of additional revenue streams as well. Newer technology streetlights are able to serve as multi-functional "smart poles" that support both telecommunications, like 5G antennas, as well as electric vehicle charging stations. A Penn State research team found that streetlights like this could double as affordable EV charging stations. After installing 23 of these smart poles in Kansas City, they discovered the new pole chargers were faster, cheaper, and more eco-friendly than traditional EV charging stations.

Horton told me she had a meeting scheduled with Aurora’s city manager to learn more about the streetlight contract but has not yet shared with me the outcome of that meeting. Whether or not Aurora decouples their streetlights from Xcel is still up in the air. Until city council either moves forward with a proposal to once and for all purchase the streetlights from Xcel or they decide to strike a new deal to convert to LED, expect the mishmash of streetlight types throughout the city to be in place for now.

Denver7 Traffic Expert Jayson Luber says he has been covering Denver-metro traffic since Ben-Hur was driving a chariot. (We believe the actual number is over 25 years.) He's obsessed with letting viewers know what's happening on their drive and the best way to avoid the problems that spring up. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or listen to his award winning Driving You Crazy podcast on any podcast app including iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Podbean, or YouTube.