The street lighting has been completely replaced in all 26 settlements and the Mariyno, Vulkan and Chernokonevo districts in the Dimitrovgrad municipality. The results of the activities were reported today by the mayor of the municipality Ivo Dimov, the project manager Eng. Klavdiya Toncheva and the team under the project "Construction of a system for outdoor artificial lighting (street lighting) in the settlements of the Dimitrovgrad municipality and the Mariyno, Vulkan and Chernokonevo districts". The project was implemented under the National Recovery and Sustainability Plan within the priority axes Low Carbon Economy under the procedure "Support for energy-efficient street lighting systems - call 1", BG-RRP-4.025. The total cost of the project is 1 076 364.10 BGN, 100% grant aid.

"The project covered all 26 settlements in the Dimitrovgrad municipality, namely: the town of Merichleri and the villages: Bodrovo; Brod; Bryast; Velikan; Voden; Varbitsa; Golyamo Asenovo; Gorski izvor; Dlagnevo; Dobrich; Dolno Belevo; Zdravets; Zlato pole; Kasnakovo; Krepost; Krum; Malko Asenovo; Radievo; Raynovo; Svetlina; Skobelevo; Stalevo; Stransko; Chernogorovo; Yabalkovo, as well as the three city districts: Mariyno, Vulkan and Chernokonevo. With the implementation of the project, we built modern outdoor artificial lighting on the territory of the settlements in the Dimitrovgrad municipality, which achieved: energy savings, greater reliability and quality of lighting, reduced costs for maintenance and use of specialized equipment, reduced greenhouse emissions (CO2), significantly higher system reliability, reduced losses, reduced accident rates and maintenance costs - including labor costs, materials, damage detection, overtime, transportation costs. The activities carried out under the project were many and extensive: 5865 pcs old lighting fixtures were replaced with new LED lighting fixtures. An implementation of energy efficiency measures in the outdoor artificial lighting system in the municipality of Dimitrovgrad was built, by replacing the existing street lamps with new energy-efficient LED lamps. Three types of LED lamp powers were implemented: 30 W, 23W, and 16 W. In the reconstruction of the existing lighting, the available poles were used by replacing the old lighting fixtures with new ones. 93 pcs old boards were replaced with new ones with an implemented street lighting management system with remote monitoring and control. The automatic switching on and off of the outdoor artificial lighting system will be implemented by introducing a centralized control system. This system allows for special management of the outdoor artificial lighting system in extreme situations. A report has been prepared to assess the results of the implementation of energy efficiency measures. The data from the report indicate the following values ​​- before and after the project activities:

The goals achieved after the implementation of the project are the modernization of the Municipality's outdoor artificial lighting system in accordance with modern European requirements and new achievements in lighting technology; the quality of the outdoor artificial lighting system has improved; the energy efficiency of the system has increased and the consumption of electricity has been reduced; conditions have been created for the safe movement of motor vehicles and a safe and peaceful atmosphere for pedestrians in the evening and at night; the new street lighting also achieves environmental protection by reducing the emission of gases accompanying the production of electricity; as well as improving the night view of the municipality and increasing the visual comfort of the city and villages. The detailed information was reported by the project manager, Eng. Klavdiya Toncheva, at the press conference.

Thanking the team for the work done, the mayor of the municipality emphasized that the settlements in the municipality now have modern and energy-saving lighting. "The project was an exceptional challenge to work on. Our municipality is one of the first to complete all activities to replace street lighting, which I hope will also affect the lives of people in the settlements. In recent years, there has been a trend towards buying houses in the villages and we asked the mayors in the villages to submit information about places where there is a need for additional lamps on the end streets. Now the municipality is about to make a phased replacement of the cables to meet modern standards. Starting next month, we will be able to make a real comparison with the previous period of last year of the costs of electricity," said Mayor Ivo Dimov at the press conference.

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Project No BG-RRP-4.025-0038 "Construction of an outdoor artificial lighting system (street lighting) in the settlements of Dimitrovgrad Municipality and the districts of Mariyno, Vulkan and Chernokonevo", Financing Agreement No ME-C4.I3-34/30.08.2023, procedure BG-RRP-4.025 "Support for energy-efficient street lighting systems - call 1", priority axis "Low-carbon economy", National Recovery and Sustainability Plan of the Republic of Bulgaria