Nov. 8--Five years ago, the city of Ann Arbor, Mich., embarked on a path not taken by many other communities -- the conversion of all 1,000 downtown lights to LED.

And the success of that project has some wondering if Oklahoma City shouldn't pursue a similar path as it begins a $115 million makeover of downtown that will include the replacement of 880 city streetlights.

By all accounts, LED, or light-emitting diodes, continue to be an emerging technology. Only a $630,000 grant made it possible for Ann Arbor to buy the expensive fixtures, but with that initial investment came an estimated energy savings of $100,000 a year. It's a project that began with 25 globe lights retrofitted with LED in 2006.

"The first block was well received," said Andrew Brix, Ann Arbor's manager of energy programs. "In 2007 we started replacing all 1,000. We've done about 700, and we haven't performed any maintenance on any of them, including the original block."

Ann Arbor is seeing reduced maintenance costs, Brix said, and has cut the city's energy bill in half.

Even as its sister city Tulsa considers letting some streets go dark to save money, Oklahoma City officials are uncertain whether to follow Ann Arbor's lead. They were unaware of the LED lighting pursued by Ann Arbor and other cities before such efforts were first mentioned at a planning meeting Wednesday by local architect Rand Elliott.

Elliott is urging Oklahoma City to look at the LED City program -- an alliance of cities like Ann Arbor and LED manufacturers and vendors led by Durham, N.C.-based Cree Inc.

"Before you make sweeping changes in Oklahoma City, we need to make sure the research proves it's a good solution aesthetically, economically and functionally," Elliott said. "The Cree program has monitored 11 cities in doing these LED lights. They have experience with it, so let's contact them on how it might apply to Oklahoma City."

Assistant City Engineer Laura Story, tasked with overseeing the streetscape program, isn't arguing against the adaptation of LED streetlighting. But citing consultants' concerns about shaky standards and a lack of warrantees, she questions whether the time is right to pursue the technology.

"The point of the downtown streetscape is not to invent a new technology, it's to revamp our streetscapes," Story said. "We don't want to mislead people and say we're into this. As soon as we do it wrong, we're worse than not trying it."

A test not feasible? Oklahoma City also may not be in the position of doing a one-year test of a single block.