This year, the City Council will invest 1.7 million euros in an ambitious plan to provide lighting for areas in the suburbs and the coastal corridor.

Three works will be carried out before the end of 2024 and will be completed in 2025 with new interventions. The first actions planned for Ecuador Street and Camino Montesol are already in the bidding phase.

The Estepona City Council has designed a special lighting plan for areas of the suburbs and the coastal corridor, which will be implemented in two years, and in which more than 1.7 million euros will be invested in this first year of 2024. This is an ambitious intervention program that aims to provide these areas with lighting in a way that prioritizes energy efficiency, so it has opted for both solar streetlights and LED type luminaires.

The first phase of the plan, which will be implemented before the end of 2024, comprises three actions. The first of these is already in the bidding phase and affects both Camino de Montesol (uphill from Padrón) and Calle Ecuador (Valle Romano). The tender for the supply and installation of solar street lights at these points has a base bidding budget of 250,628 euros (VAT included). The execution period, from the signing of the contract, has been set at two and a half months.

Public lighting represents an important fraction of the electricity consumption of public entities, hence the need to increase energy efficiency in this area in order to reduce the demand for electricity. With this in mind, the City Council has proposed the implementation of autonomous solar streetlights as a solution to lighting access roads to housing developments and sections of the coastal path that currently do not have this service. These luminaires, which incorporate photovoltaic technology, will considerably reduce energy demand and, therefore, electricity billing costs.

In this sense, the second action program for this year will focus on sections of the coastal path, where new lighting will be installed. It is planned to install 520 streetlights in 15 areas of the coastal corridor. The planned investment in this intervention is 738,636 euros. The most suitable response from a technical point of view in these areas is the installation of fiberglass-reinforced polyester columns, given their special characteristics to withstand saline environments.

A third action included for this year in the new lighting plan of the Estepona City Council will affect the access roads to the city and urbanizations that currently have no lighting. These are roads with access from the A-7 highway that serve as entrances to different urbanizations. The investment for this intervention amounts to 751,363 euros, and the installation of 565 streetlights is planned.

The works foreseen in actions two and three of the plan are in the phase of preparation of the documentation for the next bidding process. Each of them will have an execution period of three months from the date of award.

At the same time, the City Council is already working on the actions to be included in the lighting plan for next year 2025, which are in the study phase.