Dubbo will soon be a beacon in the night when Essential Energy takes on the massive task of renewing every single globe in the city's street lights and cleaning them.
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About 5000 street lights maintained by the electricity company in the Dubbo City Council boundary will undergo an annual check to try and ensure all are working correctly.
The job is a time consuming one and once it gets under way later this month, is expected to take at least three weeks.
Essential Energy has been forced to defend its maintenance standards in Dubbo this year after coming under fire from Dubbo City Council. In August councillor Allan Smith voiced his concern about the number of lights that were faulty and in October it was claimed one in six lights were not working properly.
However Essential Energy's regional manager Ben Williams said the company worked hard to keep all lights functioning and responded quicker than they were required.
"The average time taken to repair a reported faulty streetlight in Essential Energy's network area is 3.2 days - well within the eight-day requirement of the NSW Public Lighting Code," he said.
This week a concerned Clews Street resident contacted the Daily Liberal and said several street lights in Clews Street and McKay Street had been out for a week.
However Mr Williams said just seven streetlights in Dubbo were known to be operating incorrectly and none of those were in Clew Street or McKay Street. He said there had been no reports from residents in the area.
"Essential Energy crews continue to work through the Christmas-New Year period and hope to have the seven reported streetlights repaired today [Wednesday]," he said.
"To ensure streetlights faults are fixed as quickly as possible, residents are encouraged to report them by calling 13 23 91 or by visiting www.essentialenergy.com.au. Reports can also be made using the NeatStreets application which is available for Android, Apple and Windows phones."
As well as the annual replacement, the company also checks all of the lights in July but for the remainder of the year it also encourages residents to report faulty lights.
Statewide, Essential Energy is responsible for 145,000 street lights across 100 councils.
