A new forecast from international think tank Pike Research indicates that shipment rates for LED-based street lighting could exceed 17 million units by the year 2020 as LED lighting technology becomes more widespread.

According to the firm's research, the market for street lighting is transforming, with more local councils at home and authorities overseas prioritising a reduced electricity spend when renovating local areas. For that reason, energy-saving LED street lamps - which often light a wider area than traditional bulbs, and with a much reduced energy spend - are being favoured by a number of councils.

Current shipment rates of LED street lamps is around the three million mark worldwide - but Pike expects that number to rise to 17 million by 2020 as more councils adopt money-saving strategies and the market for street lamps starts to transform.

"LED lamps allow for better dimming control than standard street lights, and their electronics allow for easy integration of control nodes," said senior Pike Research analyst. Eric Woods.

"Rising sales of LED lamps will therefore drive up the adoption of smart street lighting systems, which promise to bring new levels of control and efficiency to the illumination of our cities, communities, highways and public spaces."

As the SmartPlanet blog reports, very few LED street lighting schemes have made it past the pilot phase so far, due to the increased short-term cost to install.

However, the long term benefits and low failure rates of such programmes - as well as the increased ability of LED light bulbs to work with smart lighting systems to shut off or dim lighting on roads and highways during low traffic periods - is encouraging more councils to invest.

Sheffield City Council is a prime example, after announcing earlier this year plans to introduce 58,000 new LED street lamps to areas in the city. The Sandwell area will be one of the first to receive the new technology, and it's expected that the switch will reduce the annual electricity expenditure on street lights from £3 million to £1.2 million a year.