How many people does it take to change a light in Halifax?

Halifax’s regional council is hunting for a consultant to advise the municipality on how to change about 41,000 street lights to LED technology.

It's a $30-million job that will take five years. The city said it plans to buy 28,000 LED, or light-emitting diode, lights owned by Nova Scotia Power.

The winning consultant will advise council on when to buy new lights, because prices are dropping.

“We need to basically tell them what we need and what our expectations are and what penalties there might be if we don’t meet those expectations,” said Angus Doyle, who co-ordinates utilities for the municipality.

“We need to identify how to put that out so that people can actually price it competitively and then we will decide if that is a reasonable approach or if we want to do it in-house as we do now.”

The new lights are expected to last about 20 years. They burn about 50 per cent less energy compared to traditional street lights and can alert a computer if they aren't working .

The call for bids is expected sometime next year .