Sunnyvale benefits from over 9,000 street lights illuminating our streets after dark. Street lights vary from the 70-watt residential lights, to the 200-watt arterial lamps, and even special period-style lamps in the downtown area. Sunnyvale uses high-pressure sodium lamps, requiring half of the power of the once-standard mercury vapor lamps. Maintenance of the street lights is performed by the Field Services Division of Public Works.

Field Services workers perform periodic night time surveys on the city’s major streets, inspecting and repairing any street light outages. In neighborhood streets and between arterial surveys the city relies on residents, calling or e-mailing, to report street light outages. City street lights reported to be out are usually repaired within one business day.

About 10 percentof street lights in Sunnyvale are owned and maintained by PG&E. These are usually identified as streets lights mounted on wooden poles. PG&E also supplies power via an “overhead feed” power line that drops into the top of some of the city owned street lights. If these lights fail, or if the outage in a city light is due to a PG&E power problem, then correction of the problem may take longer than one business day. The City is not authorized to make repairs to the PG&E supply lines that provide electricity to city owned street lights. Staff reports these issues to PG&E and periodically performs follow up until the repair is completed by PG&E.

All street light outages can be reported to the Field Services Division at (408) 730-7510.

Traffic signals, safety street lights mounted above the signal lights, and Illuminated street name signs can be referred to the Transportation and Traffic Division at (408) 730-7415.