The MGM Grand's famous green exterior once relied on more than 500 light fixtures to keep the Strip glowing. Today it runs on just 151, thanks to a Las Vegas-based company called LED Connection, which has spent recent years quietly re-engineering the lighting behind some of the city's most recognizable properties.
According to KTNV, LED Connection is co-owned by Theresa Fette, an attorney and serial entrepreneur who has built and sold several companies before this one, and David X. Williams, who brings a background in construction. Williams told the station that the MGM Grand project used 151 fixtures instead of more than 500, a swap that cut power use by about 73 percent. The station reports that the manufacturer of the original signature green lights had stopped making them, and other companies had failed to find an LED solution before LED Connection took on the job.
From Green Glow to Gold Neon
The MGM Grand project is only one piece of the company's Strip footprint. LED Connection also completed the runner beams for the Luxor Pyramid and replaced gold neon with LED technology at Mandalay Bay and the W, formerly known as the Delano, per the KTNV report. The Mandalay Bay and W exteriors can now display changing colors, patterns, and even moving words, and the Mandalay Bay project alone required almost a million feet of cabling.
Williams also worked on casino floors, interior lighting, wash lights, and the Mandalay Bay convention center, the station notes. He said he learned about LED technology and engineering along the way and traveled to China and other countries to meet with factories as the company built out its supply chain. Fette told KTNV that she and Williams own LED Connection by themselves, and other MGM projects beyond the Grand have produced energy cost reductions between 50 and 80 percent.
A Purple Glow in Atlantic City and Beyond
LED Connection's reach extends past the Strip and past MGM. The company completed a hotel project at the Borgata property in Atlantic City a couple of weeks before the KTNV report published, giving the casino's exterior a purple LED neon look the company calls LED Neon. The firm has also worked with Walmart and completed Kroger parking-lot lighting projects across the country, and it says it has completed projects in every state.
That kind of scale mirrors what's happening at the corporate level for some of LED Connection's biggest hospitality clients. MGM Resorts has replaced more than 1.4 million light fixtures with LED technology across its properties, part of an effort that helped the company achieve a 41 percent reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions between 2019 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. MGM participates in the Department's Better Buildings Challenge, with a goal of cutting energy intensity 30 percent by 2030.
Why the Timing Matters for Strip Resorts
The push toward efficient lighting isn't happening in a vacuum. Nevada Senate Bill 358, enacted in 2019, requires electric service providers in the state to source at least 50 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources by 2030, with a longer-term target of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050, according to Utility Dive. Local jurisdictions including Clark County and the City of Las Vegas have also adopted updated commercial building standards under the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code, with enforcement taking effect this past January, per the Nevada Governor's Office of Energy.
NV Energy's Business Energy Services program offers commercial lighting rebates covering 50 to 70 percent of project costs for LED retrofits, with typical payback periods of 12 to 18 months for Las Vegas businesses, according to the utility. Those incentives matter on the Strip in particular: casino resorts there account for roughly 20 percent of all electricity consumed in the Las Vegas Valley, driven by round-the-clock exterior signage, sprawling casino floors, and climate control, per estimates cited by SolarTech.
Old Light Versus New
The contrast between legacy architectural lighting and modern LED retrofits is visible just steps from where LED Connection did its Luxor work. The Luxor Sky Beam, considered the brightest light beam in the world, uses 39 xenon lamps rated at 7,000 watts apiece, burning through roughly 3,600 kilowatt-hours a day at an operational cost of about $51 an hour, according to SolarTech. MGM has also paired fixture upgrades with renewable generation, signing a 25-year power purchase agreement in 2024 for the Escape Solar and Storage Project, which uses battery storage to extend solar electricity into evening hours for exterior lighting. The company's 100-megawatt Mega Solar Array currently generates up to 100 percent of daytime energy needs for its 13 Strip properties, according to MGM Resorts.
LED Connection's contractor relationship with MGM extends beyond Nevada as well. In June 2021, the company partnered with MGM on a $500,000 renovation to regrade and upgrade lighting at the 122-year-old Yonkers Raceway in New York, which MGM acquired along with Empire City Casino in 2019, according to G3 Newswire. Founded in Las Vegas in May 2015, LED Connection now employs between 51 and 200 workers providing turnkey lighting design, procurement, and field engineering services, per Jobright.ai. The company's growth also tracks a broader employment trend in the state: Nevada's energy efficiency sector employed 12,173 workers in 2022 out of a statewide energy workforce of 59,179, according to the Department of Energy.
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