Days will keep getting shorter as we approach the winter solstice, which means fewer and fewer hours of sunlight. That can be depressing at normal mid-North American latitudes, so imagine how bad it gets in a place like Sweden. To fight the winter doldrums, a Swedish utility is installing UV lights at bus stations.

The company installed lights at 30 Umeå bus stops last week, removing the normal bus-stop lamps and replacing them with specially designed phototherapy tubes.

Light therapy is a common treatment for seasonal affective disorder. “Winter is in many ways a fantastic season, with the darkness and the cozy atmosphere. But when the sun appears as a minimum, [we] need the energy the most,” Umeå Energi explains on its website (translated by Google).