LED Street Lights vs Sodium Streetlights

Ubbquittious

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

- yes , lets all go back to gas lighting

I got few of these 1.50 LED light bulbs from dealz store - packed up after 3 or 4 months - made in china ... 5w=40w it said , no way was it comparable to same light output of a 40w conventional bulb

You are lucky you only paid 1.50 I got the so-called good ones for 10e+

Andy From Sligo

With these LED lights you buy in the shops and they fail I dont think it is such the LED that fails, in theory that should last for years, no I think its the electronics inside the bulb like the drivers and resisters and chips to drive the LED bulb and to lower the voltage from 220v to the voltage of the LED , and if course if you split some of these bulbs open the solder joints on the circuit boards leave a lot to be desired, very shoddy and the solder loses contact and then LED lamp won't light. So its more the electronic components and solder joints that let them down and cause them to fail prematurely I reckon

Graces7

What are street lights please?

New to me Just the moon and the stars here... and the glowing eyes of foxes and rabbits..

LordSutch

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

The estate at the back of us has had its street lights (or rather just the head part insides, or bulb part) changed to white LED lights.

I can see why council's are preferring these, cheaper/economical to run, low maintenance, long lasting but I personally think they are a poor substitute Lumen/brightness wise to conventional sodium SOX / HPS lights - I bet the outlay is huge in the first place isnt it? most probably saves money over time I suppose.... but yeah, they dont seem to be as bright as the ones they replace.

Sodium all the way please . . . .

I actually saw a clip on the BBC news just the other week where a whole estate in England has signed a petition against LED street lighting due to its "hard, unforgiving, & intense light".

Apparently, the main problem surrounds sleep (lack of) in relation to where your bedroom is situated vis-à-vis the intense penetrating LED street lights!

In the clip you saw the power of the LED streetlights penetrating the woman's curtains, to a degree that she had to invest in extra 'black out blinds' to darken her bedroom.

LED street lights may indeed save money, but it sounds like they should be kept out of housing estates for the reason I mention above.

Sodium lights are much warmer & friendlier when situated alongside houses.

Kintarō Hattori

Hmnn we have a sodium lamp almost directly outside our house and a few others dotted not far from it. I have to say I do quite like them, they give off a really pleasant warm glow and don't find them obtrusive. My partner would be a light sleeper and sensitive to light, so I'm hoping the council don't change them for LED any time soon.

Andy From Sligo

LordSutch wrote: »

..... I actually saw a clip on the BBC news just the other week where a whole estate in England has signed a petition against LED street lighting due to its "hard, unforgiving, & intense light".

Apparently, the main problem surrounds sleep (lack of) in relation to where your bedroom is situated vis-à-vis the intense penetrating LED street lights!

In the clip you saw the power of the LED streetlights penetrating the woman's curtains, to a degree that she had to invest in extra 'black out blinds' to darken her bedroom. .,.

That's interesting, I wonder if their complaints will be taken into account or just hit a brick wall, I should imagine once a council has paid for the lights/equipment and paid contractors to change them it would be hard to try and get the council to revert them back to sodium lighting.

Of course in an ideal world what the council should do (before changing them/converting them) is contact evey household on the estate by letter and ask what the residents want and ask for their input. Put in the letter the positives, the figures of what savings can be made annually by changing the street lights to LED , their positives and their negatives and shortcomings and then gauge the reaction from the residents on the estate before they go changing the street lights to LED.

But as others have already said on here, I agree with their harsh white colour rendering and low to medium spread of light they give out, I dont think they really have a place on residential areas personally. In commercial situations on roads and factory, industrial estates and shops and retail parks its a different matter

m5ex9oqjawdg2i

I really wish society would move away from bright lights of all types. It's such a shame that we are no longer able to view the night sky in all it's glory.

El Weirdo

Wait... am I still in AH?

Kintarō Hattori

El Weirdo wrote: »

Wait... am I still in AH?

Three pages in with no derailment.... it seems it is capable of holding the odd thread that isn't celeb bashing, anxiety ridden, political etc.

Tefral

I'm a QS for an electrical contractor, all we ever price is these now. Its actually cheaper to get a LED head now than it is to get a SOX head and bulb.

The LED light is measured in Lumens (the output) and the Colour (in Kelvins) the colour you are seeing on the roads is 4000k. The lower the Kelvin rating, the redder the light. The higher the Kelvin rating the Bluer it gets. So basically the LED lights in your house are 3000k and are classified as warm white, but this wont work on the street as it casts too many shadows so they need to be whiter so thats why they are 4000k.

If you see the LED lighting on some cars they are nearly blue thats 5000k. The lights you see on the roads are either a Philips Selenium fitting or a Philips Luma fitting and they come standard with a 5 year warranty, the LED themselves last much longer than this though.

As a rule of thumb (not in all cases) LED's traditionally use less power by a factor of ten. So a 30watt LED would pump out the same lumens as a 300w SOX or Halide. (not in all cases but generally this is the case).

This also has the added benefit of reducing the amount of ducting, cable and mini pillars required as they can run more on a circuit or alternatively use smaller cable. So the savings to the council are not only the reduced power consumption but also the infrastructure.

In retrofit though the council only change the head, the above only applies on new installs.

Tefral

Tefral wrote: »

So basically the LED lights in your house are 3000k and are classified as warm white, but this wont work on the street as it casts too many shadows so they need to be whiter so thats why they are 4000k.

As a rule of thumb (not in all cases) LED's tradiionally use less power than SOX or Halide by a factor of ten. So a 30watt LED would pump out the same lumens as a 300w SOX or Halide. (not in all cases but generally this is the case).

I'm sorry but you're way off on both counts here. Colour temperature has nothing to do with how shadows are cast. High CCT light can't magically bend around objects so the laws of physics still apply, if an object is in front of the light source it will cast a shadow. Low pressure sodium lights have a CCT of around 2,200 and have been effectively lighting streets for decades.

As for efficiency, yes LEDs can be more efficient than sodium lamps,but it's nowhere near a factor of 10.

Low pressure sodium gives off 120lumens of light per watt of electricity. For LEDs it ranges from 100-200 lumens/watt, depending on the type.

Andy From Sligo

Tefral wrote: »

I'm a QS for an electrical contractor, all we ever price is these now. Its actually cheaper to get a LED head now than it is to get a SOX head and bulb.

The LED light is measured in Lumens (the output) and the Colour (in Kelvins) the colour you are seeing on the roads is 4000k. The lower the Kelvin rating, the redder the light. The higher the Kelvin rating the Bluer it gets. So basically the LED lights in your house are 3000k and are classified as warm white, but this wont work on the street as it casts too many shadows so they need to be whiter so thats why they are 4000k.

If you see the LED lighting on some cars they are nearly blue thats 5000k. The lights you see on the roads are either a Philips Selenium fitting or a Philips Luma fitting and they come standard with a 5year warranty, the LED themselves last much longer than this though.

As a rule of thumb (not in all cases) LED's tradiionally use less power than SOX or Halide by a factor of ten. So a 30watt LED would pump out the same lumens as a 300w SOX or Halide. (not in all cases but generally this is the case).

This also has the added benefit of reducing the amount of ducting, cable and mini pillars required as they can run more on a circuit or alternatively use smaller cable. So the savings to the council are not only the reduced power consumption but also the infrastructure.

In retrofit though the council only change the head, the above only applies on new installs.

thanks for that post there - really informative. When you put it like that no wonder they are becoming the most efficient way of lighting up an area at greatly reduced cost.

When a council retrofits existing lights do they always have to change the whole head (or the bits inside the head) because I thought I seen loads of LED (corn type) bulbs with ES and GES cap's - could they not just easily unscrew the SON/SOX and just simply replace them with the new LED Lamp to save even more costs? (but then again I suppose the ballast/gear/igniter has to be bypassed as well on each lap as well though)

Good that the councils stick with Philips though , should be better made than these non-branded plethora of LED lamps on the market these days (should be?) - I have had some philips 11w CFL bulbs and it said so many years guarantee on the box and they have packed up in a year, but I guess everything is mass produced now and dont get the high quality check what they used to get years ago.

Tefral

Deleted User wrote: »

I'm sorry but you're way off on both counts here. Colour temperature has nothing to do with how shadows are cast. High CCT light can't magically bend around objects so the laws of physics still apply, if an object is in front of the light source it will cast a shadow.

Agreed, however the shadows i am taking about are the ones where the spread of light from one light ends and the next begins in a row of lights say along a road.

The diffusers that are used in the Luma lighting for example on the 3000k lights are not the same as the ones for the 4000k lights. The 4000k diffusers in this example are actually more directional and less shadowing occurs as a result. I am not a lighting designer so cannot comment on why they use a different diffuser but i am assuming its due to the fact that your eye perceives the colour blue as harsher and they need to spread it more. I stand open to correction on this.

LordSutch

On a point or order, and just to put the record straight, LED bulbs (in a home environment) are generally 2700k, as this figure is closest to the type of warm light we're accustomed to in the home!

3000k is far too 'bright-white' for the home (when compared to traditional light bulbs).

Long may sodium street lights survive.

Victor

I did work on a council specification for public lighting. Only certain manufacturers and models were considered acceptable.

The real cost in street lighting isn't the bulbs (electricians call them lamps), but replacing them. With 'traditional' bulbs, it is generally cheaper to do a systematic replacement of all bulbs on a 1-2 year cycle than it is to deal with large numbers of individual failures.

LEDs for street lighting are expected to last for up to 20 years, not least because they are made up of many individual LEDs - if a few fail, the lighting level is still acceptable.

Most council contract out their public lighting, originally to ESB, but the business was sold on, I think to Airtricity. I think only Dublin City Council do their own public lighting. The manufacturers know they can't screw around with customers that buy tens of thousands of fittings.

Where lighting is too bright near bedrooms, a 'shroud' can be fitted to the column to block the light in that direction.

There are issues in some places of there being pocket so light, accompanied by pockets of darkness, especially if there are trees, eg. Westmoreland Street in Dublin.

Kintarō Hattori

Said I'd dig this up as leaving the estate I live on I noticed a light was white instead of orange. I live around a green and all the lights are orange but leaving a few weeks ago I noticed one of them was white and the light dispersal certainly looked LED.

I know it's inevitable that the LEDs are coming but I hope it's still some way off yet. The orange glow from the sodium lights are much more 'homely', the LEDs were just cold looking. Plus I have one right outside my front door so I'm hoping there won't be too much light intrusion into the bedrooms. This was in Fingal btw.

Bummer1234

Should we be mostly looking at smart street lights like the are in Denmark*

Link

They are like the ideal thing to have working in housing estates after a certain hour where kids would be playing at 1-5am

*Apolgies if this has been already mentioned

Victor

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Plus I have one right outside my front door so I'm hoping there won't be too much light intrusion into the bedrooms.

Ask them to shield it.

Kintarō Hattori

Victor wrote: »

Ask them to shield it.

I didn't know that was a possibility. If it goes LED then I'll look into that. Thanks.

Andy From Sligo

if there is any benefits to these new LED heads its that I think with new reflector designs , they (normally) have been designed to (or should have been) designed to reflect all the light downwards because of newer laws to do with light pollution these days - so if your bedroom is upstairs (and above the lamp head maybe) then you might not get affected by the light coming into your bedroom.

There's another point there now I come to think of it that when they replace these Sodium heads with LED units , I do think they should lower the head unit somewhat , especially if the LED head that they are using to replace the sodium (low pressure SOX/high pressure SON) light is not as bright Lumens wise

Andy From Sligo

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

I didn't know that was a possibility. If it goes LED then I'll look into that. Thanks.

other than that a black-out blind maybe at the bedroom window.

The LED's (especially in the case of bright white LED's they use in these conversions) have a tendency on the blue light scale - something they reckon can really disturb sleep patterns , this is why they say if using mobile phones/tablets or watching LED at night can disturb sleep - my wife's phone actually has a 'blue light filter' settings in its menu for this reason. so, yeah i would say if you could see these LED lights now through your bedroom window it could definately mess with your biological clock alright...

Victor

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

so if your bedroom is upstairs (and above the lamp head maybe) then you might not get affected by the light coming into your bedroom.

Lamp posts tend to be 8-10 metres high. A first floor bed would tend to be at a height of 3-4 metres.

There's another point there now I come to think of it that when they replace these Sodium heads with LED units , I do think they should lower the head unit somewhat

The problem there is getting enough light to the areas that are away form the lamp.

especially if the LED head that they are using to replace the sodium (low pressure SOX/high pressure SON) light is not as bright Lumens wise

While nominal brightness may be lower, effective brightness might not, as some wavelengths are seen better by humans than others.

Andy From Sligo

Victor wrote: »

Lamp posts tend to be 8-10 metres high. A first floor bed would tend to be at a height of 3-4 metres.

The problem there is getting enough light to the areas that are away form the lamp.

While nominal brightness may be lower, effective brightness might not, as some wavelengths are seen better by humans than others.

thanks, yes i take that all on board what you say.

Interesting that bit you say about "some wavelengths are seen better by humans than others" - im in my 50's and my eyes are most probably getting worse, and i know i am long sighted now. maybe the lights on the estate behind us that have been replaced with LED heads just look a lot dimmer to me. When i have mentioned to others that the LED dont look bright enough others have said that they look bright enough. - so maybe its just my eyesight.

AllForIt

NIMAN wrote: »

Often LED lighting is at the cool end of the sprectrum, more a white/cold light rather than the yellow/warm lights we have grown up knowing. Maybe thats what you mean? As I said above, the ones I seen locally are very white as opposed to yellow.

Yes that's why I don't like them. I was wondering if they could be retro fitted with some kind of a placticy oranagy/yellowy transparent plastic type thingy which would change the colour. I don't see why not.

Andy From Sligo

AllForIt wrote: »

Yes that's why I don't like them. I was wondering if they could be retro fitted with some kind of a placticy oranagy/yellowy transparent plastic type thingy which would change the colour. I don't see why not.

I have some LED lights on a strip I want to use outside (they are ip65 rated) and i dont like the bright crisp white colour they give off (by the way on their packaging it says 'warm white' - well if thats warm white then you could imagine what cool white would look like) anyway last friday I was in an arts supplies place and they had the Vitrail glass staining transparent paint in bottles and I have bought a bottle of 'yellow-orange' colour to see if that is a nearby match to a SOX sodium light outside our house - the had 'orange' but that looked more on the red side of colour. have used Vitrial glass stain before years ago, pretty good stuff - about 4eur a pot.

Kintarō Hattori

That's the light I mentioned the other day. You can see the older lights all around and this one appears much brighter. I thought it unusual that there's just one, I wonder if they are trialing it to see if there are any complaints.

Andy From Sligo

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

That's the light I mentioned the other day. You can see the older lights all around and this one appears much brighter. I thought it unusual that there's just one, I wonder if they are trialing it to see if there are any complaints.

well I would have the complaint there that why didnt they change (trial) all of them at the same time so they are all matching- now its neither one or the other and looks silly.

another reasoning is maybe in above the council motionings and meeting they have most probably voted that every time a sodium bulb blows or breaks now it must be replaced with LED and sodium to be not used any more - so when the others blow or stop working the council (or more than likely the contractors they have tendered the street light bulb replacements job to) will just replace them with LED heads one by one, so they will all eventually be /end up LED street lights

other than that, there wouldnt be CCTV (hidden or otherwise) at that spot could there be ? - that could be another reason for just putting white LED lamp there so that colours /images would pick up much clearer with a white light than a sodium lamp, that could be another reason they only just used a white LED streetlamp in that spot maybe?

Kintarō Hattori

Hey Andy,

The replacing them as they blow certainly makes sense. No, there's no CCTV on that area as it's generally a pretty quiet place. The odd bit of bad parking but nothing crazy.

So you do think it's an LED light?

Andy From Sligo

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

Hey Andy,

The replacing them as they blow certainly makes sense. No, there's no CCTV on that area as it's generally a pretty quiet place. The odd bit of bad parking but nothing crazy.

So you do think it's an LED light?

do you know what, to me it looks too bright to be an LED - I am just wondering if it is a Metal Halide bulb they have replaced it with instead - that would be white in colour as well - the way to tell if its LED if when it starts up if it starts up immediately - if it does then its definately LED if it starts off dim and blue and then gets full brightness white colour after 3 minutes then it more than likely a screw in MH bulb , that can use same gear (ballast/ignitor) as a SON lamp .. maybe if they just replaced the SON bulb but didnt have a SON on the van they may have whopped in a MH in its place.

_Kaiser_

LED streetlights FTW. Far better visibility when driving, particularly in poor weather conditions