Something for Patric

[TheArtist]

Couldnt resist.

"City swapping out light bulbs for LEDs"

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/18/leds.street.lights.ap/index.html

Doing a little math from what I found in the article. It looks like you save about 65 to 70 dollars a year, per light, using LEDs. Actually it could be more than that, according to the article it will cost them 630 thousand dollars to install LEDs in 1,400 downtown lights. That comes to a cost of bulb and installation being 450 dollars a pop. Surely it cant cost that much for each bulb and to replace each one can it? And yet they still see a 65 dollar return per year. I bet we can do better than that. No matter how crappy our city gov can be, surely even we can buy an led and replace a bulb for less than 450 dollars each lol.  []

[Conan71]

LED's are awesome.  You can't beat them for low amp draw and they burn cool.

Edit to artist's edit: LED is a good deal more expensive.  The only personal experience I've had in buying LED lighting is for 12V variety for my sailboat.  I got an LED reading light to save battery power when I read at night in my berth.  The cost was about four times what a regular swivel-type fixture would have cost with a traditional bulb.  

LED navigation lights (bow, stern, mast) cost about ten times what standard lighting would cost.  Pretty unnecessary on an inland lake.  But if I were venturing off-shore for a week or so and relying on wind or solar to recharge my batteries, it would make perfect sense.  There's an added safety factor in the visibility range being claimed to be farther.

LED's also have a very, very long duty life.  Cutting replacement labor and materials is another aspect of the ROI to consider.  Seems to me that price points on light bulbs are somewhat relative to their lifespan in comparison to traditional bulbs.

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

I bet we can do better than that. No matter how crappy our city gov can be, surely even we can buy an led and replace a bulb for less than 450 dollars each lol.

When you look at "Acorn" decorative fixtures costing $1300-$1900 each then yes, we could be doing a lot better.  

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

LED's are awesome.  You can't beat them for low amp draw and they burn cool.

LED's also have a very, very long duty life.  Cutting replacement labor and materials is another aspect of the ROI to consider.  Seems to me that price points on light bulbs are somewhat relative to their lifespan in comparison to traditional bulbs.

Some LED's have lifespans of a decade or longer, which translates to huge maintenance savings.  To their credit, the city is taking advantage of that by refitting traffic signals with LED's but we seem to be going in the opposite direction with streetlights (replacing Sodium lights with Metal Halide that have half the life).  Go figure.

Directional control is another big advantage of LED's.  It's easier to design lighting that shines only where it's needed (as opposed to lighting clouds or bedroom windows).

With costs going down and the Lumens-per-Watt going up, expect to see more LED's used for all kinds of applications not previously seen (nor anticipated in things like zoning and nuisance ordinances).

Im looking forward to the day we warrant streetlights for how well they compliment human vision (and not how well they burn off the utility's off-peak excess on the taxpayer's dime).  

[TheArtist]

I was assuming there was a difference between replacing a fixture and replacing the bulb in the fixture. Cant LEDs be put in the acorn light fixtures to make them not so bright, direct the light better, and save money?

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

Cant LEDs be put in the acorn light fixtures to make them not so bright, direct the light better, and save money?

Yes, you should be able to find an LED "upgrade" that will fit the socket, once the fixture's existing HID ballast has been removed and the LED's are aimed properly.

In the past Ive suggested we replace the Acorn's garish Metal Halide lamps with Compact Fluorescent, which would knock the intensity down to something more in scale with a "decorative" fixture -- and do the primary job of lighting the streets with more efficient Full-Cutoff Sodium fixtures.
The result would be much, much less glare and energy waste, decorative fixtures that dont hurt to look at, and streets where you can actually see.  

This should please the "beautification" folks by keeping their Acorns, which would now supliment the real streetlighting, provide moderate "human scale" vertical illumination (for face identification, facades, etc) and fill in the colors that Sodium is deficient in.

There's no reason why LED's couldn't soon be a candidate for such a project, but this is something we could be starting today with CFL.  LED's however, also give you the option of more precisely controlling the color of the light by throwing in a few elements of the desired shade.  (The so-called "white light" of Metal Halide is actually very bright blue, which casts a cold, uninviting mausoleum-like pallor on everything).

Here's an illustration from a lighting design book showing such a "dual system" in a dense urban environment, scale back accordingly for other areas:

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

I was assuming there was a difference between replacing a fixture and replacing the bulb in the fixture. Cant LEDs be put in the acorn light fixtures to make them not so bright, direct the light better, and save money?

You may be looking for something like this:
http://www.lumecon.com/luminaire_retrofits.html

...though I think the manufacturer may be trying to "keep up" with the light output of existing Metal Halide lamps even when it might not be necessary nor desired.

[TheArtist]

Interesting. Wonder how those would look in our acorn lights? I dont particularly like all the little spotty "lights". May work if the glass on our acorn lights has some sort of striation pattern or frosting, havent paid attention to that though.  I do think its interesting that you can adjust the lighting levels from 100% down to 10% so you can have whatever light level you want. They tout the white light you get with these but I wonder if you can get them to make some with a more "golden glow"?

[rwarn17588]

I'm an energy-sipper, but I don't think LED lights are there yet. They certainly have a ton of potential, and are worth keeping an eye on as more innovations come to the fore.

But they're not nearly as good as compact fluorescents in terms of household lighting ability. And CFLs don't use much power, either.

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by TheArtist

May work if the glass on our acorn lights has some sort of striation pattern or frosting, havent paid attention to that though.  I do think its interesting that you can adjust the lighting levels from 100% down to 10% so you can have whatever light level you want. They tout the white light you get with these but I wonder if you can get them to make some with a more "golden glow"?

They advertise a replacement for "cobra head"-style lights with the option of either Warm (3000-4000K) or Cool (7000-8000K) color temperature, so it may be possible.
http://www.lumecon.com/docs/RELUME_keyline_SPEC.pdf

The globes on our present Acorn lights are refractor-type, meaning they scatter light in an attempt to soften that one big light spot in the middle.  There are such things as "Full-Cutoff" (low glare) equivalents to the Acorn, though; They do their magic by hiding the light source underneath the top cap, and using clear glass (instead of a refraction grating) to keep the illumination out of people's eyes.
You have to be a real progressive municipality like Atoka to use them, though []

[patric]

When the academic community blogs about Acorn Streetlights...

Chicagoans "concerned about a plan before the council to replace some hooded streetlights with decorative acorn-shaped lamps in various historic districts. The acorn lamps allow most of their light to shine upward, to the sky.

   "They are blantantly inefficient," said Paul B. Etzel, director of the nearby Mount Laguna Observatory. "It's a 19th century solution to a 21st century problem."

   Critics also point to higher costs. Getting rid of the low-(pressure) sodium lights would cost nearly $2.8 million and raise the city's power bill by a half-million dollars a year, according to a city report."


Gee, why didnt Tulsa do a report like this before replacing our downtown Sodium lights with Acorns?
http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/2007/07/astronomy-communities.html

But Chicago's residents also found out that even Sodium lighting can be a problem when streetlighting programs are driven by politics instead of science:


"This alley has 4, 250W lights plus a 150W streetlight within a thirty foot radius. A resident of this building can't get the city to remove or shield any of the lights.

I've seen it first hand in a place that doesn't need anymore light, yet we in Chicago increase the energy use in lighting by leaps and bounds whenever the mayor needs re-election or a University president feels to rule by fiat. I can only hope people will eventually realize spending tens of thousands of dollars for just the light that goes up into the sky (yes, really) is not smart for a campus nor the millions of dollars per year for a city like Chicago. The nation as a whole wastes--not uses, but wastes--$5 billion a year or more in outdoor lighting that doesn't hit its target.

People think that brighter lighting decrease crime--but it doesn't, period, and in fact, I was shocked to discover someone actually checked: Brighter alley lights in Chicago increased crime in the alleys by 21% percent: Each of the three crime categories experienced an increase in the number of reported incidents between the pre and post- installation period. Violent Index offenses increased 14 percent (119 to 136), property Index offenses increased 20 percent (30 to 36) and non-Index offenses increased 24 percent (279 to 347). All this, using 160W more per fixture (there's 175,000 of them in the city), adding 28 Megawatts to the "Greenest" city."

[patric]

Theyre not the most attractive things, but here's a sneak peek at a new design in energy-efficient streetlights:





http://www.betaled.com/PrdArea.htm

Since Tulsa's streeetlighting system is geared more towards loading AEP's off-peak power generation, dont expect to see anything like this around here outside of the private sector until our city council comes to it's senses.

[dsjeffries]

quote:Originally posted by patric

Theyre not the most attractive things, but here's a sneak peek at a new design in energy-efficient streetlights:





http://www.betaled.com/PrdArea.htm

Since Tulsa's streeetlighting system is geared more towards loading AEP's off-peak power generation, dont expect to see anything like this around here outside of the private sector until our city council comes to it's senses.

I don't think they're unattractive... In fact, they look nicer than what we currently have:



And ahhh, look at this: Solar-powered streetlights!


Here's an image of LED street lights at work in Australia:

[patric]

quote:Originally posted by DScott28604

I don't think they're unattractive... In fact, they look nicer than what we currently have

Here's an image of LED street lights at work in Australia:

Now those Australian lights are more what I envisioned, since LED's free you from having to design your fixture around one brighta$$ bulb...

Rather fancied this design from a New York competition:





Pilfered from here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ddc/html/citylights/compete.html

The more you consider what's possible, the more you realize the ubiquitous "Acorn" energy hog is for those without vision.