Around a year ago, the (concrete post, sodium lamp) street lights in my road were replaced with new metal poles and fluorescent fittings. I was surprised as elsewhere in the borough new LED lamps were being installed.
Today, a team turned up and replaced all the fluorescent heads with LED fittings.
Does anyone know the relevant savings over the running of fluorescent against the cost of running LEDs? What would be the payback time when taking into account the initial cost of the fluorescent head, the replacement cost of the LED head and the labour cost of changing them?
I wasn't surprised at the replacement of the sodiums, as they'd probably been there for fifty or so years.
As an aside, several of the new heads were illuminated this afternoon. I pointed this out to the fitting team and they replied it will happen until the new lamps get their internet instructions. I think something may have been lost in translation, as English was obviously not their first language.
Do they have some sort of internet capability, maybe a SIM card? I assumed they were controlled by a photocell.
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Re local street lights in Surrey.
IIRC £70M was recently spent (2009 ) on changing all local street lights.
Replacing concrete posts, for safety and also steel posts rotted by dogs pee ( i kid you not:-(.
Our lights are now auto dimmed from 22:00 to 00:00 and then switched off from 00:00 to 05:00 .
www.surreycc.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/road-maintenance-and-cleaning/street-lights-traffic-signals-and-signs/part-night-street-lighting/part-night-streetlighting-consultation#why .
I have not seen any mention of varying these hours by season.
Q & A
www.surreycc.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/road-maintenance-and-cleaning/street-lights-traffic-signals-and-signs/part-night-street-lighting.
Seems we missed out being early adopters. Today, I guess LEDs would be installed.
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We had LED lamp standards installed down my road about three years ago to replace metal Victorian lamp posts that were rusting away despite being painted on a (fairly) regular basis.
The original sodium lights were quite efficient, but the new ones vastly more so and, in fact, some lamp posts down my (approximately) 400 yard street weren't replaced as the replacements' coverage was so superior.
Biggest problem was that I had a lamp post almost immediately in front of my gate posts which wasn't replaced and I was lost for some time afterwards trying to spot my own driveway. Old habits die hard....:-) Also lost the security aspect of having a street lamp illuminating my property....
Last edited by: Stuartli on Thu 31 Aug 17 at 00:43
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Lucky me. No street lights for miles. Perfect star gazing territory.
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>> Re local street lights in Surrey.
>> IIRC £70M was recently spent (2009 ) on changing all local street lights.
>> Replacing concrete posts, for safety and also steel posts rotted by dogs pee ( i
>> kid you not:-(.
>> Our lights are now auto dimmed from 22:00 to 00:00 and then switched off from
>> 00:00 to 05:00 .
Yup, our surrey street was thus upgraded about 5 years ago. Even during the "full on"period lighting is noticeably dimmer compared to the old sodium lights
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>> Even during the "full on"period lighting is noticeably dimmer compared to the old sodium lights
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At night the new lights cause me to slow me down when I turn off the through rote into my street.
It is not the brightness but the colour of the new lights ???
In the old days before I turned in, I could see the white light of an approaching car was warned of a car but no more, all light is white :-(.
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>> Even during the "full on"period lighting is noticeably dimmer compared to the old sodium lights
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Just the cataracts kicking in with increasing age :)
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>>Re local street lights in Surrey.
>>Our lights are now auto dimmed from 22:00 to 00:00 and then switched off from 00:00 to 05:00 .
www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-street-lights-switch-off-13916570
Soon the off period will change to 01:00 to 05:00
>>Seems we missed out being early adopters. Today, I guess LEDs would be installed.
"Looking ahead we are considering using LED lights
Because with technology advances and falling prices the savings they offer could outweigh the cost of installing them."
Still pushing to keep lights on all night.
www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/surrey-street-light-switch-off-13919807
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My area has been fitted with a combination of LED and flourescent street lights, my street has bright white flourescents, an improvement on the orange lights they replaced. They are on all night.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Sun 19 Nov 17 at 13:03
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...there are a number of publicly available business cases for LED replacement available on the web. You might even find the one for your own local authority.
Just Google "LED streetlights business case".
They'll provide a better background than me summarising here (though, in quick skimming, I find some supposition rather than fact, and some conflation of replacement to avoid maintenance, rather than simple energy saving cases).
They can be installed with a Central Management System, wired or wireless, allowing remote dimming (with the profile being adjusted to suit) and monitoring, adding another facet to be considered in the business case.
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As MD says - Our nearest street light must be a mile away. LED lights have an unintended consequence for the environment though - insects aren't attracted to them and won't gather around them like they did around old style street lights with a consequent knock on for the local bat population.
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>> As MD says - Our nearest street light must be a mile away. LED lights
>> have an unintended consequence for the environment though - insects aren't attracted to them and
>> won't gather around them like they did around old style street lights with a consequent
>> knock on for the local bat population.
OMG the poor bats, I mean its not like bats have been around for 50 million years and street lights a mere 100. Not exactly an evolutionary disaster is it.
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Except that there is a dearth of insects, so gathering them at feeding stations might be quite helpful. To the bats. Not so good for the declining insect population. Aaaaargh!
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Over here the individual household's contribution to the cost of local street lighting is itemised on the electric bill, which does give a chance to relate directly to what the public service actually costs.
Of course there is virtually only one provider...
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We used to have that on our council tax bill. It was paid to the parish council as a separate charge.
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No but the radio programme that mentioned it said it was a huge factor in the declining number of bats and insects that they need.
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15 year old street lights round here had bulbs replaced with LEDs in the spring, they are brighter and whiter which polarised opinion, fortunately our house is set back from the road so we don't get blasted with extraneous light.
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Street lighting in villages seems to fall to the Parish Council, ours in S Northants certainly does.
Pretty much every street light in village was changed last year with some type of low energy bulb replacing a mix of sodium and other types. Not sure if they're LED or some other technology; IIRC while savings were greatest with LED the capital cost was more and there was a debate around payoff periods etc.
Think they got a grant or 'soft' loan from either County or national gov.
The County have also done a lot of work on 'their' roads with new columns, low scatter downlighters and new bulb technology. Lighting has also been removed from stretches of the M1. I well recall lighting marching northwards so that by eighties it was contiuous from J19 to J4; no longer so.
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County Councils responsible in Wales.
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They are in England too apart from trunk roads and motorways where ,Highways Authority are responsible. Parish council are responsible for footpath lighting.
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...I think you've wrongly conflated a few concepts here.....
Highways England are responsible for Trunk Road and Motorway lighting.
The local Highway Authority (often the County Council, but not always - Metropolitan Borough, Unitary Authority, etc.) are responsible for other street lighting.
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Actually it seems it is even more complex. Parish, Town and District Councils can also be responsible for street lighting .
Here is the situation in Norfolk
"Norfolk County Council is responsible for more than 50,000 street lights, 10,000 illuminated signs and 2,500 illuminated bollards.
District and town or parish councils are responsible for another 20,000 street lights in the county and Highways England is responsible for lighting on the A11, A12 and A47 trunk roads."
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I don't know what the general rules are, but I believe that the cost of our street lights is met by the parish council from its precept, although the money goes to the County Council.
So it would be true to say that both are responsible.
Town councils are the same level of local government as parish councils, but of course not everybody has either, just the next level of local government - borough, metropolitan or unitary?
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LED streetlights and smart controls are the way to go. If you're interested to know more, take a look here: www.slsc.org.au/home
There are Australian and international case studies referenced.
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>> Do they have some sort of internet capability, maybe a SIM card? I assumed they were controlled by a photocell
LED streetlights were installed in our cul-de-sac and on the approach road in the Spring. They are definitely connected online in some way, as they all (around 20) turn on simultaneously at dusk and all turn off together on the stroke of midnight (to the second, as per my radio-synced alarm clock). For some reason they stay on until 01:00 on a Friday night but not on a Saturday.
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Ours are still sodium and were replaced with internet connected heads 10 years ago. The original heads had small antennas but the heads were replaced again about 4 years ago and have no antenna but a small photocell. They are still internet connected but I presum the photocell is failover for internet loss or unexpected daytime darkness such as nuclear war. I think those square antennas on some posts are the relays to other sets of lights.
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I don't drive in the dark now, mainly 'cos of car headlights coming at you. The street lights are a different matter. In the next borough, Trafford, they seem to have been replacing lamp-posts with ones about 25 ft high on some of the major roads. The trouble is, these lights are often up in the tree canopy, leaving the road in darkness. Surely posts about 12 ft high would light up both the road and the pavement a lot better. Our council replaced ours with tall ones so the people across the road now have a light level with their bedroom window and about 15 ft away.
Trafford have also retained a lot of the old Zebra crossings...mainly used by people wearing dark clothing !
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"I don't drive in the dark now, mainly 'cos of car headlights coming at you."
Time, perhaps, to thoroughly clean the inside of your windscreen?
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>> "I don't drive in the dark now, mainly 'cos of car headlights coming at you."
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Cataracts ?
www.allaboutvision.com/over40/night-driving-tips.htm
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Street lights - henry k
