StreetLightNews

The city of Ann Arbor expects to spend $640,000 on new LED street lights which are expected to pay for themselves over the next 4.2 years in energy savings.

In a press release from Philips, their new energy-efficient LEDs, CosmoPolis, are praised as a breakthrough in reducing the environmental impact of street lights. The LEDs emit white light and are said to provide greater safety through increased visibility. They have been installed in a residential area and are expected to decrease power consumption by 10% compared to high-pressure sodium lamps, without compromising the lighting performance.
Compared to conventional street lights, the new installation provides a better, whiter light which can be pointed more directly to the streets, avoiding pollution of night skies. So far, CosmoPolis has been adapted by 50 European cities.
While Philips boasts about the fast payback of the LEDs, there is no information about the control of the street lights. At one time, Philips put a lot of time and effort into a centralized control system for street lights, however, such a system is not mentioned in the press release.A centralized solution makes even more sense to install after LEDs have become prevalent. LEDs typically last for 12 years when being lit for 11-12 hours per day. With high reliability, bulb changes can be based on the number of burn hours. A centralized system can easily keep track of the amount of hours the street lights have been turned on. Read more here…

The LEDs that are being tested at Manchester University have shown to last four times longer and use less than half the electricity of conventional lamps. The county council of York is positive towards the improved light source and see great potential in being able to half their annual £600,000 electricity bill on street lighting. More information here…

In one of the fastest growing Chinese regions, the Yangtze River Delta, the transportation infrastructure developments call for innovative solutions for energy management, including street lighting. The explosive growth in many areas of China has increased the need for installing solutions that can reduce the energy consumption and concurrently improve the quality and security of the installations.
The chosen system from Echelon, LonWorks®, will be installed in parts of the highways of Nanjing, as well as on one of the world’s longest suspension bridges, the Jiangsu SuTong Yangzi River Bridge.
The fact that the Chinese government and local authorities are concerned with coupling the massive growth and resulting increased energy consumption with energy management technologies indicates that environmental concerns are taken into consideration when planning and commissioning new projects. Read more…

In a cooperation between USAID, the United States agency for international development, and the Armenian government, a new lighting network has been installed. The infrastructure of the Armenian capital, Yerevan, is worn down and outdated and has not been upgraded for decades. This has had a very negative influence on the street light quality.
Previously, the street light was controlled in branches with only basic on/off functionalities. Each branch had to be inspected every day by technicians in order to avoid numerous outages. This procedure was not only labor-intensive, but also a very expensive practice.
Through USAID, a project involving 19 streets and 37 kilometers of line was launched in order to demonstrate the efficiency of such an installation. A centralized solution was chosen, allowing full control of the street lights from Yerevan’s lighting network center. This has enabled flexible lighting, allowing street light dimming at 1/3 and ½ of the full intensity. Daily inspections are no longer required and requests and inquiries from the central control point are immediately answered.
So far, the savings are expected to exceed the investments by 81%, allowing for a return-on-investment of approximately four years. There are plans to implement the system in the entire Armenian capital, supplying Yerevan residents with street light of significantly higher quality and reliability. The fact that it is cheaper and energy saving is an added bonus.
Source: http://armenia.usaid.gov