LED street lights?

sotonsteve · Post by **sotonsteve** » Mon Dec 15, 2014 17:54

The nail has been hit on the head with regards bulk replacements!

I heard a rumour about a certain council who recently replaced all of their SOX and SON street lighting with CosmoPolis technology street lighting, as part of an "Invest to Save" initiative. Having made this whopping investment, LED offers savings over CosmoPolis. This council is now considering an "Invest to Save" on top of their "Invest to Save", believe it or not, before the original invest to save has even earnt its payback and the lanterns are pretty much all less than 5 years old.

There could equally be councils who now decide to replace all of their lighting with LED. The problem is, in two or three years time the technology may be even better. What do the councils do then? Do they replace everything again?

Adopting a big bang approach isn't the best way in my opinion. I would think it better to target, say, 20% of the lighting stock in one go, if going down an invest to save route. That way, once a round of improvements have been done the savings can be measured, and the performance of products on the market reviewed. With PFIs and bulk replacements there typically aren't any reviews. Lantern types are decided at the start of the project, and the whole project is priced upon those products, so by the time replacements are finished the newest installations are a few years out of date with the times. Lighting technology is evolving rapidly at the moment, and I think it unwise to go "all in" when the dust hasn't settled. You only have to go back five years in time and LED was only just about good enough for side road installations, and the energy savings weren't all that notable over conventional light sources.

Nwallace · Post by **Nwallace** » Mon Dec 15, 2014 20:12

It may be that they are seeing significant enough cost reduction to know it's worthwhile upgrading now.
If you keep putting off upgrading due to the possibility of something being even better next month I'd still be working on a 33Mhz i486 PC and a 28.8Kbps modem...

Brenley Corner · Post by **Brenley Corner** » Mon Dec 15, 2014 20:20

For a while now, Kent has been undertaking a programme of structural failure replacement of their lighting columns. For a while SON has been used, then COSMOPOLIS, and now LED for these ad-hoc replacements - this has led to a main road near us having SOX, SON, Cosmopolis, and LED all within half a mile!! They are now also spot replacing failed lanterns with LED units.

I understand on the grapevine that they are now determining and costing a full programme of wholesale lantern replacement with LED units right across the county such has been the success of the spot replacements.

The current chosen lantern is the Urbis Axia in varying brightnesses depending upon the column height and it does seem to be a smart good looking and efficient choice.

Tony

brummie_rob · Post by **brummie_rob** » Tue Dec 16, 2014 00:46

Brenley Corner wrote: The current chosen lantern is the Urbis Axia in varying brightnesses depending upon the column height and it does seem to be a smart good looking and efficient choice.

Tony

Those are the ones used in a few few of the Solihull PFI at the moment. They are a nice shape and the colour is good from them, though I have seen some whiter LEDs and softer used already. I can't understand why they don't match up lighting instead of having different colours/styles. They have installed SON on some streets and LED on others with no clear pattern as to why (i.e through routes or smaller residential routes). I'm just glad my old street has the LEDs!

ajuk · Post by **ajuk** » Tue Dec 16, 2014 02:59

So does anybody have a clue what it was I saw in Alveston, are there LED street lights colour balanced more towards that of Sodium lamps now?

UTCPaul · Post by **UTCPaul** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 09:15

Nwallace wrote:It may be that they are seeing significant enough cost reduction to know it's worthwhile upgrading now.
If you keep putting off upgrading due to the possibility of something being even better next month I'd still be working on a 33Mhz i486 PC and a 28.8Kbps modem...

But if you did it in stages you'd have a 386 running Win XP with a 200Gb SATA HDD and BT Infinity

The advantage of "All at once" is that you have a standard area wide that reduces the need for different control systems, spares range, simpler database, etc etc. The disadvantage is the whole lot is outdated at once.

However I think the main reason for bulk replacements (and bear in mind this is a 3 year program for some areas) is that the money was there, and if you only do part you might not get another shot to do the rest.

sotonsteve · Post by **sotonsteve** » Wed Dec 17, 2014 18:02

The issue is, it is columns that tend to fail rather than lanterns, as columns are made of steel and rust, or made of concrete and spall. Having said that, there are a number of modern lanterns available which are of a very questionable quality.

Ben302 · Post by **Ben302** » Sun Jan 04, 2015 21:22

Medway are doing a similar thing to KCC but are using the Urbis Sapphire in either 8 or 16 LED form but using Arcs with Cosmo lamps on main road replacements, Most mainline SOX has been replaced with WRTL Lumas but on a small stretch of the B2004 they have been trialling different LED lanterns in groups of 4 to compare with SOX and Sapphire some have twin optics either arraged one infront of eachother and some side by side, the Axia has been trialled in 16 LED form here too

Patrick Harper · Post by **Patrick Harper** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 08:52

In Herts I've started to see LEDs go up, most notably on the Watford inner ring road. I've also seen many main roads in Bucks with new LED lanterns on existing columns, most of which were previously Urbis SON. In my home town though, the newest we've had is 2000s era SON with a recent surge in CFL casual replacements. SOX is still very much dominant.

Post by **Sabrista** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 12:57

There's a whole load of these on the A12 now, west of Gallows Corner.

Serena

Brenley Corner · Post by **Brenley Corner** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 22:58

Kent County Council has now announced that it will now convert all its lighting stock to LED over the next three years starting another end of this year at a cost of £40m. It claims that it is the largest project of its kind in the UK. Upon conversion part-night lighting will be ceased; residential streets being converted first ahead of main roads and town centres.

PRESS RELEASE

Tony

lewie0404 · Post by **lewie0404** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 10:50

Hi, im new to this forum, i live in Glasgow, i heard they are to install LED lights on all the main roads in Glasgow, i live on a small street with Thorn Beta 2's and Philips XGS104'S i think they are better than LED and im hoping that my street dosent get LED!

Ben302 · Post by **Ben302** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 21:50

Brenley Corner wrote:Kent County Council has now announced that it will now convert all its lighting stock to LED over the next three years starting another end of this year at a cost of £40m. It claims that it is the largest project of its kind in the UK. Upon conversion part-night lighting will be ceased; residential streets being converted first ahead of main roads and town centres.

PRESS RELEASE

Tony

It will be a sad day when the Thanet Way loses its SOX lighting

already noticed that the area around the services by Dargate has been converted to LED (48 LED Axia's) I imagine the mainline A299 will be one of the last to be done

trencheel303 · Post by **trencheel303** » Tue Feb 10, 2015 20:01

lewie0404 wrote:Hi, im new to this forum, i live in Glasgow, i heard they are to install LED lights on all the main roads in Glasgow, i live on a small street with Thorn Beta 2's and Philips XGS104'S i think they are better than LED and im hoping that my street dosent get LED!

They're saying that, but I don't think they should rush to it as a lot of Glasgow's main roads already have very good lighting; Byres Road, Great Western Road and the Centre are all running ceramic metal halide - or so it would certainly seem from the colour - (usually in Arcs) as I'm sure you know.

Jamesabout29 · Post by **Jamesabout29** » Tue Feb 10, 2015 22:58

Urbis Ampera LED lanterns are currently being installed throughout Southend-On-Sea and, sad as I am to see all the SOX go, the LED does a much better job of lighting the road than the SOX/SON it's replacing. All lanterns are expected to have been installed by 2018. Southend is going to become very uniform and boring

Patrick Harper · Post by **Patrick Harper** » Thu Feb 12, 2015 16:56

Uniformity is not necessarily a bad thing as long as the design is on the mark, it's just that the aesthetics of some of the new lanterns are soul destroying compared to some of the old GEC, Eleco and Philips stock.

It's worse with the Hertfordshire A-road upgrades as they are keeping the old columns, many of which are 40-50 years old and are towards the end of their working life. When each of them need replacing they'll still use a different lantern to the rest of the street, so it's still going to be just as much of a mish-mash of old, new and not quite as new.

Gareth · Post by **Gareth** » Thu Feb 12, 2015 17:24

I'm honestly not sure there's anything more bland than the unpainted Mallatite hockey stick that Liverpool's been using for side roads for the last few years...

The Fabrikat hockey sticks they'd been using prior to that were not any better but they had the decency to paint them at least.

The lanterns are equally as dull and uninspired.

Bryn666 · Post by **Bryn666** » Thu Feb 12, 2015 17:31

You haven't seen the CU Forest columns that have gone up in our £40m redevelopment area then... everyone here has face-palmed at that one.

brummie_rob · Post by **brummie_rob** » Mon Mar 16, 2015 23:55

Stoke on Trent Council have now decided as part of there PFI (there are just a few years left and most lamposts were converted years ago) that they now want to trail LED in certain streets with a view to dimming or switching lights off.

If successful they want to roll it out. They only have a few years left of the PFI, so I don't see how this will work and particulary since the SON installations only took place from around 2006 I think. I guess LED is seen as so cost effective, there might be a quick upgrade taking place.

Patrick Harper · Post by **Patrick Harper** » Tue Mar 17, 2015 21:30

I had the chance to drive under LED lights, specifically Urbis Amperas, at night, for the first time today. I can see the white light will be much better for security and pedestrians, however the atmosphere felt rather cold and hazy compared to SOX. Infact, I'd say even the white light from flourescent lamps is better quality then the LEDs for this application, as the distribution was more even and clearer. Time will tell how well they fare in the fog/problematic weather and how much they impact on safety.

SABRE

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