New street lights

[audioguru]

They are changing all the sodium-vapour street lights in my city. Last week I watched one guy removing the old light, drilling the light post and installing the new light while 4 of his colleagues stood around doing nothing (BUT STILL GETTING PAID FROM MY TAX MONEY).

The old lights were amber. The new lights are bright white.

Today I got a closeup look. They are LEDs! About 50 of them on each light.

They changed all the traffic lights to LEDs a few years ago and today you can see that a few LEDs are burned out. The lights still work so they are not replaced.

 

[Mr RB]

Q; How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb?

A; 5! That's 1 to change the bulb, and 4 more to stand around soaking up AudioGuru's tax dollars.

 

[audioguru]

Q; How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb?

A; 5! That's 1 to change the bulb, and 4 more to stand around soaking up AudioGuru's tax dollars.

Hee, hee.
The guy doing the work was up pretty high in a hydraulic lifter. Maybe the 4 guys watching were there to catch him if he falls.

 

[unclejed613]

the money they wasted on the 4 loafers will likely be made up by the lower electricity usage and lower maintenance cost.... maybe

 

[alec_t]

You can bet that the taxpayers won't see any of the money saved. Local Authorities in general are expert at dreaming up other ways to waste money.

 

[unclejed613]

they're just imitating what they see at the state and federal level..... just it's more visible when it's out on your local street....

 

[MrAl]

Hello there,


Well let's hope that they get their money's worth out of those LED's before they have to replace them. If they run them at the right current and other conditions are met, they should get long life. But that's a big "IF". Lets see how long it takes before the LED's dim to the point where you can barely see under the light anymore.

Also, South Park does the caricature of Canadian's by showing their head as two parts, so when they speak the top of their head hinges off to one side as their mount opens. Not sure where they got that idea from, but it's cute and it means you can always tell the Canadians from the other folks. Pretty funny too overall. So they show Canadians in various scenes doing funny things, but i cant think of what they might do to show them changing street lights to LED. Maybe you guys can come up with some ideas. Maybe getting a shock now and then and falling off the ladder onto the other 4 Canadians.

 

[schmitt trigger]

Back to the original post, has anyone published a RELIABLE STUDY comparing the lumens/watt ratio of LEDs vs HID lamps?
I knew that the older mercury vapor were not that efficient, but the sodium vapor are.

And in foggy conditions, their yellow light appears subjectively to produce less glare.

 

[unclejed613]

yellow maybe, but not green.... ever been through an intersection at night in a blizzard when the LED signals turn green? visibility drops from maybe 20ft to zero.... all you can see is the green snow, and everything else disappears...... red or yellow seem to give better definition to stuff beyond the snow probably because they get refracted differently. but the human eye is most sensitive to green, and in a blizzard, you can't see through the snow when it's lit up green.

 

[schmitt trigger]

That is what I meant, the sodium vapor's yellow light allows for better visibility in fog/blizzard conditions, as compared to white light.

AudioGuru.....what you saw with the 5 guys appears to be universal practice among repair/construction crews. One guy is actually doing the actual job, the others are just there loafing around or doing simple tasks; i.e. a flagman.

 

[RODALCO]

Interesting. I noticed last night while getting some takeaways that in New Lynn, a local West Auckland suburb, all the streetlights were changed to LED. Nice and bright, but for how long.

We have had these trials with LED streetlights over the last five or so years, but I have seen a lot of LED lamp faillures too. sometimes within weeks, and replacements are no doubt very expensive. Well, The tapayer / ratepayer is paying, as usual.

 

[audioguru]

I think the LEDs in a street light are high quality. I have a cheap clock radio that has been showing the time continuously for 33 years and now its LED display is so dim that you can barely see it in the daytime.