Hi everyone,

I’ve been reading with great interest your passion for streetlights.  I’m doing an extensive study for a California utility to develop a comprehensive business plan for their streetlight business.  One of the strategic recommendations is to build a streetlight network infrastructure which will create an intelligent streetlight capable of dimming and brightening a string of streetlights based on the environmental conditions.  In addition, my team is also recommending that the utility follow the streetlight policies the Europeans and Asian countries follow in order to conserve energy and use alternate energy sources. 

We plan on completing our analysis by October 2006 with a presentation to the utility in December.  If you could change the way utilities manage streetlights what would you recommend?

Best Regards

Tim S.

well I would love ideas that will keep old streetlights since I like old streetlights like Westinghouse OV-15 and Tudors and other 1960s streetlights

here's the idea....Why not have timed photocells.....when a photocell is turned on it will set to maybe 5 hours before it turns off...after 5 hours it will turn the light off....and we could like have the photocell installed every other streetlight while the others still have the regular ones which will stay on.....

Cutting streetlights off at night would be dangerous. Streetlights are suppost to be on the entire night.

This is why one has headlights on his or her car.

i say lps in non critcial area's and merc vapor they seem to last forever i change way to many metal halide's out they do not seem to last at all and hps seems to have a semi long life atmoms house she has a old gumball and the bulb is merc vapor and is atleast 15 yrs old and the ballast might be 20 yrs old
i go with the just beacause it's new does not mean its better some of those old lights here in phx are still going on some lots i have been 2  .

You can't always rely on headlights alone where it's pitch black at night.

BGE is the utility that serves central Md. We have installed several LED streetlights that are currently under test. If you would like more info on these lights please e-mail me at: (spedri@comcast.net) BGE is also concerned with energy savings as well as the environment.

Over here in the UK some streetlights have part-night time switches or photocells. That means that they come on at dusk, switch off about midnight and if it still dark at 5am, they come back on. The part night photocells automatically calibrates itself to the time so on the first few days they operate all night then once they are calibrated they go to part night control. If there is a powercut, the photocells will need a another few days to recalibrate themselves.

Regards DP