Induction never took off here, come to think of it, where I am, fluorescent never did either! The nearest induction installation I know of is on an ASDA car park in Manchester 40 odd mile away from me!
Halide street lighting didn’t take off either, (not even the ceramic version), even today the only halide street lighting I know of is around the shopping centre in my neighbouring town, and it’s 8 columns if that?

I was born in 1972 with predominantly mercury street lighting, then in 1980 the mass changeover to LPS came about with the energy crisis.
The LPS lamp was with us for the next 36 years, with spot replacement of HPS only appearing in the 90s here!
In about 2015, just 3 LED lanterns appeared in random places across our whole town, these would remain as 3 until
2017 when there was a complete town wide explosion of them wholesale!

The 5 guys that did the refit, (2 in a column truck, 2 in a bucket van, and one in a service van), worked at such an incredible speed, that when I passed them while going to get milk and bread one morning, I saw them starting one road, and by the time I got back from the shop they had completed the removal of about 6 old concrete columns, planted the new steel ones, fitted lanterns to them and had them lit on test!!

It took the same team just 3 months to completely 100% re-light our entire town from SOX to LED!

I imagine that this council was pretty happy that SOX was discontinued since they thought that LED was the world’s most energy efficient light source.

Oddly enough, the original change out plans were for 36 watt PL-L fluorescents, this is what was put forward on the street lighting page of the council website, the road plans to where they would start were all laid out with dates for the work to be completed.......
Then the page went blank, for about 8 months, and it was a further year until work started with LED, I’m guessing in the end, fluorescent wasn’t given a green light to go ahead with?

I love Hid fixtures
Metal halide mercury vapor and high pressure sodium for life

It took the same team just 3 months to completely 100% re-light our entire town from SOX to LED!

My neighborhood & all surrounding ones are still HPS. (so I could look outside at night & still see HID lights in use)
But allot of the highways & main roads have been converted to LED.
Allot of shopping centers have converted their parkinglots to LED as well.

There's still tons of HID around me, in fact, a majority of street lights here are still HID. That said, I'll definitely miss it when it's gone, regardless of how good LEDs get.

I just enjoy my HID lights AT HOME!Paying to run them doesn't bother me.

I just enjoy my HID lights AT HOME!Paying to run them doesn't bother me.

Same here, but I miss them when out and about, as well 

Although I don’t necessarily miss the actual light source itself, I do miss the odd and quirky SOX columns and lanterns we had, in equally odd and quirky places around our town!

I miss the twin REVO Hyperion Bs we had on our little round about that I spent 12 years walking past on my way to and from school, I miss the lone PHOSCO P153 that was outside my junior school, I miss the ‘sisters’, (2 swan neck columns), that stood alone, either side of the canal bridge down Long Lane, and the single GEC Z9532 that was under the big oak tree along Croxton Lane, (a lantern that always reminded me of bonfire night), as it was near the cricket club where our annual town fireworks display was that I would go to every year as a kid!

I think that what all lighting enthusiasts associate street lighting with, their childhood, and memories of growing up?

And if I could go back and save any lanterns from my childhood, it would definitely be the twin REVO Hyperion Bs from the roundabout, as it was unusual to see twin 135 watt SOX on a housing estate when I was growing up!

Sure do. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
 

Do bears (...) in the woods?? 

I miss  more than anything.  Growing up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, our electric supplier was Singing River Electric Power Association.  They never used one type of MV.  They used Philips (primarily), but also Sylvania, GE, EYE.  When they would change a Mercury lamp, it was always fun to guess if it was clear or DX.  6 times out of 10, it was clear (around the mid-90s).  It was also around 1987 that they started installing 100w HPS in new applications or as MV went bust.  But never, and I mean NEVER did they go around changing a perfectly good fixture.....until LEDs came about.  I wish I could’ve been there.  It’s unlikely these days, but the chance was always there to score some of the HPS and MV fixtures they were replacing, but I didn’t live there then.  Noticed it when I went back to visit.  And they use the ugly 5,000k LEDs.  And they’re so damn DIM!!!  I do like 3,000K LED as it gives off a DX Mercury Vapor kind of light.

I believe HIDs were more reliability than LED street lights, Now I start see more offen LED go bad and it does blinks a lot if cheap china capacitor or circuit board go bad for some reason while classic HIDs don't but usually keep going or sometime drop dead.

I do remember when I was young there major of mercury vapor running and high pressure sodium anywhere and mass LED bulbs don't exist in 1980's but starting see something big change in around year of 2000 and after. Eventually all power companies will keep increase crazy rate of kwh and nobody in poor class people want pay big electric bill for 1000w plus HID burning in their yard in future of time.

I never like much LED light for indoor it hurts my eye if long time and lacking red infrared cause eyes go decay - leading to blind.   

I find led's and reliable and boring

LOL, it used to be all about MV lighting around here. When I arrived they were in the way of being banned, and HPS was the evil parasite. Now all HIDs get their fair share of love 

I'll sure miss HPS lighting. Especially in winter, for some reason I can't really explain... Pure nostalgia I guess!

Absolutely. I was a fool to be excited for LED.


You really don’t appreciate things until they’re gone, at least in my experience. It is said absence makes the heart grow fonder.