Out of what’s left of the lighting industry in the era of LED technology, Leotek is arguably one of the more controversial brands of roadway lighting fixtures. Between the unreliable E-Cobra (which got them sued by Detroit), to the GreenCobra lineup, it was thought the GreenCobra was to be the I guess mid-range product from them. Unfortunately, the GCMs aren’t as good as we thought.

Starting in 2015 Long Beach, CA began converting its street light system from HPS to LED. The city originally had GE fixtures from the 90s, and chose Leotek as their brand of choice. From my understanding, Leotek is known for their competitive prices, and even though their products might look good after installation, most models don’t seem to age well at all. As of summer 2022, Long Beach has began to replace dozens, if not more Leotek GreenCobra CGMs that date back to 2015 - 2017 due to increasing light-loss, color degradation, and driver failure. All the characteristics of the disastrous E-Cobra, but at a much slower pace. As a result, many intersections throughout the city have become dim and dingy with their (what were 4000K) Leotek CGMs

As a result, LB has been spot replacing them left-and-right with new 4000K, 5000K, and 3000K models at almost every other intersection on the east side. Despite those efforts, even more fixtures have been failing. Fixtures that were marketed as lasting 15+ years have only lasted about 6, the lifespan of some older HPS lamps the city used to use. The smaller GCJs seem to have held up better.

Even though Leotek has a sketchy track record on fixture reliability, they’re still a popular choice for many SoCal cities, including Long Beach. Probably due to the fact they’re cheap, easy to get, and look good brand new. But if mass failures become a common theme for the GCMs, this could be a concern. Let’s see if they’ve corrected this flaw in their latest model. In addition, let’s not forget about the recent Cooper(Signify) and AEL products, which have their issues.

Only time will tell.

This is the problem with LED streetlighting. With the old streetlighting, the solution was simple as relampping. With the LED streetlighting, the entire lantern need to be replaced, which is much more expensive than relampping the old lanterns.

Makes sense why the gcj would hold up better, less heat and stress on the fixture and LEDs themselves. I find all the older GC1s and GC2s are terrible, I think the newest one is probably the best, although time will tell how long it holds up.

I hate the GreenCobras period with an ugly design and premature failures in the newer ones as well.

Very surprising to hear. Tacoma Public Utilities used the GCM and GCJ models for their LED conversion, which started back in 2017. I have seen few, if any, failed units. The only problem I see is their doors falling off.

I install these sometimes. One thing to keep in mind.  These have the same drivers as the American electric Autobahn series. Both of them are common here, and they definitely both have about the same failure rate.  One thing I've noticed about the GC is that the newer ones over time will develop a sort of purple hue but not at individual diodes, the entire board, and very gradually. The older ones are turning a yellow color. The casting quality is very poor. The threads for the slip fitter are super loose and the bolts strip out very easily.  Most lights if a car smacks the Pole, they still remain attached. These ones will quite literally fall off of the arm. They are a pain to work on because they are kind of designed to just be cheap without any servicing or installation in mind.  Putting the terminal block in front of right where the slip fitter is is a terrible design choice because you can't bend the wiring to fit.  They also have the worst optic control I've ever seen on any light. Like the beam pattern doesn't make any sense at all. A lot of the time we have to end up installing Shields on them. That's what happens when a company that used to make DVD players gets into the lightning business.

Good points, thanks for sharing.

Huh I interesting, I was in Virginia Beach which happens to be full of the Ecobras and the worst thing I saw was a single diode out on one of the lights.

Idk about the smaller GreenCobras since there aren't that many where I am, but the GC1 that CalTrans uses has been decent. All of them are from 2013-2016 and about 80 percent of them are still going. Seems they have a slight yellowish tint to them though, but that's typical.

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Cree - They were probably installed within the past two to three years or maybe even newer. Most of the ECs on the CalTrans system (the main place I see these, but I know a few cities that have them at some intersections and they look the same now too) are terribly dim and yellowed. Most were installed around 2012 or so and were used as spot replacements til 2017, but I have seen some installed in 2020 and 2021 for new rehabilitation projects though those are far from me. Heck, even one was installed this month near me. I'll keep track of that one.

I'm not sure about the newer ones though as I don't see many and all those cities that have them are replacing them with other LED lights as they fail and CalTrans has been using the new generation 3000K SMX to spot replace the failing ones along with failing GCs.

They were installed in 2014.

The smaller GreenCobras in some parts of Mass work decently well.

Spotted dozens more GCMs totally fail all over east Long Beach, and the city has been spot replacing them like crazy now, almost every other intersection has at least 1 or 2 fixtures replaced due to systematic failure. Hope they’re getting good use out of their warranty.
 

Update: The Leotek GCJs are now not safe either. Dozens, if not hundreds at least in the north end of Long Beach are becoming dim and dingy like the GCMs. Installed in 2017. The problem has also now spread into neighboring Lakewood, CA (who knew Leotek products were made with cheap imported parts from the get-go) where GCMs are failing in the same manner as Long Beach and the GCJs are dimming out. There’s almost zero lighting really hitting the pavement in some cases. They’ve started to spot replace ones at intersections, original models were 4000K, spot replacements look to be 5000K.

I guess Leotek is the Hyundai/Kia of street lights now.

Yeah, in contrast Signify / Philips is like the Honda of street lighting.