I'm tired of the government getting involved in the lighting industry. They took mercury vapor and probe start metal halide fixtures away from us, we don't need to lose more lighting choices. LED's are only good to a certain extent, they're not suitable for all lighting applications.

I agree.  All of the types of lighting all have there advantages and disadvantages.  But who knows, LEDs could get better by then, or they could not just to get more money which hopefully will not happen.

Want to be green, stop being consumer society first

And go a bit back in lighting standards, nobody needs 200Lux in that parking lot

nobody needs 200Lux in that parking lot

The problem is, than majority of the parking lot installations (from what I've seen; but now I speak about shopping centres, public parking houses and similar places) have very non-uniform illumination level, bright pools alternating with dark spots. In covered parking lots the ceiling is either kept totally dark or it is used as the diffusing reflector for the main illumination (and in that case frequently not cleaned at all, so after few years it become dark, so does not reflect anything). And yet another very frequent error is designing the illumination for an empty parking lot.
In all cases, even the relatively strong illumination look dim. And in order to not look as dim, the usual response is to increase the illumination level, when the overall illumination is higher, the same poor light distribution become "just sufficient".

Quite good illumination I've seen only twice, so from that I know it is possible to really suffice with 10..20lux and yet still have the lot well lit, with very good visibility on what happen where.

Also, they said me that the power consumption from the battery, doesn't affect fuel consumption.

  are you sure? with alternator, more current you are using, more force it requires, so more fuel consumption.

Quote from: dor123 on October 20, 2012, 07:18:15 AM

Also, they said me that the power consumption from the battery, doesn't affect fuel consumption.

  are you sure? with alternator, more current you are using, more force it requires, so more fuel consumption.

It probably relate to the statement, than although LED headlights consume less power when lit, the overall car fuel consumption is in best case the same, but mostly higher. As mentionned above, the LED's save the electrical power only when headlights are in use, but the higher mass of the installation consume extra fuel all the time the car is driven. And the second usually cause more extra fuel consumption than the lower electrical power use could save (it depend on how, where and when the car is driven - if the headlights are used for long time so the power saving make an effect to compensate out the extra mass, driving mostly on highways, so the mass does not play as much role, or when driving mostly in the city during the day, so the extra mass of the LED installation increase the fuel consumption, while the savings from the lower power are not utilized).

Medved: I wasn't clear. People in my hostel, said me that a gear of the HID headlights adds 25g to the weight of the HID headlights, which without the gear, is essntially the same weight as the halogen headlight. The additional 25g of the gear, contribute nothing to the vehicle weight, so don't affect fuel consumption.
Regarding to the weight difference of LED headlights between halogen headlights, I will find out later.
I understood, that the electric parts in the car, still consumes from the battery, even if the engine is working. The alternator only charges the battery and nothing else. So headlight wattage rating, don't affects fuel consumption at all.

@dor123: I do not believe the HID ballast mass being only 25g, I would guess no less than 100g.

The alternator have a regulator on it, what drive the excitation winding so, the output voltage is on the specified level (desired battery float voltage - so the voltage, where the battery itself control the charging current so, it end up and remain fully charged). So when you turn ON some load, the alternator regulator sense drop in voltage and increase the excitation, so the output power of the alternator to recover the voltage, so again the complete power need is supplied from the alternator. And when the load is removed, the excess alternator power cause the voltage increase, regulator reduce the excitation and the voltage drop back, when it become exactly the same as the system load.
When the car is running and the battery is charged, the battery act only as a stabilization reservoir to cover up the momentary deficiencies and excesses in alternator output power, so with no average power at all.
So all the power needed for the car come from the alternator and that in turn load the engine. So higher electric load does mean some extra fuel consumption.

And even when the electrical system would run from the battery and the alternator recharging it after a while, more you consume, more you discharge the battery, so more you have to recharge, so extra fuel as well, this time you would have to provide even more to cover up for battery losses...


And for the LED headlights: The problem with LED's is, then unlike other light sources (incandescent or HID) it does not throw the "waste" heat in the form of the IR beam, what normally take care of drying the front glass, so keep it clear from water droplets scattering the light. Instead, the LED's need (again unlike other sources) the heat to be taken away from their back in the form of conducted and rather l;ow temperature heat.
To take care of the water buildup, with LED's you need an explicit front lens heating system to keep the light scattering water droplets out. And to remove the heat from the chip, you need extra heatsink. Both of these add quite considerable weight...

But in real life both of these effect affect the fuel consumption way way less, than the way, how the driver does his "job".
With the halogens we are talking about extra 200W load (assume alternator efficiency is 50..60%), while to keep the car maintaining the road speed you need 20..40kW just to overcome the air.
And even ~2kg of mass are only 0.2% from about 1 ton of total car mass, so not as big deal either.
Only driving so you do not use brakes (so release the gas pedal earlier, so the car slow down by itself) to keep the speed save 10..20% of the fuel, mainly in the city. And here we are talking about 20..100x more savings than even possible by optimizing the headlights for each particular route...

I'm posted a thread in Ynet community (Hebrew community) at the automobile forum, about the effects of the weight differencies of incandescent/halogen, HID and LED headlights on the vehicle weight and its fuel consumption, with a link to this LG thread, and a member in my thread in Ynet automobile forum commented (His words. Google translated from hebrew to english): "Negligible. "De minimis trifles"" (Namely, similar claims to the people that I asked them the things that Medved said here).

When it come to car's fuel consumption and driving style, I always say the most fuel hungry components are the brakes.
I always get puzzled look at first, something how the brakes could consume fuel, when they do not have anything common with the fuel system at all in the first place (some even start to argue about the effect of vacuum pick up from the intake manifold for the power brake assistant) :-D
Then I usually ask: "What about driving so, you won't have to use them".
Only some grab the concept (of the statement about brakes eating fuel) without any need for further explanation... :-D