Are they on poles with electrical wires on em or are they underground fed?  I've got about 40 dead underground poles here in my community from underground faults.  So far about 4 cobra heads out of over 200 are actual failures.  We've gotten down into the 20s (20-F) but surprisingly I haven't seen any cold weather failures other than possibly 1. 

And two LEDs are dead already, Time to report them to Xcel.

A few days ago I saw one of those hideous new AEL fixtures on the freeway dim and strobing madly.

Well, i'm sad to report that having watched Eluko79's new video, the truss-arms at the MN-5/I-35E interchange are no more  . Unfortunately, that means that the only still-functioning original 1960s truss-arm freeway lighting (to my knowledge) is at the Huron Avenue on/off ramp on I-94 in Minneapolis.

Well, i'm sad to report that having watched Eluko79's new video, the truss-arms at the MN-5/I-35E interchange are no more  . Unfortunately, that means that the only still-functioning original 1960s truss-arm freeway lighting (to my knowledge) is at the Huron Avenue on/off ramp on I-94 in Minneapolis.

Link?

You can't link what you see with your eyes

Report freeway lights that are out to Mn/DOT...

Two new approved products for Mn/DOT lighting

250 Watt Equivalent: Cooper Streetworks Verd-G Verdion (143 watts)

400 Watt Equivalent: GE Evolve ERS2 (162 watts)

That 162w is NOT going to be a suitable replacement for the 400w. The 143w will probably be ok though (not that there are any 400w HPS lights left in my area anyway.) Also, Cooper Verdion? This is the first thing I think of whenever I see one of those.

I haven't noticed that the freeways are noticeably dimmer since the LED conversion. We're not lighting engineers so I'm going to trust their judgement. I assume since the 400 watt lamps were mounted up higher that there was a lot more slop behind the fixture and other places it wasn't designed for as opposed to the 250 watt models.

For comparison the Autobahns are 164 watts and the Navions are 157 watts. The Roadviews were yanked off the approved product list for being too energy wasteful at 209 watts, but there's a lot of them that got installed especially in the northeast metro.  

A brief history: Until the 1980s the St. Paul lanterns were incandescent. I-35W from 66th to Lake Street, I-35E north of downtown, and Lyndale Ave in Bloomington were HPS, and the rest of the lights were mercury.

In the mid 1980s NSP, now Xcel energy, converted it's lights to HPS, primarily American Electric 15 / 115s and GE M250Rs, although some areas had Cooper OVZs. OVX saw some use as replacement. Mn/DOT did not convert the rest of the freeway mercury lights to HPS until around 1990. Richfield converted it's lights about that time; for a while the city owned lights on N-S Richfield streets were mercury and the E-W NSP lights were HPS. The last of the incandescent St Paul lanterns were converted to HPS about this time to.

LPS was never used much. There were some on Old Cedar until 1988, and major Richfield N-S streets from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. These were converted to HPS. There used to be a LPS wall pack on the running park building that's gone, the lights on the Thunderbird Hotel parking lot were removed last year when the hotel was demolished. The nearest LPS lights I know of are on the Big Blue Bridge in La Crosse; used because they do not attract Mayflies.

The new I-35W bridge in 2007 was the first use of LED lights on an interstate highway. At the time no direct replacement for a standard cobrahead was available so they needed to space the poles closer together. Mn/DOT has monitored their performance over time, there have been no failures and they are pleased.

Last year was the mass conversion of the freeways to LED, they used to use Philips Navion, but these got yanked for being too inefficient at 215 watts for a 400 watt equivalent, so they're now using Cooper and AE Autobahns driven at about 160 watts for 400 watt equivalent, 130 watts for 250 watt equivalent.

A few induction lights exist in Hudson. Afton finally got rid of their gas lights last year in favor of LED; these had automatic ignitors per Minnesota law. Afton was going to keep a few in their park but I haven't verified it.

The mass conversion of Xcel lights, which covers most of the metro, started last year with GE Evolve fixtures, although Philips Roadview were used in Wisconsin. Richfield will replace a sodium light with a Leotek GreenCobra whenever they're called to service it. Minneapolis will generally replace a copbrahead with an LED but service a shoebox.

St. Paul is using corncob lamps to retrofit their lanterns, after complaints they're now testing out various warm white models. So far they have are not aggressively converting their overhead lights, mostly NEMAs on wood poles.

There is no LED approved for high mast, so some new HPS high mast lights were put up last year, replacing a metal halide installation running on mercury ballasts. Metal halide is used for Minneapolis parkway lights, 100 watts for mid-block and 150 watts for intersections, but new ones are LED. 

St. Paul is using corncob lamps to retrofit their lanterns, after complaints they're now testing out various warm white models. So far they have are not aggressively converting their overhead lights, mostly NEMAs on wood poles.

About the LED corn cobs, are they just using them in NEMAs or are they being used in cobraheads too?

They're just using them in the lanterns. They'll replace a cobrahead with an LED fixture on occasion, but I've not seen to much of this and I've not seen a NEMA fixture been replaced.

Around here they retrofit the post top lights with corn cobs but any overhead street light or flood light gets replaced. No NEMA heads here.

The utilities in California has gotten approval from the California Public Utilities Commission to discontinue new installations of HPS and other HID light sources. But HID is still serviced and new fixtures are installed as replacements only.