are leds a good choice for streetlighting?

led benifits

instant on

high effiency

relatively good color rendering

long life

led disadvantages

light output can be negatively affected by tempature changes

the cost of one led lamp far surpasses that of more conventional lamp designs such as hid,and flourescent

heat must be dissapated to in higher wattages to ensure maximum preformance

No. HID's are still better.

You need to edit your comments not post new comments that is very distracting.

 

Hi guys, first post.

I'm not a lighting veteran, just a little experience with my last company that made automotive lamps, and a failed attempt to get into LED back in 2000.

I am in a new position where I am now trying to sell a new street lamp technology (sort of like a perfected HID), but I am having trouble because of the existing hype about the LED stuff. I have been told the existing LED stuff is expensive, puts out too much heat, and has a bad CRI. Is that true?       

And I am not sure if any of you guys would know this, but assuming the new technology was better and I wanted to get it out as fast and widely as possible, any suggestions about how I would go about doing it?

Please let a noobie know.

Thanks 

I read an article where the city of Anchorage, AK is going to be doing a test install of LED streetlights.  Part of the test is to see how they hold up in the Alaskan climate.
Next time I'm in Anchorage, I'd like to find where they were installed and check them out.

I think New York is doing an experiment as well. I would be more curious how they would do in say, Death Valley, CA since supposedly heat is an issue with them.   

NYC is testing an LED prototype in the 5 boroughs, PSE&G is also doing some tests in 4 or 5 cities in New Jersey at no charge to the municipality (and NJ needs it - their streetlighting infastructure is in horrid condition).  I recently worked with the city of New London, CT and audited the entire city and determined that they should wait a little while longer for LED.

I work for Sylvania and we have various manufacturers (yes, the big ones!) working on cobraheads that will use Icetron induction lamps rated at 100k hours.  These seem to be generating interest.

LED is great in the colder climates...the LED arrays love the cold temperature, but the control gear (drivers or transformers) are likely the limitation.  LED's need massive heat dissipation built into the design of any prototype luminaire.

I just sat through an LED presentation about 2 weeks ago.  Everything sounded wonderful until the guy got to the price.  A parking garage low-bay style fixture was close to $1,000.  You can go through a lot of energy, lamps and ballasts before that fixtgure is even paid for.  Time will being the cost down, though.

Good luck!  There are a lot of players in the LED market, and the market will naturally eliminate the weaker companies, whomever they may be!

Sylvania purchases cobraheads from other companies?

We don't make fixtures anymore...that's long gone.  For our service division, we buy from manufacturers that we trust, or those which the customer specifies.  Sometimes this means that we install other manufacturer's lamps, if you can believe that.

But, what I meant was, the company has an entire OEM department that works with various fixture manufacturers to put our "stuff" into them.  Without lamps and ballasts, the luminaires would be worthless bent metal.  So, in that case, yes, a GE cobrahead could possibly have Sylvania components (especially with the Icetron system).

We are not buying anything - they are buying from us!

LED street lighting has now appeared in my local area, and I'm very disappointed with it. The LED module is rated at 45w and provides 2000 lumens of light. This compares with 35w CDM-T (ceramic metal halide) which provides 3300 lumens, 36w PL-L (compact fluorescent) which provides 2900 lumens, 42w PL-T (compact fluorescent) which provides 3200 lumens, and 45w CPO-TW (CosmoPolis ceramic metal halide) which provides 4300 lumens.

The street lit with the experimental LED street lighting is probably the worst lit in the city. It is a bit like a street lit with 80w mercury where the lamps haven't been changed for a decade or something. The lighting levels are poor, and you can forget being able to look into the face of an attacker, because you'd struggle to see them at all, let alone get an idea of facial features.

It seems LED lighting technology still needs to develop a lot before it can successfully enter the street lighting market. It's certainly a lot less efficient than ceramic metal halide and compact fluorescent. There was a web page created regarding the experiment, where they said something along the lines of "Wow, we replaced 70w high pressure sodium with 45w LED. Look at the power savings." What they don't tell you is that light levels are less than a third of what they were, both on paper and what is apparent in reality on the ground.

led are still developing but i think the brightest leds will never be as bright as the brightest high intensity discharge lamps,but time will tell.

HID's are still better

Last time I was at home, I drove by a single LED street light.  I was busy that day and wasn't able to get back to photo it before I had to leave, and I didn't get a chance to see it in the dark either.  It had a metal halide-like light color.

The shopping center in my city installed 3 experimental fixtures on a pole that used to hold 3 1000W HPS lights. They light very well. Don't know their wattages though...