Donegal County Council to spend €13m on public lighting..

Andy From Sligo

Sounds Like Donegal Council are going to borrow 13 million euro over 5 years to replace all Streetlamp bulbs in Donegal.

I presume they will be changing all the SOX and SON Sodium lamps to LED lamps?

[URL="https://www.oceanfm.ie/2018/01/30/donegal-county-council-to-spend-e13m-on-public-lighting/[/URL]

But what about all the life still left in these sodium bulbs there could be thousands of hours left in them, are they just going to whip them out and chuck them away ? - that doesnt sound very economical if there is nothing wrong with them.

My only other issues with LED streetlighting is that they still havent got the spread of light that sodium lights have and look darker with lots of gaps of darkness between lamp posts and the colour rendering and the light pollution is worse than the sodium lamps.

Tests done said that the blue white in the LED fools humans into thinking its daylight and can mess with sleeping patterns and Nocturnal animals suffer as well because they cannot differentiate between night and day.

I can see why they might want to do it, lower wattage, no mercury in them, run cooler, no ballasts or gear needed and long lasting but I dont know whether they loom into these things fully or just think "LED is the future , so we better change all the street lights to LED" and forget about other issues.

Cee-Jay-Cee

No more sleeping on the footpaths for me.

Andy From Sligo

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

No more sleeping on the footpaths for me.

Blackout Blinds are your friend LOL

L1011

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

and the colour rendering and the light pollution is worse than the sodium lamps.

This absolutely isn't the case.

They're white, not a sickly yellow or approaching red that sodium have; and proper heads ("lumieres" I believe the industry term is) usually 100% nulled upwards.

Indeed if they were worse at light pollution as you claim the issue of them not having as much spread as the sodium lamps you have complained about wouldn't be the case!

Retrofits need to be done properly; not shoving new bulbs in old heads - 13m would suggest they'll do it cheap.


We were told sodium streetlights would cause all the "we'll think its daylight" issues too vs incandescent and gas or even mercury (the older high intensity ones, the ones that were bluer). Didn't happen.

Mal_83

Any other news sources for this?

Andy From Sligo

Mal_83 wrote: »

Any other news sources for this?

what do you mean? - any more news sources for the Donegal replacing streetlamps news do you mean?

water-man

This is already under way, at least in Ballybofey & Stranorlar, I've noticed on main street the lamps are much better.

NIMAN

Carn also had some changed out to LED recently.

Andy From Sligo

NIMAN wrote: »

Carn also had some changed out to LED recently.

any good? - are they as bright as the one they have replaced? (presuming they have replaced conventional lights) ..

malinheader

Whatever about the lights they would seriously need to start fixing the roads.

buckfasterer

The lights were changed in Letterkenny before Christmas. Awful poor light coming from them though, can't see people waiting to cross the road etc.

NIMAN

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

any good? - are they as bright as the one they have replaced? (presuming they have replaced conventional lights) ..

Its strange, they are a cool white light, if you know what I mean. Whereas the older lights would have been warmer.

Thing is, I don't think they illuminate the footpaths under them better than the old ones. Its hard to say really because its a different type of light.

Andy From Sligo

buckfasterer wrote: »

The lights were changed in Letterkenny before Christmas. Awful poor light coming from them though, can't see people waiting to cross the road etc.

I do have to agree, i am trying to think what the fault is here - do you think its the engineers havent done the maths properly and matched the lumens of the new LED heads to what the lumens a SOX / SON bulb gave off. I mean take a 70w SON sodium lamp (I know a lot of the road lamps would be higher than 70w or have a low pressure sodium SOX) but take a 70w SON bulb, one of those outputs in the region of 5600 lumens - so you would have to have a serious amount of bright LED lights in a head to match than lumen output wouldnt you?

So, OK if they are (by cheapness) just replacing the heads they want to be using an LED with the euivilent of 5600 lumens throwing out from the LED head .... or put up extra lamp posts / lighting.

I presume way back when they (engineers/council road lighting department) design road lighting for a particular road and use SOX/SON/MH and do some maths with Lumens of the brightness of the bulb they design the gap between the spread of the lumen output so that there are no dark spaces and that everything is evenly lit ... well if you go putting in lower power/wattage LED heads with not as much lumen output then things are gonna get cocked up and its going to be/look darker.

I replaced a 60watt incandescent bulb in the living room once with a 5w LED bulb "replaces 60w bulb it proudly said on the box" - was rubbish , so much darker that a 60w I had to have 2 running to get the brightness near of a 60w light bulb - yes admittedly it was 10w versus 60w so it was saving electricity - but maybe the councils when replacing the lamp post heads with LED they should double up, either by getting a 2xbrighter head than normal or for every street lamp post put another post in - then it might even up the lighting and be as bright as the the sox/sons they are replacing ... but of course then we are talking more money and if they are already spending millions on new LED heads and doing it on the cheap and borrowing the money they are harly going to put in extra lamp posts.

Andy From Sligo

NIMAN wrote: »

Its strange, they are a cool white light, if you know what I mean. Whereas the older lights would have been warmer.

Thing is, I don't think they illuminate the footpaths under them better than the old ones. Its hard to say really because its a different type of light.

yes they do tend to be bright white/crisp white light LED's in the head unit of a colour rendering of around 4500k - 6500k cloudy bright daylight whereas a SOX could be around 2000k and SOX low pressure sodium even warmer colour rendering

There are warm white LED but maybe the bright white LED's used in the heads give out more lumens (brightness) than warm white LED's and maybe thats why they use them .

if when growing up your eyes have been used to seeing SOX Sodium lamps on the roadside this is why the led manufactures say some people find the light colour odd when the roadside lights have been changed to LED, but then they say "your eyes adjust and you get used to it after a while" - well our estate at the back of us has had LED lighting for nearly a year now and I still find it odd and not as bright as it was before and some industrial estates and shopping retail parks have changed (or fitted from the start) with LED lamp posts and the light off of them I still find strange at night and not very bright with loads of shadows .

Of course another reasons councils and industrial estates and shopping centres retail parks have changed to LED and to bright white LED's is for security reasons . Low pressure SOX and SON light bulbs colour rendering are absolutely terrible for CCTV security cameras - they like nice white light to pick up colours properly and clear (say of a persons jacket colour, or colour of the person and other details) you could use HID sodium bulbs that give off a crisp white light but then we are back to they are not effecient in terms of wattage and have the old nasty mercury in them.

Andy From Sligo

https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/29/health/streetlights-improve-health/index.html



Different colour rendering makes quite a difference

Quackster

NIMAN wrote: »

Its strange, they are a cool white light, if you know what I mean. Whereas the older lights would have been warmer.

Sodium-vapour lamps are warmer, yes, but the LEDs replacing them are of a similar colour temperature to the mercury-vapour lamps that lit our streets for decades before sodium came along.

And I've never come across any reports of mercury-vapour street lighting causing sleep disturbances in humans or wildlife.

Andy From Sligo

Quackster wrote: »

Sodium-vapour lamps are warmer, yes, but the LEDs replacing them are of a similar colour temperature to the mercury-vapour lamps that lit our streets for decades before sodium came along.

And I've never come across any reports of mercury-vapour street lighting causing sleep disturbances in humans or wildlife.

I read it somewhere once in research (unless I dreamed it, thats possible, I do have weird dreams lol ) - in any case I cannot find anything to back it up now,always the way.

I would have thought anyway that if a colour temperature of a bulb mimicked daylight then I would have thought that would mess with the body clock no?

I was born in 1965 - all street-lighting i have seen on the roads have been SOX low pressure (35w and upwards) to be honest (the ones that start up red and turn to orange/amber after a few minutes) - maybe mercury vapour were used extensively for road lighting before SOX?

I have seen MBTF being used in some warehouses and car parks thats white and metal Halide's used - I have a 160w MBTF bulb in my workshop and it doesnt require any ballast or gear - was it them ones (and higher wattage) in use before SOX for road lighting?

Andy From Sligo

I do like the concept of these.
LED SOX lamp replacements - no need to change heads. they have a wide voltage range of 100v to 277v AC - and available in warm white 2700k
wonder why the councils dont retrofit these into the existing fittings instead of changing the whole head?

http://www.cespeled.com/products_list.aspx?id=73&proID=65

Andy From Sligo

worst use of LED lighting i have seen so far is the car park of the The Diamond Coast Hotel in Enniscrone, in Sligo - its wicked, all lit up with LED now but its so dark ! - terrible so it is, or it was when I went there last year

muffler

Andy From Sligo, has this thread anything to do with Donegal Council's expenditure or do you wish to discuss the technical performance of street lifting?

From your opening post and all your subsequent posts it seems to be the latter so I'm going to have to move it to a more appropriate forum as the discussion is certainly not exclusive to this county.

NIMAN

Isn't it SSE Airtricity thats replacing all the street lights?

Edit: just saw this on their websire:

We are Ireland's leading street light contractor, maintaining approximately 300,000 street lights on behalf of almost 90 local authorities in the Republic of Ireland

Andy From Sligo

muffler wrote: »

Andy From Sligo, has this thread anything to do with Donegal Council's expenditure or do you wish to discuss the technical performance of street lifting?

From your opening post and all your subsequent posts it seems to be the latter so I'm going to have to move it to a more appropriate forum as the discussion is certainly not exclusive to this county.

sorry I went off tangent - um yes, its a bit of both really, I wanted to know what people thought of the council replacing all the lights, but then started to veer towards the pluses and minuses of LED road lighting in general .. but connected to each other if you know what I mean.