"terry" wrote in message
...
Often wondered why street lights on all night. Wasted energy etc. Also
unnecessary pollution where electrcity is generated by coal or other
fossil fuel. Could save some small municipalities some cost?

Apparently a German town/city has decided to turn them off.

However provision is made for residents to call a telephone code that
will switch them on for a timed period in their area. The call can be
made from a home phone or from a mobile/cell phone etc.

So it would appear that a householder could turn them on; as could
someone making a late night delivery, a taxi driver looking for
certain street etc.


A 2002 DOE report found that outdoor lighting in the U.S. used 58,000+
gigawatt hours/year. 93% of that went for roadway and parking area lighting.

And, that total doesn't include night sports lighting, on-premise signs,
building floodlighting or landscape/decorative lighting.

There are certainly savings to be had no matter what you think about light
and crime or safety. For example, what about the wasted light -- that
portion that just goes directly up into the sky from poorly shielded
streetlights? That waste has been estimated at 30% of the total power used
by streetlighting by the International Dark-Sky Association. So, just
controlling the wasted light would save $1.7+ billion per year if the
electricity costs $.10/kWh. Depending upon the fuel used to generate the
energy, less oil or coal would be used and less C02 and other environmental
pollutants would be emitted.

So, at least reducing the wasted light that does no one any good seems like
a no-brainer plus, as others have said, turning off or dimming down some
streetlights late at night when traffic is light, especially on freeways,
makes sense too.

Streetlights can now be addressed individually via internet technology and
so dimmed down or turned off when not needed.

Some streetlighting is also excessively bright as the newer car headlights
have some 4X the light output of older headlights. Oddly enough,
headlighting doesn't seem to have been taken into account in the lighting
designs for most traffic streets and highways.

TKM