"TKM" wrote in
news

"Red Green" wrote in message
...
"TKM" wrote in
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"terry" wrote in message

m. ..
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




I still say and have said for years that the answer to all this
energy stuff is lightning. Stop ****ing around with seaweed fuel and
light bulbs that are dimmer than Bush. I mean there's even some gypsy
wagon looking guy
on TV pimping seaweed pills to clean out your asshole. What, is
seaweed like baking soda or something - airplane fuel, colon cleaner,
bunyan annihilator?

There's this paradigm that the answer to oil replacement is to make
alternative fuel out of something else. All Rube Goldberg if you ask
me. Electricity is out there in it's pure form and lots of it.
Harness, control, store and convert to whatever. The Exxon's, Arab's
or anybody else
can't buy up the source and charge for access. It's almost
everywhere.

58,000+ gigawatt

One good lightning storm is one city in one day. Chicken ****.
Shouldn't really use that one. I'm sure the government is paying big
bucks to someone
to try and make chicken **** energy.

Go for it. Next lightning storm go stand in Possum Lake holding a
nice long metal boat mast. Have someone --- oh maybe 500 feet away --
ready with a camera to snap the action. You might make a great
battery. If not, you can sell the picture.

TKM



With hair pointed vertically and skin toasted beyond, I'll probably look
like Buckwheat.


TKM: "Well Red, how'd it work?
Red: "OTay!"