In article ,
"Arfa Daily" writes:
Has anyone got any long-term experience of LED street light replacements ?

I've watched this being done, and then abandoned, in a number of places.

The reasons for fitting them a
1. The maintenance company makes money out of doing the work, and so puts
a lot of effort into selling it to the council.
2. The promise of maintenance-free lighting looks attractive to the council.
3. The energy savings look attractive and easy to sell to the public (even
though, as you say, they aren't very significant, particularly when
replacing low pressure sodium which is very efficient).
4. The promise of good colour rendering.

These points actually resolve out more like...

1. only makes sense if the existing lights are at end of life, and I've
often seen this done when that's not the case.

2. Many LED lamps have turned out to have very low reliability. They're
often manufactured by newcommers to outdoor lighting, newcommers to
outdoor electronics, and the result is very short life - shorter even
than the relamping periods for current lamps.

3. Unfortunately, these decisions are often made by councillors, who
are not technically competent to make them, nor to read past the
selling claims of the installers.

4. LEDs can have good colour rendering, but LED streetlamps rarely
give enough lighting to trigger colour vision, so you are effectively
locked into black-and-white moonlight vision mode.

The other thing is that they are very directional and only light the
road surface. Areas outside this such as front gardens and doorways
are in darkness, which makes many people feel a lot less safe.


My observation is that councils give up with LED lighting in about 2
years, and switch over to fluorescent lanterns, although they aren't
likely to replace the areas already fitted with LEDs.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]