LED breakthrough improves the efficiency of street lights
Brighter future for UK streets
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A lighting system developed by a Yorkshire company could one day replace traditional sodium street lights across the UK.
Carbon Reduction Technology (CRT) claims its LED lighting system dubbed ‘e-lamp’ uses up to 75 per cent less electricity than traditional sodium street lights and is much more efficient than other LED lights on the market.
CRT co-director William Robson said the e-lamp’s improved efficiency is due to its patented microprocessor, which controls the voltage, current, resistance and working temperature of the LED.
‘We operate our LED lighting system at a much cooler temperature than anybody else,’ he said. ‘That helps with the efficiency.’
Robson added that LEDs are commonly used on walkways and car parks, but street lighting is a relatively new application area. The CRT e-lamps are currently being trialled for this purpose with two local councils.
Following those trials, Robson said CRT plans to market the lights throughout the UK and later India and North America.
He added that it will likely be a trend in the near future to switch from traditional sodium street lights to LED. ‘A traditional lamp will last between three and four years,’ said Robson. ‘An LED street lamp will last roughly 50,000 hours, which in the lifetime for the lamp is in the region of around 10 to 12 years.’
Robson added that another advantage is that LEDs emit white light, unlike a sodium street light’s yellow glow.
‘With a white light colour recognition is very good, so if you are using the lights in conjunction with CCTV cameras, there will be better recognition of colours and faces,’ he said.
CRT recently received £300,000 in funding from angel investors Ewin Woodward Development to take the concept further.
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Readers' comments (14)
Anonymous | 13 Jan 2010 2:00 pm
White light may be good for security, but not for amateur astronomers. The sodium light can easily be filtered out. Better design of the lights is required so more of the light goes down into the street and not into space!
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Anonymous | 13 Jan 2010 2:00 pm
Very disappointing to read that colour reproduction is considered important with street lighting. Lighting engineers should realise that, for main roads and motorways, the design codes require the background to be lit (negative contrast) not objects in the foreground (e.g. pedestrians). The use of white light does not give the best performance for road safety, therefore - stick to the sodium lighting. Also, using brighter lights means that neighbours to the lighting (i.e. residential properties) have to endure far greater levels of intrusive (and unnecessary) light into windows, particularly bedrooms. There is a law that says that I, as a private individual, must not cause nuisance to my neighbours with light (criminal offence, note) but many lighting engineers in this country still ignore the effects of their actions (street lighting is a very good example as it is the major source of unwanted light in the country). Brighter lights will only exarcerbate the problem of intrusion and will also add to the loss of the splendour of the night sky. It is uneconomical for unwanted light to be restricted so this latest technology will not be any different from the nuisance already created. It's not new light sources that are needed but new thinking to light only where light is needed - a seemingly impossible task, looking at the new lighting schemes being installed.
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Anonymous | 13 Jan 2010 2:18 pm
The two previous comments miss one of the fundamental greats of LEDs - directional light output. Where the traditional bulb gives light over 360 degrees, LEDs can have lenses giving a dispersion angle as low as 5 degrees. This would allow all of the light to be directed where it is required, unlike the traditional lamps, which would need costly reflectors and lenses to achieve the same.
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Anonymous | 13 Jan 2010 2:40 pm
Perhaps a great way of saving energy is to have street lights switching on only when there are pedestrians around. The rest of the time they could switch off. This saves energy, reduces light pollution and extends the working life of the lamp. I acknowledge that this would not be suitable with the current discharge lamps due to the time they take to get to working temperature, but may be a possibility with LED technology. On the subject of LED's white is not the best colour as there is too much reflection in fog etc. but given the range of colours now available from LED manufacturers this should be easily overcome.
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Anonymous | 13 Jan 2010 2:46 pm
I have always thought that one of the advantages of the yellow sodium lights (well this is what I was taught at school) was that they are better in foggy conditions as they show objects with a better contrast than a white light that just...well whites everything out!
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S. Martin | 13 Jan 2010 7:25 pm
The main benefits of such systems are the ability to control the light from individual, or clusters of LED's. This means there are not the bright then dark areas between lamp standards, thus a more even light output.
Current developments also mean the light output colours can be subtly changed or altered to suit a wide range of conditions such as heavy rain, mist, or even fog; giving the optimum or best light output for the conditions.
Many other developments are in the pipeline, these include the LED's abilities to be run from low voltages, this means battery back up for individual lamp standards, and the ability to utilise solar power to charge these back up batteries.
With current battery technologies, and solar power advancements, we can see the time coming where street lights will be virtually self sufficient, this means lower power bills, and the ability to work during power failures.
Its a ‘win win’ situation.
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Anonymous | 13 Jan 2010 9:05 pm
One of the comments on this article states that one of the greats of LED lighting is its directional light output. Currently, there are many manufacturers of streetlights who design their luminaires to throw light on to the faces of buildings (including in to windows) even though they are only meant to light the road/pavement. It is not the light source that is the problem - it is the misuse by lighting manufacturers. Many conventional luminaires using discharge lamps can be fitted with the manufacturer's louvres to prevent light spill but they don't do it. Don't hold your breath for LED streetlights to remove an intrusive nuisance that has existed for decades and that will exist for many more years unless legislation is brought in to force the streetlight designers to act as responsibly as the private individual is currently forced to act by law. The efficiency of LED lights will cause the irresponsible to throw light everywhere, not just on the road, because they know no better. Road safety will also suffer because bright white point source lights cause disability and discomfort glare to drivers such that their vision is impaired.
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Joanna Walls | 14 Jan 2010 8:53 am
Whilst I agree with the concept of using LED street lighting to save a huge 75% of energy, I also think that emitting white light would not be a good idea. You only have to see the effect of a full beam in foggy driving conditions to see that. However, I do think that if they fit yellow light covers to the LED street lights the problem would be solved.
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David Cutter | 14 Jan 2010 8:54 am
Switching different LEDs within a cluster to give more emphasis to a particular colour or beam direction is easy and can be programmed to respond to any local condition, eg fog, time, area occupation, security situation, limited only by imagination, desire and need. However, a lot of time will be needed to determine all these conditions for individual or groups of lamps covering an area. There's no fundamental reason why they shouldn't all be linked by computer and controlled on the fly as circumstances arise, like motorway signage.
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Paul | 14 Jan 2010 5:06 pm
Computer control and inevitable wireless transmitters aren't exactly what's needed for saving energy.
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