New York City Street Lights To Go LED

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 19, 2008 @04:15PM from the big-apple-lite dept.

eldavojohn writes "Wired has a short piece on NYC's new street light project. I don't think we need to belabor the many benefits that LEDs hold over traditional light bulbs, but the finishing touches are being addressed, and they will hopefully be put into place sometime next year. This design won a competition back in 2004, and OVI has been whittling down the prototypes. At $1.175 million, this sounds like a pretty cheap deal considering the DOE forked over $21 million to 13 R&D projects along the same lines."

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Bad plan in snowy environment... by Anonymous Coward · 2008-12-19 17:17 · Score: 5, Interesting

Here in Portland, OR, we have already started to use LED street lights. And now that we're in a snow storm, these lights aren't working. LEDs don't produce heat (that's why they're efficient). By not producing heat, they don't melt the snow away from them. So all the LED streetlights in Portland are covered in snow and cannot be seen.
The old lights produce enough heat to melt all the snow. Snow in Portland is rare, so it's not that big of a deal. In NY, it's quite the opposite.