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UK To Dim Highway Lights To Save Money
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that street lights on thousands of miles of major roads in England will be dimmed during quiet periods to save money and reduce carbon emissions. The Highways Agency has already turned off the lights on more than 80 miles of the motorway network and will soon begin a survey of where this can be done on the 2,500 miles of A roads it controls. Nigel Parry, of the Institution of Lighting Professionals, says that technology enabled lights can be controlled individually and remotely. 'The idea is that when traffic is busy, such as during the morning and evening rush hour, you have them at their brightest. When the traffic disappears you can dim them. You can maintain safety and use half as much energy.'"
welcome our new dark overlords.
Korma: Good
I doubt that highway lights are an actual safety improvement, considering that the german Autobahn don't have them at all.
bickerdyke
I always felt that lights were less necessary when the highways are illuminated by all of the cars on the road.
"Each full-fledged installation includes a built-in speaker and a duo-band radio with data storage."
As this is UK, I expect it also to include camera recording everything.
Every lamp post spying on you. Wouldn't that be great?
This actually sounds sensible.
if this makes for less light pollution then even better.
now if we can get warehouses to shut off their lights at night even better - security my ass - have they not heard of IR / lowlight video cameras - that would help even more...
who where what when now?
Disclaimer: no expert in this area! I remember hearing stories that for electricity generating companies, the highway lighting was one way of consuming the excess production of electricity at night (knowing that a nuclear power plant does not have a big red control lever to lower electricity generation at night). Where will this electricity go now, just in the earth (all non-used electricity is wasted!) ? And who will pay for this, the UK consumers who will see a raise in their electricity bills for more wasted electricity at night?
Why not just turn them off if there's no cars? Ok, current lights I'm sure take time to warm up, but if switch to these new lowpower thingies, aren't they near instantaneous?
Or....
Glow in the dark paint on road sides.
As cars travel by with their lights on, it'll 'charge up' and provide a clear path for the next car! Just one or 2 lights where needed at junctions (and as a heads up that there IS a junction up ahead), and catseyes/glowinthedark paint everywhere else! Save a fortune, increase road safety!
Or solar panel charged LED lights for road edges like you get at garden centres. Power up in the day, gently glow at night.
Ok, next plan...
Glow cars. Seeing as body panels these days are plastic anyway, why not make them slightly translucent, and attach lights inside the panels to make the main car itself glow? You'd be able to see cars far easier, dim headlights, giving cyclists/motorbikes clearer visibility (same brightness on their lights).
As cars brake, not just their rear brake lights, but the whole car illuminates/changes colour.
All in the name of saving power.
(posting so I've something to refer back to for prior art one day).
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Long answer: street lights reduce the glare from oncoming vehicles, which is at its worst at busy times. On 'A' roads, they also let you distinguish motorcycles from our increasing number of one-headlamp drivers. On the other hand, I've seen the result of the Porsche that overtook me once doing at least 200k at night meeting the Polish artic with tiny lights covered in mud. With street lights, the Porsche driver might have seen the truck in time. As it was, Darwin claimed another victim.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
In the US in the 1930s it was common for major cities to turn off traffic signals in the middle of the night, also to save money on electricity costs. The criminal element quickly learned to use these times for their getaways, since they could cross town quickly without attracting the notice one gets when running red lights (cf. The Valachi Papers).
I know there are few traffic signals on A roads but, as this is the UK, I can't decide whether "in for a penny, in for a pound" or "penny wise, pound foolish" is the more appropriate idiom.
An interesting idea but surely this is kind of backwards ? During busy times there are lots of vehicles on the road with their lights on so it is easy to see other road users and it is less likely that you will find unexpected obstacles in the road such as animals and people straying into the road. However during quiet times only your lights are illuminating the road and you are far more likely to encounter unseen obstacles.
Why wouldn't you turn the lights off during rush hour? More cars mean more car lights, which automatically illuminates substantial portions of the road, whereas during trough hours, there are few cars.
It would thus make more sense to not have lights during high traffic times.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The biggest problem is that LED (CREE etc) based streetlights have not yet been ratified by the EU and so cannot be used on public highways in the UK. If they do become ratified then there will be huge power savings. In China, they have whole motorways lit up using this technology. Not only do they burn less power, but the lantern lifetime is much longer than the standard sodium units that have a warranty lifespan of 3 to 5 years.
One of the problems about dimming lanterns is that the lamp post spacing is all based around the lamps at a certain luminenscence and so dimming may create dark zones, or over bright zones. So some careful analysis will be needed about how the lamps dim and whether they dim uniformly or not.
Of course, the control system required is far more complicated here. I wonder how much energy is consumed in producing and maintaining the new lampposts, controls, communication network, etc.
I'm sure the lights were not designed to be turned on and off as often as they would be under this scheme. It would be interesting to see how much money is actually saved over time, once the increased wear on the lights due to the frequent on-and-off cycling is considered. How many more light replacements per year will now be required?
while an IR / low light video camera would do the trick of recording the crime well lighted areas deter it. A lot of criminals are stupid, but even the dumbest do not tend to do things in well lit areas.
Plus not all warehouses are closed at night, there is always the safety of the people who work there, including security people.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Never heard of cat's eyes?
As an aid to international understanding, I note that in the U.S. these are called Botts' dots.
There would be more money saved by making the people individually controlling these lights redundant?
They're one later.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
I find street lighting on highways annoying, Save money, turn off the poles and put down more reflectors. The reflectors have the added benefit of making the lane markings visible when overhead street lighting dosen't.
My most hated driving is at night while raining on a lit up highway. The street lighting illuminates the water on your windscreen causing almost whiteout conditions.
Adrian
There, half the energy used in the UK streetlights and only a slight implication towards safety.
But that would be the smart thing to do, so it won't happen...
About about dimming (to the point of turning off) daylight running lights, the absurd waste of forcing keeping car headlights turned on during the day after some bureaucrat read a story that it helps reduce traffic accidents in Nordic countries (which have a lot of dark days).
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
In Belgium they are doing this for several years. After having the (questionable) reputation of the most illuminated motorways and highways in the world they started dim to lights at night.
First it was only from midnight to 5 am. Last year they decided to turn on the lights only when it rains. This created additional problems with unforeseen rain or with local thunderstorms.
economic problems are starting to really hurt when the street lights are put out (or dimmed). Regardless of what everyone thinks, outdoor lighting does NOT reduce crime, but makes everyone feel safer. If you light one area, you only move the crime around. In the US, many gas stations have higher lighting levels than hospital operating rooms. Those bright lights attract attention and make the customer feel safer.
Street lighting does improve safety by reducing accidents, but can usually be designed better to be both safer and use the light better. Replacement of older installations that would save lives and money is a function of capital costs and the age of the installation; with the ROI being measured in years, so this doesn't happen quickly.
The use of LEDs could save money; 1) by reducing electricity use; 2) Smart systems that dim at different hours. But this only works if current lighting levels are maintained. Historically, this hasn't happened. The introduction of Mercury-Vapor, High Pressure Sodium and Metal-Halide (each about 15 years apart) have all "promised" to reduce costs, but universally in each case, the light levels were increased in lieu of saving money and energy.
Poorly designed outdoor lighting is linked to breast cancer. It also has dramatically impacted night time insect populations, which in turn has impacted the food chain. It also dramatically impacts migrating birds, accounting for tens of thousands of birds a year in North America alone. It has robbed about 2/3's of the worlds population to a primary paradigm that links all human cultures regardless of skin color, location or religion; the night sky. Can you name a single star? Did you know the names of those planets you saw beside the Moon last night or earlier this week? Odds are, you can't.
In fact experiments are already taking place with LED streetlights, which are variable in output and last longer the more they are dimmed. There is a roundabout lit with them not far from where I live. Although the payback compared to conventional lights is about 8 years, that is pretty good for an infrastructure project as is getting better as costs fall.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time.
What's not mentioned here is the human factor. Our retina uses cones for daylight vision, and are colour sensitive. We use the rods for night vision. and we see in black and white only. If you use bright lights, the cones take over and the rods fade. Then you drive into a dark spot, and you can't see anything until the rods kick in again. What you need is dimmer lights, so that the rods work all the time. The cones aren't too sensitive to red light, so you could use red lights, as used in aircraft and ships, so that we can use the rods all the time.
This is all complicated by those drivers with cataracts, who see oncoming headlights as huge circles covering the entire road. For these drivers, we need brighter lights so that they can actually see the road in front of them. What we really need is for the road itself to glow in the dark. Any inventers out there?
Except that the headlights only use power when the car is on the road, which for most people is less than 10% of the time, only have to light a small area, and represent a tiny proportion of the energy being consumed (in my car, an average of around maybe 0.5%). And you are only required to have them on overnight or during precipitation. The running lights nowadays are mostly LED and use a tenth of the power of the headlights. This is a straw man argument.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I foresee a rash of Darwin Award nominees racing to "crash" the party.
All too many people zip around there with the attitude of, "Lights? I don't need no stinking lights!" especially if it's dark and/or raining.
It is just possible, slightly likely, maybe even a reasonable guess that the folk who came up with this "dim the lights" idea have brains and have used them.
Poorly designed outdoor lighting is linked to breast cancer.
Then again, by now everything has been linked to breast cancer.
That probably won't save much juice, we don't have any highways!
Now, if they do this on the motorways, that might be different.
Lifesigns: Present Hair: Escaped Age: Increasing
Ordinarily I would not care about the street lights, but these days there are cars with VERY powerful headlights, probably Xeon etc. and they look like someone has left their main/high beam on, dazzling oncoming traffic. And there are drivers that insist every day is foggy and the front and rear fog light dazzles you. And then there are the drivers with one headlight working, not bothering to fix the other one making it hard to guestimate how wide they actually are.
At least with street lights, it helps to lessen the contrast between the lights and darkness, and helps you see how close you are to on coming traffic. The UK has some pretty small roads, not the kind of wide roads the US have (if you look at Google Earth).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Personally, I find my normal night vision + my headlights + tail lights of other cars is more than adequate to drive safetly at 70mph on a motorway or main road.
I find that (unless its an obvious danger spot) occasional lit stretches of road probably cause more danger than help as it takes maybe 30 seconds to get your night vision back to full capability after passing through them.
If they want to make motorways safer at night, then they should do more to reduce the effects of eye fatigue caused by repetitive momentary blinding from headlights of oncoming traffic.I suggest more natural light-blockers between the roads, such as planting hedges.
My first thought was of the refrigerator/freezer sections of many supermarkets. At one time, they had the lights in those cases on all day. Then, they realized that they were wasting electricity if nobody was by the aisle. So they installed motion detectors. Now, the case will be dark unless someone walks by. Then it lights up.
Perhaps street lights could have a version of that in place. Detect if there's movement and, if there is, turn on the light. To better account for fast moving cars (so that lights don't turn on as you are already passing them), link the sensors together. So Lamp A's sensor also turns on Lamp B, C and D. Finally, bad weather conditions could lead to the lights not turning on. (e.g. A heavy fog might mean the sensor can't see the car going past.) For situations like this, have the lamps calibrate every so often via some method. For example, a tiny laser light aimed at a reflector on the other side of the highway. If the sensor doesn't get the laser returning, it assumes bad weather and turns the light on until the next calibration regardless of any motion detected.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If the ideal solution has lighting vary with the amount of traffic, perhaps the highways should be an integrated system with wires sensing traffic and sensors measuring ambient light so as to produce a target amount of illumination, mostly regardless of the time of day. And if the lights are cut from 100% to 50% in a single step, it's going to be a little startling for anyone on the road. Hopefully they'll design a system intelligent enough to reduce the power gradually.
Prepare for every highway to be like a dance party, with all the lights flashing and what-not.
While I think it is responsible to try to save money I think it might be ironic--and slightly funny--to imagine the savings if we skipped out on lights altogether. HUGE savings.
They're called control rods. We tend to think of the control rods as being an on/off switch, but what happens in you insert the control rods 20% or 50% of the way in? You get fission, but at a lower rate.
The short answer is that nuclear plants are very expensive and the fuel is very cheap (relative to the amount of power released by the fuel). Owners of nuclear plants desire to maximize the revenue, so they'd rather have a market to sell the power to during off-peak times so they can continue to make money.
If you're selling power at, say, 6 cents per kWh, if you sell the power 24 hrs/day, that's 8760 hours per year you can sell electricity. If you have to throttle to, say 50% output for 8 hours/day, that means you are only at full output for 5840 hours, and are at 50% for 2920.
Basically, you can only get about 83% of the revenue over the life of the plant as you could if you can find a way to continue to sell the full output of the plant at full price.
Of course, if you built enough nuclear plants to provide a substantial proportion of the country's electrical needs like France does, then as another poster pointed out, you are pretty much forced to throttle the plant because power consumption really does drop off at night.
As someone else pointed out, electric cars are the perfect match for nuclear plants - they would be charging just at the time that other power demands are decreasing, keeping the total power demand somewhat close to constant throughout the day.
Your point about the interface between the lit and the non-lit is correct, but it has unintended consequences. I did a fair amount of research into street and highway lighting as part of astronomy related "dark sky" issues. Some things are counter intuitive. It would seem that the brighter the light, the better and safer the roadway would be. That might be true when entering a well lit area, but upon leaving it, you will see much less until your eyes adapt.
It'd be interesting to see any research on how sodium-vapor lights help with this. The orange-yellow lighting is commonly used on roads at least where I'm driving, and apart from being an affordable and energy-efficient technology, it may work akin to the red lighting used by submariners, or it may not: accordingly to Wikipedia, LPS emission spectrum hits the peak sensitivity spot of the human eye.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
I like the lights on thanks, too many stories of unsecured loads falling off the back of lorries/trucks. On a dark night with dipped beams you wouldn't see the debris until it's too late to maneuver. A few years ago at night on the M1 motorway in England I noticed in the distance a car parked up at an angle on the side of the carriageway, it didn't seem right. I then noticed the outline of a large flat object ahead in my lane, it was the bonnet of the parked car. I had to swiftly maneuver, luckily there were no other cars nearby. I didn't stop, I carried on driving whilst my passengers expressed their 'oh my gods'. I've often though whether some poor bastard behind me ran into it, I should've called the Police. Lights save lives.
one of the nicest things on UK motorays:
the colourful lights.
a shame to put away with them just for energy conservation reasons.
Belgians don't have a very good safety record as drivers either. http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/43314/E92789.pdf Shows that the Belgians have twice the number of people dying, compared to their next door neighbor, the Netherlands. Even Germany, with the no-speed-limits Autobahn only has about 60% of the number of casualties. Maybe it's not just about lighting, but also about culture and driver education.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Colliding with another car? Nope: Lone Driver.
You see cars come with these things called "headlights". You should try using them.
That said, a busy motorway doesn't need lights on either. Some lighting to denote the central reservation (LED, doesn't have to be bright) would be enough for those drivers with knackered headlights that don't illuminate fully.
Why not turn the lights off on everyone on earth?
Start WW3 by voting for one of the psychopaths
They should install headlights on their cars instead.
No, the problem is just as bad here on the plains. Our roads have bumps too, braking causes vehicles to dip and rebound, acceleration causes them to rise and fall back, you can't tell the difference between a focused beam sweep and a highbeam flash, and the whole thing is significantly distracting when you really need to be paying attention to other issues, such as the facts that your iris is now contracted more than you're used to, your vision into darker areas more impacted, and your risk factors are now higher.
Street lights are an old idea, now essentially or at least potentially obsolete. Cars: uniformly mount headlights and backup lights. People: can carry flashlights, which are much better than streetlights, as they put the light anywhere you want it, instead of in a fixed position that provides guaranteed hiding places and uncertain passage within fixed shadows. Streetlights are hugely overrated, and there are many communities, as I'm sure you know from your dark sky research, that get along just fine without them, likewise nighttime area lighting, etc.
Not to mention that areas that cling to this outmoded technology loses sight of all this.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Unless you have an extremely unusual vehicle, your vehicle cannot follow a path perpendicular to your headlight beams. If there is a vehicle keeping pace with you in the lane you plan to enter into to your right or left, you will know it is there by its own headlights. If there is not such a vehicle, then traveling for a moment ensures that the lane is clear.
As long as "unsafe" doesn't include "driving without headlights", no, you don't. The physics and logistics of the situation take care of themselves. You need to ask yourself: How is it that so many communities do entirely without these concepts of yours, and yet remain accident free? Are those people inherently better drivers due to some local magical effect, or are they simply driving better because the situation doesn't allow them to depend on exterior lighting (and for that matter, doesn't screw up their night vision with it, either)?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why is it that so many communities get along just fine without this "general view of the road"? It's because you don't actually need any such thing. And because that general illumination also contracts your pupils, which in turn reduces your night vision, which in turn raises your risk.
Drive at a reasonable speed, don't overdrive your headlights, and pay attention. Simple.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Some places don't have "annual inspections."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Even on dipped beam you can see it curving away into the distance.
German motorways don't have these.
Deleted
Those same streetlights create pools of shadow, and they are far more advantageous to criminals intent on doing personal harm than a directable flashlight, or a consistent level of illumination, even when that illumination is very low. This has always been true, but with the advent of FLIR capabilities, there is now no way to hide in the shadows. Many cops already have FLIR in the car even in my rural ara; you can too, it's about $5k right now, I think. I have it in mine. Seeing deer and people and other objects self-illuminating much further down the road than any rational headlight can reach is a huge safety advantage, and is in no way comparable to the general lighting provided by streetlights, where said deer and people are illuminated at the same levels as everything else. FLIR is passive, too, so it helps to return our natural night skies to ourselves and our kids.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
In Montana, when during a short and unusual period of rationality we had somewhat unlimited daytime driving speeds, nighttime driving was still constrained to relatively low speeds because there is no safe driving regime that includes over-driving one's headlights. And while during the day it was kind of difficult to get a ticket when driving reasonably, at night, they could nearly hang you at the side of the road if you stepped out of line. IMHO, that was driving heaven. Accidents declined below Montana's previous levels, and other than gas milage, the side effects were pretty much uniformly positive.
Personally, we (my family) bought a relatively high-powered sports car capable of long-term high speed runs, and intentionally focused on traveling during the day, as one got to the destination faster, the driving was a lot more fun, concentration was better as more things happen faster, and said concentration, easier or not, didn't have to be maintained for as long a period.
As an aside: Daytime driving is safer here because the animals generally keep their heads down or they get shot off by our not very lovable rednecks. Often heard here: "Wanna go bust some 'dawgs?" This is a euphemism for going out and "popping" prairie dogs, and anything else that might show its eyes or ears, with a high powered rifle. This is about as popular as drinking. and often the behaviors are combined. Anyway, it leads directly to a very cautious daytime wild animal population.
Alas, the feds applied significant pressure by threatening to withdraw highway funds, our state legislators invented nonsensical justifications to accommodate the idiot feds without exactly looking like they were accommodating them, we lost our driving paradise, accident rates went right back up, and there you have it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
These situations are adequately addressed by headlights. However, if you were *really* concerned, you'd invest in a FLIR system -- immeasurably better for your safety, and that of others, than any imaginable streetlight system -- even better than daylight.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They don't help at all, because the Color Rendering Index for sodium lamps is shit, especially low pressure lamps. The light is ALL yellow and it's more difficult to tell distance/recognize shapes/etc.
The third world already saves electricity either by not having public lighting or having a low power light.
I don't know what kind of paint they use in California when striping the roads but when it rains the lane markings pretty much vanish by day and by night. UK roads have much better reflection going on. You've got the really dark tarmac contrasting with sparkling white stripes and the self-cleaning glowing cats' eyes in the middle. Makes even the smallest country road appear to light up like a Christmas tree when you shine your headlights on it.
You know what'd be cool though? Street lights that only switch on when a vehicle approaches. Of course the sensor equipment would be costly so the energy savings would need to be substantial to justify it. I was just struck by a great system I saw in Vancouver airport where the escalators all crawl really slowly until you approach; once your presence is detected they go back up to normal speed again. Good eh?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
In Switzerland a marshaling yard is switching from conventional lamps to LEDs. The TV program Einstein reported about it.