UK To Dim Highway Lights To Save Money

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UK To Dim Highway Lights To Save Money

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 26, 2012 @11:34PM from the those-greedy-corporations-just-don't-care-about-safety dept.

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.'"

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I for one by biodata · 2012-02-26 23:38 · Score: 5, Funny

welcome our new dark overlords.

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Korma: Good
Re:Highway lights??? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-26 23:42 · Score: 5, Funny

The Germans are in bed by 9pm.
Light pollution by Dave+Whiteside · 2012-02-26 23:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

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...

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who where what when now?
Re:Highway lights??? by pahles · 2012-02-26 23:48 · Score: 5, Interesting

Belgium (notorious for lighting every square meter of higway, it looks like you're driving in broad daylight) decided to turn of every other light a couple of years ago. After the number of accidents rose some 25% they quickly turned the lights back on!

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Sig?
Autobahn by Kupfernigk · 2012-02-26 23:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

Short answer: which have the better safety records, British motorways or German Autobahn?
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.

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From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
1. Re:Autobahn by tarks · 2012-02-27 03:10 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Well, at least in Germany deer must wear headlights and reflective gear if they want to cross a street at night.
Re:Electricity consumption -- where does it go? by bickerdyke · 2012-02-26 23:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Nuclear power platns don't have that, but coal and water plants do. And as you're not actually surprised by reduced energy consumption at night, reducing their output is feasable within a few hours. For the small, unexpected movements you have gas plants that can be turned on within a few seconds.
On the other hand, the street lights in populated areas (not highway lights, we don't have them here) are indeed used for load shedding of nuclear power plants. (Worked in a town with one until two years ago. saw the streetlights on at day quite a few times)

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bickerdyke
I might just be a luddite, but by Cryacin · 2012-02-26 23:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
1. Re:I might just be a luddite, but by Ol+Olsoc · 2012-02-27 01:52 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Without street lights, the area outside of where your headlights land will be dark if there's a moon, or a pitch-black void if it's a moonless night, vs. with street lights where the whole road is lit up.
  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's a matter of intuitively and practically knowing that daylight is best for vision. But we cannot afford to light up the globe to daylight levels. So we try spot lighting, which doesn't work all that well. In addition to the light/dark interface, we often have the light source being visible to the drivers. Given the intensity of the light hitting the surfaces versus the intensity at the source, your eyes will adapt to the source. So it is always safer to have shielded lights if you have them.
  There is a particularly pernicious "brighter is better" issue going on right now with the new headlights that are very bright and focused. Unfortunately, this transcends from the counterintuitive to plain stupid. The light beams are so focused that differentials in height can blind you. My first experience with one of these "gamma ray headlight" vehicles was being followed by a person down a country road with a lot of bumps. Every time his car was a little higher than mine, it would look like he was flashing the high beams. It was very distracting Worse is when they are coming toward you. The opposing driver might have their low beams on, but if they are at the crest of a hill, and you are coming up the hill, you get treated to a blinding flash of blueish light. I wonder about the safety of a blinded driver coming straight at you. Apparently the designers came from flatland.
  But it is the same thing as the "er" effect used so well in marketing. Bigg-er, Bright-er, Bett-er. It;s hard to convince everyone that brighter isn't safer.
  I think that dimming the lights might actually make the roads safer. Oops, there's that -er again!
  
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  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Re:Highway lights??? by bickerdyke · 2012-02-26 23:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

You're much more likely to notice that you forgot turning on your headlights if it's dark around.

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bickerdyke
Re:Electricity consumption -- where does it go? by ledow · 2012-02-26 23:58 · Score: 5, Informative

The same place all the other excess energy goes into - methods to try and store it and use it at slightly less efficiency later in the day.
The usual example is to pump water back up a reservoir that's being used for electricity generation. So when it falls down again tomorrow, you can get useful energy from it again at the right time and only lose a percentage of the energy to keep pumping it back up there until you need it.
Still doesn't mean it's efficient but the thing about electricity planning is that they KNOW when things are going to ramp up or slow down (even down to the timing of the adverts in the middle of big football matches!) and if they know, they can do their best to compensate.
More likely, if the motorways are switched off on a regular basis, they will power down a more flexible station during those times because they know they won't have to supply as high a peak. You can't "turn off" nuclear easily, but the infrastructure isn't all nuclear. You could easily keep them going all the time to supply the "base" current and deal with peaks and spikes (like the motorway lights being on) with other means and get to shut down OTHER types of station that you wouldn't normally be able to because of the demand required.
Re:Highway lights??? by Niedi · 2012-02-27 00:16 · Score: 5, Informative

Belgium (notorious for lighting every square meter of higway, it looks like you're driving in broad daylight) decided to turn of every other light a couple of years ago. After the number of accidents rose some 25% they quickly turned the lights back on!
Sorry, but that's definitely no longer correct.
They shut off most of it last year. Afaik it's still shut off and the reports on the effects ranged between "no noticable effect on the accidents" and "slight decrease". The light increased visibility, but the feeling of safety seemed to lead to more speeding accidents and reckless driving.
Re:Highway lights??? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-27 00:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

I doubt that highway lights are an actual safety improvement
I've done quite a bit of driving on UK motorways late at night and in bad weather and have to say I really appreciate the lit sections. Particularly in heavy traffic with fog, rain and snow it dramatically improves your visibility and I feel I can judge distances a lot better with them. I don't mind being on an empty unlit road at night, but a busy one (e.g. parts of the M62 on the north side of Manchester) can be pretty horrible.
Re:Electricity consumption -- where does it go? by welshie · 2012-02-27 00:38 · Score: 5, Interesting

Excess grid output, typically at night time, goes into places like Dinorwic (North Wales) and Ben Cruachan (Scotland), which are massive pumped-storage systems, which do a remarkable job of smoothing out the supply vs demand on the National Grid, by pumping millions of litres of water uphill at 'quiet' times, and can turn up the output on demand at ridiculously short notice (far faster than any thermal power station - oil,gas,coal, nuclear) when the population decide to turn on their kettles in sync during advert breaks on telly etc.
Re:EU Ratification by defnoz · 2012-02-27 01:09 · Score: 5, Informative

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.
Actually, the power saving for road lighting are negligible at best, or negative at worst. Low pressure sodium lamps currently in use produce up to 200 lm/W, compared to 100 lm/W for the better white LEDs around. There's not much that can compete with LPS for pure lighting efficiency, partly because the light emitted is near the maximum sensitivity of the human eye. Of course, LPS lamps produce monochromatic light which means they're not so popular for lighting urban/pedestrian areas, as people feel safer in a more "natural" light where they can see colours. But for roads alone, there's no need to see colours. Also, LPS is the least objectionable form of light pollution to astronomers, as being monochromatic it's easy to filter out (and there's not a lot of glowing sodium in space, so you're not blocking out anything of interest).