NYC's 250,000 Street Lights To Be Replaced With LEDs By 2017

An anonymous reader writes "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the city's 250,000 street light fixtures, which currently use incandescent bulbs, will be replaced with LEDs by 2017. It's part of a plan to reduce the city government's emissions by 30%. The LEDs have a lifespan of 20 years, more than three times that of the current incandescent bulbs, and Bloomberg says it will save $6 million in energy and $8 million in maintenance every year. It will be the largest LED retrofit in the country. 'The first of three phases to replace the standard "cobra-head" high-pressure sodium street lights, which will upgrade 80,000 at a time across the five boroughs, is expected to be completed in December 2015 with the final phase expected to be completed by 2017. Following the replacement of roadway lighting, decorative fixtures in the city's business and commercial districts will be addressed.'"

Comments

Re:I wish they'd do it here.

[mcgrew]

Yes, we've had LED traffic signals here for years, and I've only seen them obstructed by snow once. You need a wet, sticky snow and a swift drop in temperature for it to happen. IINM they put remote-controlled heaters in the newer ones.

And it seldom snows upwards. I don't think I've ever seen it snow upwards.

Re:Costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, its actually cheaper to replace them in large blocks than to replace them one at a time. Old tech told me once that when they maintained the long tubes at the factory high up. Once a few went it was only a matter of about a year or two before the rest of the them did and it was more disruptive, time consuming, and costly to replace them one at a time than to do it all at once. So, I've followed this process for most of my larger lighting projects. If you are going to replace one brake light replace them all. If you are going to replace one headlight replace them both.

Also, the nice thing about LED lighting is that the way it fails is it just doesn't produce as much light as it once did. So in 20 years if they want to put off the costs for another couple of years, it's entirely possible to do so.

Re:Stick with sodium

[Joce640k]

What about amateur astronomers?

Amateur astronomers actually make a *lot* of the discoveries and do a lot of the photography.

Re:incandescent != sodium

[SJHillman]

I did a quick Google to satisfy my curiosity and found a few things:
- While high pressure sodium gives off more lumens per watt, LED has better effective illumination (in part due to how our eyes can detect different wavelengths)
- LEDs are more directional, eliminating up to 40% of light loss due to reflectors
- In the end, an LED might only need to give off 20 or 30% as much light to still illuminate the same area effectively

Source: http://www.al-e.com/led-vs-sodium-lamps