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  #1  
Old Posted Oct 17, 2014, 4:35 PM
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LED street lighting

Created this thread to discuss LED street lighting in Calgary (and to attempt to keep another thread on topic).

Anyhow, the CoC is plodding ahead with the conversion to LED street lighting - nearest to my home is the community of Tuxedo Park and all I can say is I'm indifferent to LED based street lighting. Driving through Mount Pleasant into Tuxedo Park and it is quite an abrupt transition from the high pressure sodium fixtures in Mount Pleasant to the LED fixtures in Tuxedo Park. The LED fixtures have a much sharper drop-off/lesser spread which in turn seems to leave more dark spaces on a block but the whiter lighting is welcome in some ways too.

Certainly I can appreciate the daily energy cost savings that the LED's provide over the sodium fixtures and although the CoC claims they're using a "warmer" colored LED, the ones in Tuxedo Park still seem quite harsh to me. Of course, I remember the days when the CoC converted to sodium fixtures and how everyone didn't like the orange glow/light they put out - replacing the older, whiter mercury vapour fixtures.

Never the less, I support the conversion to LED fixtures for the CoC streetlights - am doing it slowly in my home and our community's new outdoor rink will most likely have LED lighting as well.
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  #2  
Old Posted Oct 17, 2014, 9:27 PM
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I think they need to work on where and how they're aimed, and how bright they are. I've walked and driven through parts of Altadore that have the new lights and the lights on some streets give off too much glare. No matter how they're aimed they're all too bright, they look like spotlights. A lower intensity, more uniform distribution of light helps night-vision more than a series of spotlights. Bright lights greatly increase the contrast between the lit and unlit portions of the street; dark spots seem darker.

I'd also like them to adjust the colour. The lights are somewhere between 5000 and 6000 K; they don't have to be 2100 K like the old HPS lights but no more than 3000 would suffice to make the lit portions of the street have better colour contrast while eliminating the harsh blue-white tones that are vehemently opposed by every astronomical society of good repute and the International Dark-Sky Association. Anyone that tells you the best lights at night are the ones closest to "daylight" (~5900 K) is an idiot.
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Old Posted Oct 17, 2014, 10:14 PM
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Never noticed LED street lights, will have to keep an eye out next time I'm in these areas.
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  #4  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2014, 1:33 AM
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Somewhat off topic and for pure interest sake, a picture of Calgary taken by Chris Hadfield while in space (are those LEDs I see?):


Source: National Post http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/10...you-the-world/
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  #5  
Old Posted Oct 18, 2014, 3:51 AM
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LEDs and HIDs (mercury vapour and metal halide) have similar colour temps. There's probably more HIDs (mostly the CBD, parking lots, car dealerships, etc.) right now in the city than LEDs. That will likely change in the next couple years.
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Old Posted Oct 19, 2014, 4:00 AM
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It will be nice if Calgary went with LED lighting. Edmonton has gone that direction and I find the light a lot better for driving at night.
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Old Posted Oct 19, 2014, 6:40 AM
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It will for the most part. It'll just take a while. 2500 of 90000 are being installed this year, with a target of 80000 retrofits by 2018.

I believe Edmonton has about 15000 installed
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Old Posted Apr 22, 2015, 9:34 AM
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Look before you jump

The buzz around LED's, as a symbol of the bright bold future, has delivered victory without tire kicking. If you query something like 'led conversion complaints' you will find alot of unhappiness about the cold institutional charachter, principally in the US, although most people just shrug. WARM is a synonym for BS in this case.

Try an LED source in a warm place in your house, like a couchside table lamp, compare it directly to other types. It is difficult to mask the unattractive aspects of LED. Better yet, get the city to light half the old city hall in LED and leave half of it as lit - see how it goes.

Our cities suffer from an overdose of ugly utilities. I have a bunch of fun LED light systems in home lighting applications. I am a proponent in appropriate applications. But, efficiency is no excuse for ugly, and I would NEVER place an LED source intentionally over my head, or ask it to do general area lighting.
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Old Posted Apr 22, 2015, 12:17 PM
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The newest ones are much improved. Try Luminaire bulbs, I got some from Costco. I ended up buying a dome light for my kitchen. They are a touch cooler than incandescent, but not by much. I think they will have the entire range figured out soon enough.
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Old Posted Apr 22, 2015, 5:50 PM
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I think The City should look at installing blue lights at C-train stations and through out the crime ridden beltline and core.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archive...event-suicide/
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  #11  
Old Posted Apr 23, 2015, 7:04 AM
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They may indeed figure it out but side by side, LED suffers from a narrow range of frequencies, which results in hard edges and monotone glare. So I have tested and rejected it in places where I am trying to create warm atmosphere. I use it for masked accent lighting and kinetic purposes.

If you need to take a leak in the bush, put your LED lamp on, you might see 5 meters if your lucky before your view is lost in some indeterminate fuzz cloud. If you want to see if there is a bear 50 meters away making noise, grab an old school 6 volt lamp that will send a concentrated beam to low lying clouds.

LOOK before you JUMP, collectively, we are losing this capacity.

Wikipedia has some interesting things pro and con. Here are some con, because they just don't seem to be on anyone's radar screen..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_street_light

Health concerns about LED streetlights[edit]
• Exposure to the light of white LED bulbs suppresses melatonin by up to five times more than exposure to the light of pressure sodium bulbs.[4] The fact that white light, emitting at wavelengths of 400-500 nanometers suppresses the production of melatonin produced by the pineal gland is known. The effect is disruption of a human being’s biological clock resulting in poor sleeping and rest periods.[5]
• Research at the University of Madrid Complutense University[6] has claimed that long term exposure to LED Street-lighting can cause irreparable harm to the retina of the human eye. The Madrid study said this was caused by the high level of radiation in the’’blue band’’[7][8]
• Artificial night-time lighting has various effects on humans (not to mention wildlife) and that exposure to optical radiation affects human physiology and behavior, both directly and indirectly. Many areas are not well understood, and a position statement from the Illumination Engineering Society (IES) emphasizes mainly the need for further research.[9]
• There is a main risk from glare. A French Government report published in 2013 agreed that a luminance level higher than 10,000 cd/m2 causes visual discomfort whatever the position of the lighting unit in the field of vision. As the emission surfaces of LEDs are highly concentrated point sources, the luminance of each individual source can be 1000 times higher than the discomfort level. The level of direct radiation from this type of source can therefore easily exceed the level of visual discomfort[10]
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  #12  
Old Posted Apr 24, 2015, 3:39 AM
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I live in the Glenbrook area and we have had LED street lights for several months now. It's interesting that some of them have already stopped working. I realize that we are a test area and hopefully the dead lights are not a sign of things to come.
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  #13  
Old Posted Mar 12, 2017, 2:31 PM
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Bump, our street just got converted to LED, can't say it's all that big of a deal. Little bit different color but certainly not the harsh white, kind of a warm hue actually. The city see,s to be moving along at quite a pace to get the LED conversion completed.
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Old Posted Mar 12, 2017, 3:55 PM
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The beauty of the LEDs in my mind is the lack of diffusion or spillage anywhere other than the road. It's actually quite an amazing difference, particularly when you're looking at a big road like Sarcee from a bit of a distance. The improvement in the night sky from within the inner city over the last few years is significant. I'm definitely looking forward to having the orange glow of the city from afar (Morley, for example) be nothing more than a bad memory.
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Old Posted Mar 13, 2017, 6:37 PM
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Will the faux-historic style streetlights be converted as well? Any examples of what those look like in LED form?
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  #16  
Old Posted Mar 13, 2017, 10:42 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Innersoul1 View Post
Will the faux-historic style streetlights be converted as well? Any examples of what those look like in LED form?
Airdrie has just announced that they will be converting about 3200 of the probably 5000 street lights here, only doing the cobra head style ones. Not sure what the faux-historic ones would get.
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  #17  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2017, 1:27 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Innersoul1 View Post
Will the faux-historic style streetlights be converted as well? Any examples of what those look like in LED form?
AFAIK only King Acorns (like the ones on 17th Ave SW) and Domus heads (those black bell-shaped luminaires) currently have a LED replacement. They're expensive, so I'm not sure if a full retrofit is happening anytime soon (or until at least all the cobraheads are taken care of). Currently, only faulted Domus and "McKenzie Towne" (those small globes) heads will see LED Domus replacement and faulted HPS Kings get replaced with a LED King.

New builds should also be full LED by now.

Physically, they look almost the same as their HPS counterparts. Obviously, because they're LED, the colour temperature of the light will be higher.
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  #18  
Old Posted Mar 16, 2017, 8:20 PM
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Also posted in the Canada section. Some downsides to LED's. Nothing is perfect.

http://www.businessinsider.com/citie...012-and-2015-1
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