New York City To Get LED Street Lighting
New York City’s Department of Transportation has tapped the Office for Visual Interaction for testing LED street lighting around the Big Apple. If successful, all of the city’s 300,000 street lamps could one day be made up of LEDs.
Of course, LEDs are just plain awesome! Their power consumption is much lower than that of standard bulbs. Heck, even lower than that of CFLs.
But the OVI contract doesn’t only replace the current high-pressure sodium lighting, but also introduces a whole new lamp pole as well. While I am a fan of LEDs, I am quite fond of the Gotham-styled lamp poles. Keep your paws off, OVI!
Okay, maybe the new poles aren’t so bad. The poles will be between four to six feet, and have up to 100 LEDs each. They will have four light sources per pole, and can create different light patterns. The light footprints can be tailored for parks, street corners or mid-block.
The city will begin testing with a mere six poles, and the testing period will end by fall of 2009. But even if the city approves the highly-efficient lamps, it’s likely they won’t roll out 300-thousand new lamp poles all at once.
Image: dbox
As a side note, the design stems from a competition NYC held in 2004. The winning design team was Thomas Phifer and Partners, with OVI as the lighting designer. The shape of the luminaire, along with the modified base and shaft were designed by these two firms along with Werner Sobek Engineers.
Most of what is stated here is, or was true 6 months ago. I am in the LED street light business and I can tell you the new technology is here to replace the decades old technology. It is not expensive as there is a 3-4 year payback. Why continue to throw good money after bad? Plus the light is a nice look rather than the ugly yellow from HPS lights.
[...] has outfitted the new R8 V10 sports car with all-LED headlamps, which consume about a quarter of the energy of halogen bulbs. According to an Audi press [...]
David Rochlin:
The bridge built here in Minneapolis to replace the 35W Bridge that collapsed is lit entirely with LED lighting. It is probably one of the best lit areas of roadway I have seen. Plenty bright and with a much better color spectrum than any other ‘high efficiency’ light that I know of short of extremely expensive HMI sources used in Theatrical equipment. All that for a fraction of the amount of energy consumed. (Sorry, but I don’t have the actual energy saving statistics to hand…)
I would say that the LED technology is there, and not stranded on some workbench somewhere…
Could you put me in touch with the City’s project manager; I’d like to know the manufacturer of the new lights etc. for an application in San Francisco.
Thanks,
RM
Global Warming, or Climate Change is real. The only scientists who don’t believe/concede that human activity is changing our climate are the ones on the payrolls of corporations who profit from causing it. There are hundreds of scientific, governmental and NGO’s working on this problem. Tundra that is thawing for the first time in 10,000 years, ancient Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets are breaking up in Delaware sized chunks, etc. Check out the UN’s information on this http://www.un.org/climatechange/.
There is no doubt that the activity of 6 billion people on the Earth is changing the climate. The only questions are what the effects will be and how can we reverse the most devastating.
The average cost of a HPS street light is approximately 70.00 per year and with CO2 emissions of 48 Kgs. LED although new enough no reliable stats have yet been confirmed it is estimated to be 25% of the running cost. The issue is capital cost and operating budgets do not allow for wholesale changes to the current infrastructure in most cities. Some cities are waiting for stimulus funding. City Los Angeles states on their web site they have some 242,000 street light sin operation with an annual cost of $17,000,000.00
For those that think Global Warming is here, then answer why the Midwest, Chicago in particular, had the COLDEST winter EVER ON RECORD!!
The big question about “climate change” is if humans are responsible or is it just a natural cycle. The true scientific evidence shows that humans have very little impact (negative or positive).
Look at Hiroshima and Nagaski. We were told they would be polluted for centuries when humans unleashed the worst weapon ever created. Guess what, not a trace of radiation now. The Valdez tanker spill in Alaska was supposed to have dire consequences for “centuries”, yet 2 years later mother nature washed away all of the oil.
DA said on February 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Global Warming, or Climate Change is real. The only scientists who don’t believe/concede that human activity is changing our climate are the ones on the payrolls of corporations who profit from causing it.
Oh really. Al Gore’s personal wealth was $2M prior to his fictious movie. Now it is $100M, or a net profit of $98 MILLION DOLLARS for talking about global warming. Wonder why he did not make a comment about the COLDEST WINTER ON RECORD this year.
NBC has made a killing on talking about Earth Day, Green Day, etc.
Universities do not get research money unless there is a crisis, such as “Global Warming”
Follow the money.
Needs to be solar powered, self activated by low light conditions, and why do lights in our pedestrian dominated city only face the street? It should also illuminate the sidewalks as well. Unless this light can bleed enough light into the sidewalk. The sidewalk should be as bright as the street.
Also in parks it should be motion activated with 360 degree coverage.