NYC's 250,000 Street Lights To Be Replaced With LEDs By 2017 372
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.'"
Re:When do the unions go on strike ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably about as quickly as the plumbers' unions in Philadelphia went on strike when they learned the new Comcast building would have all waterless urinals in it. They sued, won, and forced Comcast to pay them to install miles of water that wasn't hooked up to anything. It cost Comcast subscribers millions of dollars.
Re:20 year lifespan (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with LEDs in traffic lights, in my experience just driving around, is that the main problem is the light module itself somehow fails such that some of the LEDs can't get electricity. This results in part of the LEDs not lighting. New Orleans is right on the ocean, so the salt water in the air is more likely to cause corrosion problems. The equivalent would be blaming incandescent lights because the bases of the lamps fell apart after wind shook the signals around too much.
And then there is the problem up north, where incandescent traffic light lamps would keep the winter snow melted. When they were changed to LEDs, the lights started to freeze over from the lack of heat.
LEDs aren't perfect for traffic lights, but at least they're actually monochromatic.
Re:incandescent != sodium (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, so does LED. They tested a similar rollout in Oslo recently, but had to stop when they discovered that the LEDs aged far more rapidly than the old sodium fixtures.
Source:
http://www.abcnyheter.no/nyheter/2013/06/17/her-er-grunnen-til-oslo-satte-full-stopp-pa-led-utbyttingen [abcnyheter.no]
Re:incandescent != sodium (Score:4, Interesting)
Another advantage, if purchasers care to implement it, is that you can have somewhat intelligent LED lights that dim down to 30% when there's no traffic around, so it's still light, but much lower power, then run back up when traffic is a block away. It doesn't add much to the system cost to add motion detection and communication with nearby lights, particularly since some industrial/commercial LED lights are adding selftest health/failure reporting already.