Posted on 10/18/2007 10:01:07 AM PDT by decimon
DETROIT — How many Ann Arbor city workers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Soon, none.
Instead, they will be installing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, to replace about 1,400 street lights.
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...LED technology, which uses less than half the energy of traditional bulbs and could save the community $100,000 a year.
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..."LEDs pay for themselves in four years," said Mayor John Hieftje...
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(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
*sigh* yeah. If you live in a low sodium illuminated area, you can get goggles/glasses that filter out that wavelength, and will give you back a dark sky and stars.
The best place to see a set is the intersection of 3040 and 2499 (Flower Mound Road and Long Prairie Road) in Flower Mound. The entire intersection is lit up by LED tech, including the street lights. These are the lower power, less startling lights, BTW - so don’t think the dimness is characteristic of all LED lighting.
Does anybody know if the price for these units will drop? If this is new , then the price will be high. Look at plasma TV sets-—they have come down nicely in price.
They sell heater tape for pipes that only draws current near freezing.
LOL! That's why "better" was in quotes...
As a former LA resident, I can tell you that LA DOES have equivalents - Eagle Rock Lake Park, MacArthur Park.
And having lived near MacArthur Park, yes, there is more crime in there than in outlying areas.
No, but I have noticed that areas with high crime tend to install more lighting...
Yes. Moore's Law.
I like the LED lighting better, though. While it does wash out most colors, it does not wash out ALL colors like a sodium lamp does. And there’s less glare with most units I’ve seen.
Target acquisition is much better with the LED lights. :)
If you live in a low sodium illuminated area, you can get goggles/glasses that filter out that wavelength, and will give you back a dark sky and stars.
Not quite. They are only affective to a degree.
The solution is, those that have produced these lights that destroyed the night skies for so many, should be producing light that is directed towards the ground where it is intended, not scattered up into our atmosphere, turning the night sky into an ugly, washed out empty, milky void.
I dont forsee too many morons(which is to say none) putting huge ladders up in intersections to steal a few LEDs.
You got cheap LED lights. I use a Cateye Tripleshot and a Cateye Doubleshot on my mountain bike for trail riding at night. It’s about $600 for the pair, but they’ve been burning for two years of extreme off-road use. These guys have held up where HID and halogen have failed me in the past.
I'm tied into the electronics industry and have had discussions with some of the back room folks (who normally don't get let out in public) where their talking about 30 to 100 year expected life of the white LEDs that are only 1 or 2 development cycles down the road. that's 18 to 36 months from now. Now, those folks are mostly talking about ones intended as backlighting for things like LCD panels, but the technology is related and offers the same type of life expectancy potential to other applications.
Right now the expected life of the flourescent tubes used for backlighting on LCD panels is 6 years and that is the limiting factor on their lifespan. We're talking about the impact of having displays that live not just two times the expected useful life of the PC but 10 times. It makes a difference in your TCO planning and your entire theory of how you manage that TCO. That makes it a topic I try to keep up with.
And flourescents have nasty chemicals in them. They're not really dangerous, but they are about to be subject to some really onerous environmental legislation, starting in the EU. Flourescents are about to be painted as the next big threat, following global warming, of course.
On the flashlight anecdote, that's really first generation stuff. Fourth generation stuff is being manufactured now, but it won't get down to the price point for things like flashlights for 1 or 2 development cycles.
true. plus the current light bulbs are environmental hazards when broken. lots of Mercury in them.
both in some cases... about time they did street lights too, the DOE has been pumping tons of our tax money into LED tech since the ‘80’s
It's on its way. Give it a few more years until the prices come down and the technology improves.
That makes sense. I don’t get to Flower Mound, which would explain why I hadn’t seen them. I was thinking you were talking about in the city. I couldn’t see Dallas springing for them, since they can’t even afford to maintain their infrastructure.
Agreed - I’m not sure why Dallas even has the twelve they do, other than maybe it was part of some sort of Federal study/grant or something?
They’re in the most useless parts of town, too - down in South Dallas. Saw them on my way to the Fair last year.
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