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Detroit’s LED streetlights going dark after a few years
- mymythisisthis 8y agoWe don't need streetlights, they are a waste of energy.
- rtkwe 8y agoIdeally we'd only light the sections where people are at the time but lacking that the crime lowering effects are worth it.
- mymythisisthis 8y agoA city spending energy on lighting should have nothing to do with crime. It should only be considered when dealing with car driving safety. Want to reduce crime drastically in a city, legalize all drugs.
- rtkwe 8y agoStreet lights aren't just for cars they light the area around for pedestrians too. The only place that's true is highways and even there street lights increase visibility drastically compared to headlights.
- m-p-3 8y agoUnfortunately that's not how the real life works. Having lights is still a theft deterrent in some areas.
- icebraining 8y agoI think the evidence for streetlights deterring crime is not clear. That said, I think it is clear that people feel safer with lights, and removing that stress seems worthwhile. Although I do hope we keep pushing for lights that produce less light pollution; it has become unbearably hard to see a proper night sky.
- vinay427 8y agoI would hate this as a city dweller. Not being able to see what's 100m ahead of me, akin to driving on remote highways (with car lighting only illuminating their immediate surroundings), sounds depressing. In very dense areas, there's usually always some light from a nearby business that's on, but in other parts of cities streetlights throughout are very beneficial. For example, a lot of them help light up signs to assist pedestrians with navigation. Others indicate the existence of smaller side streets that wouldn't be visible until a pedestrian reached them. Yet others help to identify tram or bus lines, which can very useful for pedestrians.
- danso 8y agoWhat? Care to elaborate?
- mymythisisthis 8y agoCars have headlights and don't need the street lights. People are able to see well at night, once our eyes adjust.
- acranox 8y agoCars aren't the only thing that use the streets.
- bayindirh 8y agoEven a simple bike with a relatively powerful LED light (~3W at half power) can throw your night adjustment out of window for half an hour. Your proposal is not a realistic scenario.
- fwip 8y agoHard for your eyes to adjust when a car has got its headlights on.
- tdb7893 8y agoI need them as a pedestrian walking around generally. If it's cloudy at night I really can't see without them
- oftenwrong 8y agoAs you are discovering, most people object strongly to the idea of removing streetlights. Darkness == the unknown == fear. Yet, many people live without streetlights, and we have lived without streetlights for most of our history. Although streetlights and other persistent night-time lights are useful, they are massively overused, and are increasingly being overused as they become more efficient. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/10/led-light-cfl-b.html https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/10/led-light-cfl-b.html
- nerdkid93 8y agoI really hope for Detroit's benefit that the warranty was provided by some underwriter, and not from Leotek itself.
- rwallace 8y agoWhy? Is there a reason Leotek might be able to ignore a court judgment, or unable to pay?
- cr0sh 8y agoThis almost sounds like a case where the city cheaped out (maybe the budget just wasn't there?), and went with a third tier supplier. I noticed the article noted that units supplied from Cree, used in other areas of the country, are performing up to standards and not dying like the ones in Detroit from Leotek. To me, it's one thing if you're a hobbyist or something looking to save some bucks so you buy cheap LEDs drop shipped from China via Ali Express, from some rando vendor and manufacturer. If one or more die, usually it's not a big deal. But if you're building a product, or installing something commercially or at a government level, you should do yourself a favor and not go for the lowest cost. While I'm sure Cree LEDs are probably manufactured in China, too, they are likely made to a much different standard. For all we know, Leotek is using relabeled parts that are marginal or failed to pass QA inspections at other manufacturers, but they got a great deal on barrels of rejected LEDs, and decided to go into the commercial light manufacturing business. I honestly don't know who or what the company is. What I do know is the name "Cree" and their quality (which also comes with a hefty $$$ price/cost) - but "Leotek" sounds like a company you'd find in a random search on Alibaba. Maybe that's an unfair assessment; sometimes when ordering a large volume of parts, you'll get entire batches that fail in the real world when they passed QA fine...
- village-idiot 8y agoWhat’s interesting is that Berkeley used some LEDs from the same company, and I assume they’re not facing the same budgetary pressure that Detroit was.
- mc32 8y agoThe bay bridge project could have sourced the main steel parts for the eastern span replacement from US manufacturers but chose to go with a foundry in Shanghai. The USW, with all the pro-union talk in the Bay Area, cheap was chosen. Money talks.
- ProfessorLayton 8y agoI don't know if cheap is the right word for a project with a 2,500% cost overrun[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Brid...
- jedberg 8y agoI still don't understand this trend of replacing the sodium lamps with LED. The sodium lamps use roughly the same amount of energy, cast a light quality that is better for both humans and animals, and are already there, saving a bunch of money in doing replacements. Why are all these cities undertaking huge renovations to go to LEDs?
- melling 8y agoMy guess is LED lights are supposed to last a lot longer. The human cost of replacing lights is probably a lot more than the cost of the bulb. Labor is expensive.
- jedberg 8y agoNot really. The rated life of sodium is 24,000 hours, and LED is 25,000. With a lot of money you can get LEDs with rated life up to 200,000 hours, but that's not typically what cities are buying.
- TylerE 8y agoAs the article states the LEDs are failing well under rated lifespan. If I use conservative estimates (10 hrs per day, "few years" = 4), then these LEDs are failing at under 15,000 hrs.
- jedberg 8y agoWhich of course only makes a stronger argument for keeping the longer lasting sodium lamps. :)
- melling 8y agowhere did you come up with 25,000? The article says the LEDs were supposed to last at least a decade, which is the length of the warranty.
- jedberg 8y ago
- umvi 8y agoLEDs last a long time. Apparently some other critical supporting component inside LED bulbs fail within 1-2 years. Nearly every brand I've tried started flickering or dimming or failing in some way after 2 years of use despite the box touting 10+ years of life. Disappointing to say the least.
- Reason077 8y agoI’ve had excellent results with Phillips LED bulbs. Been using various models for years and I don’t think a single one has failed. Also, the IKEA ones seem fine.
- Grazester 8y agoSpeaking of Philips, I had a compact fluorescent bulb from them last me 8 years. This was used as an open garage bulb that would usually be on all night and sometimes all day if someone didn't turn if off during the day. This was in the 90's when compact florescent were not cheap in my country but we got tired of regular incandescent bulbs blowing due to the number of hours they were being left on.
- geomark 8y agoSame here. Multiple other brands have high failure rates in a short amount of time. In my case I think it is because of the poor quality mains power which suffers frequent spikes and outages during storms. Philips seems more robust to those conditions. They used to cost a good deal more but have come down to price parity with other brands.
- hevi_jos 8y agoI had the opposite experience. I have been using LED lighting for 20 years now. Are you sure your brands are original? Be careful if you buy in places like Amazon, at prices too good to be true, because they will be Chinese clones.
- umvi 8y agoYes, I've only bought LED bulbs at brick-and-mortar stores. I've tried GE, Walmart-brand, and Costco-brand. I have not tried Phillips which others here are recommending, so I'll have to give those a try.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoThe dirty secret of LED lighting is that while LEDs themselves last a long time, they only do so in the presence of good power supply design and good thermal design. If you cut corners on the power supply or thermal management, LEDs will burn out much quicker than older lighting technologies. The majority of consumer-grade LED "bulbs" available today are shitty on both counts, AFAICT.
- marcosdumay 8y agoFluorescent lamps have the same issue with power supply (but not heating). And compact fluorescent bulbs had the same issue of only bad power supplies being available. We urgently need some standards over electronics longevity, like the ones we have over power consumption.
- icebraining 8y agoIt would be interesting if there were standard warranty terms (no fiddling with the tiny print) and shops had to post the product's price/warranty-year ratio along with the regular price. Maybe it would promote some competition, as people would start to think in the longer-term cost.
- marcosdumay 8y agoThe energy consumption one has only a set of standard measurements. Many countries require that the seller do the measurement and place the results on a large tag. Nothing more, and worked wonders.
- inflatableDodo 8y agoThat's a great idea.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoAt least one local store chain has a own-brand LED bulb, where the name of the store is printed on the bulb, and they advertise a 10-year warranty. I've gone in and returned probably a dozen such bulbs without any receipt, just saying "hey, these are your bulbs, you say 10 year warranty, this is broken and they only came to the market 5 years ago". Of course this only works now in the early days. If the date of manufacture was printed along with the store name, it'd be problem solved forever.
- nullc 8y agoCities all over the country getting scammed into replacing their proven discharge lamp streelights for LEDs on the basis of TCO analysis that is predicated on false reliability figures. I'm sure some consulting firm is laughing all the way to the bank. Oh well, more cheap LPS fixtures for me... I was recently in LA and drove down to long beach, every other streetlight was dead. Maybe by the time they figure out what a disaster this is and have to redo it all, they'll do a better job at cutting out the light pollution.
- RickJWagner 8y agoWhat a nightmare. Detroit installs LEDs in the hopes of saving money and power, then ends up with a bunch of lights that need to be replaced. (Also, lots of more trash to deal with.) Ugh. I hope the right long-term changes happen where they are needed.
- tomohawk 8y agoThe dimming seems like more of a feature to me. The over bright / sharp led street lights are a hazard. Same with the led lights on emergency and other vehicles.
- bluedino 8y agoLED streetlights are terrible. Sure, they look nice, but they don't provide much light. They're always underspecced so you get a little square of light directly under the street lamp, but that's about it. Looks like early 3D videogame lighting.