6 ms·

I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on anima

by roughly 7mo ago

I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color the street lights should be, that's why they were the color they were."

linkjuice4all 7mo ago
I think we've learned a couple of times that lighting placement, temperature, and shadow-casting are not ideal [0]. Also some of the newer lighting does actually fade to a different color [1] so it's not just the base temperature of the new lights. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower [1] https://sigostreetlight.com/blogs/common-quality-problems-in-led-street-lights-causes-and-practical-solutions/ https://sigostreetlight.com/blogs/common-quality-problems-in...
cucumber3732842 7mo ago
I'm sure tons of people along the way "noticed" but if you're selling LEDs or you're paid by the LED people to create marketing to convince people that LEDs are gonna save the planet, you're not gonna bring that up.
- mikestorrent 7mo ago
  IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power. I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all over the place so that the aggregate light in the room fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all to be the same.
  - throwaway27448 7mo ago
    How many life forms do we have to kill before cost savings aren't worth it? Besides, we can have LEDs in better spectrums for under 1/5th the costs of incandescents. We just hired stingy motherfuckers and don't care about the repercussions of our decisions.
    - duskdozer 7mo ago
      I question the cost/energy savings. Seems to me for the most part any efficiency gains are being spent on making everything 5x as bright and expansive.
  - cucumber3732842 7mo ago
    >but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. Yeah I know. I love it in my house. On the industrial side, sodium vs LED is a much closer comparison generally than LED vs incandescent. LEDs kinda suck for high bay applications.
  - aliher1911 7mo ago
    Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of 2700K–3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity covers for higher cost.
    - dotancohen 7mo ago
      2700 is really cool. To the GP, if you're looking for something more like daylight but not noticeably yellow, try 3600k or thereabouts. The actual temperature of the sun is over 5000k (yes, the k in lightbulb temperature corresponds to the Kelvin scale of temperature) but after being scattered by our atmosphere it appears cooler. And where did all that extra light go? It was scattered around, making the sky blue!
      - 7mo ago
- bux93 7mo ago
  Those LED people marketed themselves out of a job, then. I repaced one (1) broken light bulb over the past 10 years, as opposed to 5 a year before switching to LEDs.
SyzygyRhythm 7mo ago
> that's why they were the color they were That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely used in San Jose because Lick Observatory could filter out the 589 nm light).
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- salawat 7mo ago
  ...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically implemented and scaled. Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
  - nine_k 7mo ago
    We of course can make LEDs of more or less any color. The current white LEDs are high-power blue LEDs that are covered by various phosphors to give a mix of colors for "full spectrum" illumination. Different color temperatures are produced by different mixes of phosphors. This is pretty similar to how the traditional luminescent (mercury vapor-based) lamps worked. But different phosphors have different efficiency and price. LED lamps were first introduced for interior lighting, where sun-like spectrum is welcome. Such LEDs were produced en masse and relatively cheaply. So street lighting naturally used them, because municipalities usually look for the cheapest viable option. We likely could produce high-power narrow-spectrum orange LEDs if there was a large market for the economies of scale to kick in. You can buy deep orange LED lamps today (look for color temperature 1800K or 1600K, "amber"), but they are more expensive, because they are niche.
    - josephg 7mo ago
throwaway27448 7mo ago
The posted article seems like credulous commentary, though.
anthk 7mo ago
I miss the aesthetics of the support for the street light themselves too. In Spain they used to be curved with a 'crown' shaped top, looking 'classical' and less hard for the brain as straight lines make the brain really tired. We are used to fractal and curved designs from nature, not to fake perspective points in every city full of straight lines. These could just reuse the current LED lamps by just redesigning the socket. Altough the materials should be changed as the old ones (I think they were ceramic and/or concrete?) could cause serious harms if they felt over random people walking around. And, yes, they can even break concrete pavement like nothing. I remember hearing a falling lamp+case near my home and upon falling to the sidewalk it sounded like a bomb, I am no kidding, even the floor vibrated and the windows nearly crashed. These things were really sturdy, either concrete or cement. I would love the same design but in magnesium, which can be lighter and maybe as durable, altough I know ceramic/concrete can withstand anything.
justonceokay 7mo ago
I wouldn’t change it for the world. I grew up in Minneapolis and moved to Seattle, so I went in a single night from sodium lights everywhere in a 500 mile radius to LED. It feels safer (subjective), more pleasant to perform tasks in, and less depressing. I should note I care 0% what the animals think of the whole affair. This is especially important at high latitudes where for months of the year the street lights provide more illumination than the sun for most working people.
drzaiusx11 7mo ago
Another effect observed with LED street lights, especially in my area, is that many have shifted from white light to purple as a widespread manufacturing flaw causes their phosphor coating to fail. The purple lights evoke a vaporwave/synthwave aesthetic like I'm in a bad 80s scifi movie. Unintentionally appropriate given the general state of things.

by roughly 7mo ago

linkjuice4all 7mo ago

I think we've learned a couple of times that lighting placement, temperature, and shadow-casting are not ideal [0]. Also some of the newer lighting does actually fade to a different color [1] so it's not just the base temperature of the new lights. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_tower [1] https://sigostreetlight.com/blogs/common-quality-problems-in-led-street-lights-causes-and-practical-solutions/ https://sigostreetlight.com/blogs/common-quality-problems-in...

cucumber3732842 7mo ago

I'm sure tons of people along the way "noticed" but if you're selling LEDs or you're paid by the LED people to create marketing to convince people that LEDs are gonna save the planet, you're not gonna bring that up.

mikestorrent 7mo ago
IDK if you've noticed but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. I like the color spectrum of a real lightbulb better, too, but not enough to pay 10x in power. I make up for it by using all kinds of random bulbs all over the place so that the aggregate light in the room fills more of the spectrum than if I coordinated them all to be the same.
- throwaway27448 7mo ago
  How many life forms do we have to kill before cost savings aren't worth it? Besides, we can have LEDs in better spectrums for under 1/5th the costs of incandescents. We just hired stingy motherfuckers and don't care about the repercussions of our decisions.
  - duskdozer 7mo ago
    I question the cost/energy savings. Seems to me for the most part any efficiency gains are being spent on making everything 5x as bright and expansive.
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago
  >but we are all lighting our house with bulbs that use 1/10th the amount of electricity as incandescents did. Yeah I know. I love it in my house. On the industrial side, sodium vs LED is a much closer comparison generally than LED vs incandescent. LEDs kinda suck for high bay applications.
- aliher1911 7mo ago
  Did you try using high CRI LEDs with color remperature of 2700K–3000K? When I switched from halogen to LED I did just that and the difference is not noticeable, you'll have the same yellowish tint and very natural looking colours. Even with expensive bulbs, extra longevity covers for higher cost.
  - dotancohen 7mo ago
    2700 is really cool. To the GP, if you're looking for something more like daylight but not noticeably yellow, try 3600k or thereabouts. The actual temperature of the sun is over 5000k (yes, the k in lightbulb temperature corresponds to the Kelvin scale of temperature) but after being scattered by our atmosphere it appears cooler. And where did all that extra light go? It was scattered around, making the sky blue!
    - 7mo ago
bux93 7mo ago
Those LED people marketed themselves out of a job, then. I repaced one (1) broken light bulb over the past 10 years, as opposed to 5 a year before switching to LEDs.

SyzygyRhythm 7mo ago

> that's why they were the color they were That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely used in San Jose because Lick Observatory could filter out the 589 nm light).

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
salawat 7mo ago
...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically implemented and scaled. Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
- nine_k 7mo ago
  We of course can make LEDs of more or less any color. The current white LEDs are high-power blue LEDs that are covered by various phosphors to give a mix of colors for "full spectrum" illumination. Different color temperatures are produced by different mixes of phosphors. This is pretty similar to how the traditional luminescent (mercury vapor-based) lamps worked. But different phosphors have different efficiency and price. LED lamps were first introduced for interior lighting, where sun-like spectrum is welcome. Such LEDs were produced en masse and relatively cheaply. So street lighting naturally used them, because municipalities usually look for the cheapest viable option. We likely could produce high-power narrow-spectrum orange LEDs if there was a large market for the economies of scale to kick in. You can buy deep orange LED lamps today (look for color temperature 1800K or 1600K, "amber"), but they are more expensive, because they are niche.
  - josephg 7mo ago

throwaway27448 7mo ago

The posted article seems like credulous commentary, though.

anthk 7mo ago

I miss the aesthetics of the support for the street light themselves too. In Spain they used to be curved with a 'crown' shaped top, looking 'classical' and less hard for the brain as straight lines make the brain really tired. We are used to fractal and curved designs from nature, not to fake perspective points in every city full of straight lines. These could just reuse the current LED lamps by just redesigning the socket. Altough the materials should be changed as the old ones (I think they were ceramic and/or concrete?) could cause serious harms if they felt over random people walking around. And, yes, they can even break concrete pavement like nothing. I remember hearing a falling lamp+case near my home and upon falling to the sidewalk it sounded like a bomb, I am no kidding, even the floor vibrated and the windows nearly crashed. These things were really sturdy, either concrete or cement. I would love the same design but in magnesium, which can be lighter and maybe as durable, altough I know ceramic/concrete can withstand anything.

justonceokay 7mo ago

I wouldn’t change it for the world. I grew up in Minneapolis and moved to Seattle, so I went in a single night from sodium lights everywhere in a 500 mile radius to LED. It feels safer (subjective), more pleasant to perform tasks in, and less depressing. I should note I care 0% what the animals think of the whole affair. This is especially important at high latitudes where for months of the year the street lights provide more illumination than the sun for most working people.

drzaiusx11 7mo ago

Another effect observed with LED street lights, especially in my area, is that many have shifted from white light to purple as a widespread manufacturing flaw causes their phosphor coating to fail. The purple lights evoke a vaporwave/synthwave aesthetic like I'm in a bad 80s scifi movie. Unintentionally appropriate given the general state of things.