City swapping out light bulbs for LEDs

[duke]

An interesting idea from the USA..

The eco-friendly city about 30 miles west of Detroit says it will be the nation's first to convert all downtown street lights to LED technology, which uses less than half the energy of traditional bulbs and could save the community $100,000 a year.

"LEDs pay for themselves in four years," said Mayor John Hieftje, who announced the city's plans this week as it joined Raleigh, North Carolina, and Toronto in the LED City initiative, an industry-government group working to evaluate, deploy and promote LED lighting.

"They provide the same light, but they last 10 years. We had to replace the old ones every two years."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/10/18/leds ... index.html

I think this is an awesome idea. We should start a trial in an Adelaide suburb to see how they go.
I wonder how much money it would save and what the reduction in CO2 would be if it was rolled out across all of Adelaide.

[bmw boy]

I rekon there was something like this on the new inventors a few months ago

[jimmy_2486]

There was on beyond tommorrow.

It is a good idea, something everyone will be considering around the world soon.

[AtD]

Probably stating the obvious, but most traffic signals have been replaced by LEDs too.

[Bulldozer]

A practically useless article. It would be good to know what type the existing lights are and how much power they consume and how much light they throw out.

Sodium (orangey) streetlights are already rather efficient for the amount of light they throw out and last many years as well - when was the last time you saw a light in your street blow?

Still, at least it's better than those low-voltage downlights that everyone uses these days:

"We're saving power by using low-voltage lighting!" they say.

"No you're not" I say, "the globes are 50W and you have to use more of them to light the room than you would a normal globe because they are a direct light."

"But they're low-voltage!!!!"

[jimmy_2486]

Probably stating the obvious, but most traffic signals have been replaced by LEDs too.

Yeah like "No Right Turn" lights....lol

[Norman]

Probably stating the obvious, but most traffic signals have been replaced by LEDs too.

Yeah like "No Right Turn" lights....lol

And all the Red Yellow Green sequence lights.

I personally think all power lines should be put underground ASAP and light poles be put up like on the southern side of South Road. The wires makes the streets look ugly.