SCE never exceeds 10-15 amps per street lighting circuit. Maybe PEPCO is the second worst utility in the USA, after LIPA.

Well.....i see all over the internet that PEPCO is the worst....LOL.....

Do to know what brand lamps PEPCO use. I have seen GE lamps here cycle within a few months.

I believe GE EcoLux lamps are used by NGrid which explains the extrememly yellowish look to new lamps as well as Them not lasting as long. Most GEs here don't seem to really be that bad. I prefer Sylvania any day though since they're better quality and the color is closer to the full mercury HPS lamps unlike GEs. I don't know about Altos though as they were never used here. The only Philips lamps were 50W lamps strictly installed with T&B 113s according to Joe Maurath. I guess maybe the lamps and fixtures may have shipped together? (just a guess, though it's likely that the lamps were separete...)

Well, BGE uses GE lamps, and I don't see early cyclers.......I think PEPCO may be using GEs or Philips I am not sure but PEPCO is using coated BT Sylvania HPS lamps for their brand new HPS Ballast in Arm that they recently replaced with to wipe out a lot of MV powerbrackets...

Michael, are you SURE Sylvania is closer to the full mercury HPS? I mean when I test the lamps...Sylvania tend to lack the blue glow during warm up while the GE's have the most. Sylvania also starts up differently from the other two big brands. Sylvania's HPS have Xexon in them.

the 70W lamp i had was, though perhaps it wasn't an eco lamp... Niall has it now. Aren't the streetlights run off the same circuts as the houses? I was under the impression they were.

Some streetlights are, some aren't......the post top in front of my house is in the same circuit......usually a row of streetlights are I'm separate circuits.....but they may be in the same main transformer though.....so if local power goes out due to main transformer of course streetlight goes out too.....

But I'm sure you have seen rows of streetlights out but neighborhood houses and buildings have power....

SCE tends to use separate wiring for street lights, although they are fed from the same secondary lines that also power residences, etc. PG&E wires their lights straight from the secondary lines. I think SCE uses lots of Philips lamps and PG&E uses lots of Sylvania lamps (and some Philips). Some Philips HPS lamps fail within 6 months, others seem to last ok. Caltrans (California highway authority) uses a mix but lots of GE and I notice they have premature failure problems, even in brand new fixtures.

@ Jace; actually whenever I've seen the house power go out, the streetlights go out too. During a storm over the summer the power kept going on and off and so did the streetlights. It's interesting how some lamps restrike faster than others. The lamp in front of my house takes a but longer to restrike than the streetlight before mine. I guess Narragansett Electric and NGrid have their lights wired directly to the secondary lines? I can see right on the pole that the leads from the street light conenct to the same wires as my house feed and my neighbors' feeds. I noticed a transformer only controlls 3-4 poles on my street. There's a transformer every 4th pole with the exception of an extra transformer added the next pole down from mine.

I noticed NGrid seems to have bad trouble with dayburners on RIDOTs freeways. I mean some lights were fixed and were dayburning after a day or two! And this is beyond nuts, but some lights were relamped without swapping out the PC and the old PCs are bad! NGrid seems to eb VERY lazy with fixing RIDOT's lights. I've seen them do about a dozen of so lights then quit and come back a week later and do another dozen or so. they've been working on the Rte 37/I-295 interchange for over a year now and they've still neglected to fix all the lights. It doesn't help that a third of the lights are on 24/7 either. and again: BRAND NEW lights, PCs, and lamps!

Could high line voltage or low line voltage or overloading the circuts cause this? I've noticed especially with the new relay controlled circuts that the lamps don't last as long.

Duquesne Light isn't the greatest power company either, they take forever to respond to a street light outage.

All our streetlights are taped directly to the secondary as with most utilities here in the northeast.

As for companies taking forever responding to streetlight outages, I can tell to first hand, streetlights is the least concern for there is no money in maintaining them. We are currently selling off our lights to the towns to let then take over responsibility. National grid is starting to do the same here in Massachusetts. In our service territory alone, we have sold off 5 towns and now the only lights we will service are PAL fixtures.

Yeah if a street light is burned out or not working, the city still gets billed for it so they don't care. They only care about dayburners since that's when they start to loose money. Though NGrid is actually better at fixing dim/cycling/out lamps than they are with dayburners.

I meant when street light outages are reported, Duquesne Light takes forever to make repairs. It shouldn't take them 3-6 months just to repair or replace a street light.