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Old vs new LED and the HUGE lumen depreciation
This was taken on a street in the San Fernando Valley. Here there are two LED street lights. The one in the foreground is over 4 years old, it's a Beta LEDway and the one in the background is a Leotek ECObrahead replaced a failed LED street light recently. They are 150w HPS equivalent. Note how much brighter the pavement appears under the new Leotek in the back? The Beta LEDWay now looks like a 40 year old color improved mercury lamp, yet it got only 20,000 hours on it. There are several other spot replacement examples of LEDs that failef around where I drove. One street had two newer ones on the same block. They are brighter with a crispy color despite having fewer LED emitters than the older ones.
Keywords: American_Streetlights

Old vs new LED and the HUGE lumen depreciation

This was taken on a street in the San Fernando Valley. Here there are two LED street lights. The one in the foreground is over 4 years old, it's a Beta LEDway and the one in the background is a Leotek ECObrahead replaced a failed LED street light recently. They are 150w HPS equivalent. Note how much brighter the pavement appears under the new Leotek in the back? The Beta LEDWay now looks like a 40 year old color improved mercury lamp, yet it got only 20,000 hours on it. There are several other spot replacement examples of LEDs that failef around where I drove. One street had two newer ones on the same block. They are brighter with a crispy color despite having fewer LED emitters than the older ones.

image~169.jpg image~139.jpg image~171.jpg image~164.jpg image~162.jpg
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Filename:image~171.jpg
Album name:Silverliner14B / los angeles dwp/bsl street lights
Keywords:American_Streetlights
Filesize:277 KiB
Date added:Jun 21, 2014
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URL:http://www.galleryoflights.org/mb/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=17700
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Silverliner14B   [Jun 22, 2014 at 04:24 AM]
What do you think guys?
Form109   [Jun 22, 2014 at 06:06 AM]
well I can see the difference on the pavement definetly,but the excessive glare from the first fixture throws me abit.

I haven't had enough time to compare LED Fixtures in fort worth but I do know of SEVERAL locations that had test patches of LED's returned to conventional HID Fixtures!
joe_347V   [Jun 22, 2014 at 06:40 AM]
I wonder if the cities who jumped the gun and fitted LED fixtures early on are starting to regret their decision after seeing them dim out so quickly. If they dim out that quickly, it seems HPS or CMH is more economical.

Haven't paid attention here if our LEDs have started to dim though.
Silverliner14B   [Jun 22, 2014 at 09:27 AM]
I know, its confusing because I took this picture within the beam angle of the first one. I should find a better example the next time I am around at night in LA. But I can tell you all the spot replacements clearly look brighter.
streetlight98   [Jun 22, 2014 at 03:21 PM]
I wonder if they've actually dimmed or if the new fixtures are simply brighter for whatever reason? But if they are dimming, it will be hard to notice unless they install spot replacements like this. Because if all the fixtures dim at the same rate, you'd never notice the difference because it's too gradual. It's like with a dimming MV lamp. If you see it every night you can't really tell it's dimming. Even if you come back 5 years later you won't really be able to tell unless you have a fresh lamp to compare it to. That's why I personally prefer lamps that just burn out instead of dimming because you know that when they go out, it's time for a new lamp. i personally hate to remove something that still works, even if it's not really as useful as it was intended to be because it still does work, so I feel wasteful removing it. But if a lamp burns out, obviously it's given all it has to give and it's not wasteful sending it to the recycling center.

Well, I'm glad that we still have nice looking cobraheads here and not aluminum waffles but the one (and ONLY) thing I'm looking forward to about the inevitable LED changeout is the nice crisp white light. The orange light from HPS is really hard the eyes and while I can tolerate it, I like pure crisp white light much better of course. Even greenish bluish white MV light is better than HPS. I've been very impressed with the LED conversions at local gas stations throughout the state. Same for car dealerships. The area is always very well-lit and the quality of the light is really there. Glare seems to be a big issue with LED fixtures but GE seems to have a good approach, using reflectors and putting the LEDs out of sight so that the glare of the diodes isn't paralyzing to nighttime drivers. It would be nice to see an LED M-250R2 or M-250A2 from GE. There's no reason why an LED panel with nice big heat sinks can't be installed in place of a traditional reflector and have a drop lens installed inside a current cobrahead body.

Right now we have nice looking fixtures with yucky orange light. Sooner or later we will have nice white light with yucky looking fixtures. So why not keep the nice looking fixtures so we can have the best of both worlds? Neutral
Model25FanForever   [Jun 22, 2014 at 06:58 PM]
Actually the Cooper NVN's here have already started to dim actually.

And I agree with you completly. It would probably be cheaper to retrofit existing cobraheads here with an LED panels and keep the lens. The only downside here would be that it would kill off the last of our B2255's, Model 25's, OV-15 and 25, and other older lights here. But it would be an awesome switch. I don't want to see metal waffles . My street is 2 lanes on each side and uses 250w. The only 400w on my streets are replacements of the 400w shoebox's a while back. We just started using LED for 70-150w fixtures. I hope my city decides to only uses cobra's for LED
streetlight98   [Jun 22, 2014 at 11:25 PM]
Even if they installed new fixtures with the LED panels. Hubbell offers the RM fixture in LED with a flat lens. Darren got one and found a way to stick a drop lens on it. Looks very nice! No different than a MH!
Form109   [Jun 23, 2014 at 02:35 AM]
I've seen plenty of gas stations with LED Lighting,and the quality of the light is excellent,the area is well lit no doubt....ive even seen two Walmart's with exclusive LED Lighting and they look pretty good at night,and well lit as well.

ive even seen some private family/non corporate places with LED Fixtures.

my Problem with LED's is the high start up cost of investing in the fixture....point is the cost of purchase Is supposed to be offset by longer life/less upkeep....that part of the bargain is not being met in a lot of cases and that is a HUGE problem.
streetlight98   [Jun 23, 2014 at 02:41 AM]
Yeah I agree, it's the price of the LEDs that's the biggest downfall. If you have a small parking lot with a few lights and want to install LED lights you have to pretty much take out a second mortgage to pay for the lights and they don't seem to last any longer or perform any better than HID and HIDs are a quarter of the price...
lights4life   [Nov 04, 2015 at 09:33 PM]
Starting to question if LEDs were ever to be light sources. Neutral

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