The National Lighting Product Information Program (NLPIP), based at the Lighting Research Center in Troy, NY, recently released its latest Specifier Report, designed to provide objective performance information on existing street lighting technologies includingLED, induction, and high pressure sodium streetlights.
NLPIP performed photometric evaluations of 14 streetlights that used either HPS, pulse-start metal halide (PSMH) or induction lamps, or LED modules. NLPIP analyzed the streetlights for light output and distribution, energy use, spectral effects on visual performance, discomfort glare, and economic factors. The streetlights were evaluated as part of installations that meet the lighting criteria as defined in the American National Standard Practice for Roadway Lighting, ANSI/ IESNA RP-8-00 (R2005), for a simulated one-mile stretch of collector roadway (a road servicing traffic between local and major roadways).
According to NLPIP, when replacing the pole-mounted HPS streetlights on a one-mile section of collector road with the LED or induction streetlights used in the study, it would take twice as many of the pole-mounted LED or induction streetlights to meet the lighting criteria as defined in RP-8-00.
Complete performance results are published in Specifier Reports: Streetlights for Collector Roads, which is available online here.
“The LED and induction streetlights we tested required narrower pole spacing. As a result, the life cycle cost per mile was dominated by the installation cost of the poles, as opposed to the initial cost of the streetlights or any potential energy or maintenance cost savings, as one may assume,” says Leora Radetsky, LRC lead research specialist, principal investigator and author of the report.
LED and induction technologies are often marketed as money saving alternatives to HPS, with some manufacturers claiming reductions in energy and maintenance costs. However, NLPIP found that the HPS and PSMH streetlights evaluated in this test provided a better cost value than the LED and induction streetlights evaluated, which would need to produce about the same street-side lumens as the HPS models to be economically competitive.
The average power demand of the LED streetlight layouts evaluated was slightly lower than the average power demand of the HPS streetlight layouts, but there was wide variation among LED models, according to NLPIP.
