Just wondering,
What type of streetlighting do you have around where you live?.
The reason I ask this, is, I was reading an article in a Trade magazine recently, that stated that where the street lights had been upgraded to Metal-Halide, there was a distinct decrease in the number of pedestrians hit by motor vehicles.
The authorities that had the upgrades done also noted a decrease in the amount of energy used over a period of 3 months, as opposed to the Sodium Vapour lamps that they replaced.
What are your thoughts on this subject, as Street lighting is one thing that is often taken for granted(until it fails!).
But if a few lives can be saved, in the process, it's got to be good, eh?.

Flourescent, on highly frequented streets and crossings sodium. Maybe metal halide is used on the oldfashioned candelabers in the inner city, they are on very high poles and give off an almost white light, so I guess either metal halide or mercury vapor. Typical is a batten with 2 flourescent tubes, hanging from 3 bare wires above the middle of the road. 1 tube is switched off at midnight.
Some time ago in front of our house the tube that remains on all night blew in 2 adjacent fixtures, so it was completely dark.

Over here in Ireland they're almost exclusively sodium lamps except in some city centre locations where an orange glow is considered a little on the ugly side and a white flourecent or high powered "architectural" white uplighters are used on buildings and bridges.

Old lamps were mercury based and were gradually phased out as they're considered an environmental hazard. Disposal of large quantities of mercury containing tubes poses a big problem and is quite expensive.

The older mercury lamps also didn't really throw out enough light. Sodium bulbs can be much brighter without being irritating.

I've also seen single round lantern-style fittings "strung" between poles that hung in the centre of the street. Not too many of them around anymore. They looked cool though. Much more ornate than the modern ones.

Gas street lighting has re-appeared in some locations too. It provides a really soft light and it's much more ornate. It's used exclusively in Dublin's phoenix

Normal Dublin Electric (usually sodium) street lamp.

(Standard Dublin Street lamp)

that should read: Dublin's Phoenix Park! The gas lamps were chosen as they did not want to upset the large population of Deer in the park with harsh lighting.

In Sweden you only find the yellow lamps on highways. Most street lights have a type of bulb that takes a quite a few seconds to start: the light goes frome reddish to bright white in the process. You pros should now be able to tell me what it is

dkj,
those are beautiful lamps! *envy*

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 04-10-2003).]

C-H i think the lamps you are on about would be High Pressure Metal Halide,

as to lighting in England, it really depends on were you are,

In my town (Southampton)we have a varity of fittings and lamps.

Motorways, (were lit) are high pressure sodium usually 4 x 400watt each arm.

class 1 roads;
high pressure sodium, from 150, 250w and 400w
single lantern at heights of 4m to 10m

class b roads;
35watt low pressure sodium (a horid light but excelant lamp life)

But in the city they are slowly being changed to 100watt Metal Halide and 400 watt in the main city streets, (as the city now has CCTV it helps to see the local idiots on a weekend after the bars shut)

but we still survuve on 35, 55, 90 and 135 watt low pressure sodium lighting on most streets, and out in the wilderness of the new forest etc.

me personally,? change em all to Metal Halide, good clour rendering and an all round good light, and you can get colours for them as well.

Bye for now, John H

The majority of street lights in the US are sodium, as are the majority of utility-owned parking lot floodlights.

However, privately-owned parking lot lighting tends to be metal halide.

You will see, on rare occasion, an ancient mercury vapor street light that has not been replaced yet.

If I might add an interesting side note, the street on which I used to live actually had incandescent street lamps up until the early 90's, with huge 300 or 500 watt mogul based bulbs. They were replaced with sodium lamps.

indeed most area still use 100 watts hps but in cities it can varis from 100 to much as 400 but some case i see use a thousand watt bulb (1,000w) bulbs but right now few area in cities are staring to switch over to metal halide now but with new one comming out is pulse start mh i personally like them they do kick more light than old mh type and as far for old mercury vapour light that about complite history expect for privte owned fixures and flourest light it is mixed bag here but flourscent light is not too wonderfull in northen state due cold weather

merci marc

CT wireman — Were the street incandescents the "series string" type? They were popular during the days of penny-a-kilowatthour electricity, along with “mica shots” flashing/hopefully shorting when a lamp filament failed.

Side note: One [minor?] limitation of M-H lighting is its [pitch black in the mean time] 15-minute restrike time after power interruption/restoration.

Now I've checked it up: Most street lighting is mercury in Sweden.

Are mercury vapor lamps the ones that give out a sulfurous blue-yellow light that makes your skin look green - like you were dead?

They used to use a bulb like that in various passageways in the New York City Subway...they have been replaced with a yellow bulb - sodium, I presume?

Some huge warehouses, school gyms, etc. use these bulbs that give out a bright white light - sometimes it borders on ORANGE to the point it's PAINFUL (at least to me).

What is this one?

Also, why is it that every time I walk by one of these high-intensity weird lights the thing blinks off?

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 04-10-2003).]

Bjarney, I'm not really sure. It was a long time ago so I don't remember specifically what they looked like. I was quite surprised that they survived as long as they did. I do actually remember feeling kind of sad the day the utility truck came around and replaced them! But, they were getting hideously expensive to maintain and operate (and electricity is about 10-12 cents a KWH here in New England), so they had to go.

Bjarney,
That's true, Metal-Halide does have a rather long warm-up/strike time, but so do most other Gas Discharge lighting sources, obviously excluding Neon and Fluoro tubes.

Mike

he he yeah you are correct sevnnyc;

blue-green colour is mercury vapour
blue-white colour is metal halide

that is very caratisic of them

merci marc

Just about all the public street lights in my area are sodium, although metal halide are becoming more common in privately owned areas, e.g. supermarket parking lots.

Now I come to think of it, it must be many years since I've seen a mercury-vapor type of light. I've lived in rural areas a long time now and avoid big cities whenever I can, and as I recally the mercury lamps were most often found in urban areas.

I'm not sure that series street lighting was ever employed in Britain. Most is just run straight off the 3-phase distribution lines with either timer or photocell control. Some older installations used a fifth pilot wire to close contactors at each light.

There's nothing beautiful about our flourescent battens. A grey metal top and a plain glass bottom, and 2 flourescent tubes.
There are some retro poles lights that look like the standard Dublin type, only a bit less ornate.
In 1924 the first electrical street lighting was installed. 44V/200W incandescent in series. In 1934 and 1935 first mercury vapor and sodium lights were tested.
In 1950 the first flourescents were installed. In 1956 the first regular Gas Discharge lights were installed. In 1962 the last gas light was extinguished.



Today Vienna has got the following lights:

105 incandescents
198.584 flourescents
1.371 sodium low-pressure
32.810 sodium high-pressure
7.140 mercury vapor

There's some type of lamp that gives off a bright white light, but while heating up the light is intensely green. Are these mercury vapor too? They give off a very intense light and were commonly used in school gyms about 10 years ago. Now they went back to flourescents, much nicer to the eyes.

SvenNYC.

With regard to your question about the sodium/metal halide lights, `going out` during there illumination time,

This is an easy one, most of the time it is due to lamp failure,
the lamp will strike normally but then will get progressively brighter, then will go out, in about 5 to 10 min the lamp will re strike and the whole pattern starts again,

there is safety feature designed into all high pressure lamps to protect them from exploding,

if the lamp is not replaced it can cause premature failure of the lamps control gear.

Hope this helps.

John H

Ragnar, the lamp you posted looks like it works on gas. I thought you said Vienna has no more gas-powered street lamps....so I guess that's an old picture?

Exactly. This is the last gas street light. i posted it just for nostalgic reasons.

Ranger,
That sounds like M-Halide starting up, it actually turns all sorts of colours, but many of the changes happen so fast, the eye never picks them up.
Paul, that Pilot+Contactor system must have been expensive.
We had this system over here(and also a variation of it, in some places).
It's not used here now, the streetlighting is on it's own dedicated circuit, controlled by a photcell and contactor on every 3-4 blocks.

We use the pilot system for Hotwater and Street lighting in West and North Auckland.

There are 2 varieties with the Pilot system.

1. Tail and Charley. Lightcell from substation to contactor, string of 20 streetlights, contactor, string of streetlights etc.
2. Express pilots. Dedicated express pilot line feeding contactors only.
Contactors feed streetlights and hotwater control circuits.
In the meterbox there is an IPR relay or contactor which switches the actual hotwater load.

Near substations you see LV 8 wire systems, 3Ø + N, 2 pilots and the two express pilots.
Further away down the line you see LV 6 wire systems.

Most lights are 85, 250 or 400 Watts SOX, high pressure sodiums with the peach orangy glow.

The restrike is reasonably fast. quite often less than 1 minute although the older SOX lamps can take up to 5 minutes for a restrike.

Low pressure sodium has disappeared, perhaps a couple of them are in use in remote areas.
Biggest issue was the poor colour rendering.

None here! We fit headlights on our cars.
Works for me!

Two things I wanted to mention... first: the flourescent battens are indeed plastic, not metal!
The tubes used have weird wattages (forgot the exact numbers) so people (I guess municipial employees) won't steal them.

Second, a new type of street light has popped up where I have absolutely NO idea what it could be.

It's definitely a vapor lamp that can be used in the same fixtures as sodium lights without modifications, but the light is white, slightly yellowish, absolutely looking like an incandescent bulb! I love them because of their real nice light! They feel much brighter than the sodium lights they replace.

True Alan, I forgot about that optional extra we have in our cars.

Even the village (400 inhabitants) where my grandmother owns a house has huge streetlights... metal poles with two flourescent tubes.
One of these beasts manages to shine over the roof of the house next door right into our garden. Our house is on a slope, as is the house next door, and the light is on the street above the two houses, so it's noticeably taller than the roof.

Back when In was younger I remember ALL the city streetlights were mercury vapour, but the lamps I am pretty sure were
"clear", and gave off that harsh blue light as opposed to the whiter light I have seen from a " Coated" mercury lamp..
Most of the older sections of the city that were supplied from the older 4KV system also had a 4KV circuit that originated from the substation and fed pole top transformers that in turn fed the streetlighting. All of these circuits were in turn controlled from the head office downtown. Also was not uncommon if you had a good eye to see the lights of your house flicker when large sections of streetlighting were switched on..
About 14 years ago the city made the conversion to high pressure sodium, gone were all the mercs as well as the central switching system. All new " cobra head" fixtures had a photoswitch in the top and were tied into the mains supplying power to residental and commercial customers, although there are small sections downtown where decorative poles and streetlighting are supplied by a contactor and photoswitch arrangement located in a vault somewhere.
Recently though the decorative streetlighting as well as a few re-located poles outside of the University have been switched to Metal halide..
I find it makes the downtown look
"cleaner" and more attractive which is what this city needs, but for the suburbs, the HPS is here to stay.

A.D

When I was a boy, we had a gas-light standard in the lane by our row of cottages, ideal for honing the climbing skills. It was right outside my uncle Sam's house. The lamp was a glass-paned enclosure with a gas mantle mounted on a cast iron post with a cross bar for a ladder. A pilot light burned continuously and it had a clockwork timer, wound every week by a Gas Works employee, a miserable old git on a rust bicycle as I remember, who stunk of Elliman's Embrocation [ ointment for rheumatics ].
Well, progress caught up with us and sometime in the fifties and without warning it got removed and replaced by a concrete monstrosity, c/w a yellow sodium lamp. But,they put the new standard outside my auntie Annie's house....

JHC! World War III erupted in the lane! Old uncle Sam, by then well into his seventies, had had the benefit of a 'free' bedside light for 45 years and now he had to buy candles! Auntie Annie had now got "his" free bedside light, [ as if she had schemed it all ], but she said she didn't want it as it made her look like she had jaundice! They both wrote furious letters to the town council and Winston Churchill [ and for all I know Harry Truman ], but it stayed firmly planted where it was.

I looked on Google Earth - we sold the house after Ma passed away - and fifty-odd years later, it's still there! Creepy!

Alan

That's the classic Dublin street lamp.





They line all of the streets in the city centre which is mostly georgian.

djk- Now that's what I call streetlights!
Just beautiful!
Are they original gaslight standards do you suppose? - I notice the bars in your 1st pic for the lamplighter's ladder.


Alan

There was a major project undertaken for Dublin's millenium celebrations in 1988 when the city celebrated its official 1000th birthday. (However, the area has probabally been settled for much more than 1000 years, that's just a random date that was taken by the City Council at the time)

Some are original, some are repros. They've been electric since the late 1800s so I'm not 100% sure how many of them would have been gas to start with.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 09-18-2006).]

The Vikings were established in Dublin around 830-840AD.
Contrary to 'Hollywood-style' epics, the Vikings engaged in trade, crafts and the arts as well as seafaring, pillaging, looting and the ravishing of fair damsels, principally in the british isles out of York [ Jorvik ] and Dublin [ Duiblinn ], the latter famed for its silver. They also [reportedly] made landfall on the North American continent some 500 years before Columbus, [ "Vinland" ].
They were finally expelled by the united Irish kings in about 989AD, so the 1000th anniversary was either 164 or 17 years ago, depending on which way you want to look at it. Some settled in Normandy and 77 years later, under Gwilliaum Conquerant, defeated the Anglo-Saxons at Hastings in 1066. Since the entire population of the british isles then was probably less than 2 million, Viking bloodlines are extensive still in the UK and the Republic. Energetic little buggers, were'nt they?
BTW, the Jorvic [ York, England ] centre is a brilliant reproduction of a Viking town, c/w the sounds & smells of everyday life, and worth a visit.

Alan

Sure the viking names ending in sen, son etc all still exist here.

Likewise the town names etc.. Wexford, Waterford, Leixslip etc..

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 09-19-2006).]

Dave, Alan,
Could we please start an off-topic thread about this subject?.
Reason I ask this, is because I just got Pay TV hooked up here and there is a serial doco on this very subject on the Discovery Channel.
It really intrigues me about what went on in the UK, Ireland and various other parts of Europe.
I thought I must have heard the TV wrong when they mentioned Vikings in Ireland.
It's up to one of you guys to start a new thread, I might not get back here before Saturday.
Cheers guys.

Dave, does that make me a Viking? Coolsville, I allus fancied a big hat with cow-horns!
Don't think a new thread is necessary, the Vikings' idea of 'street lighting' was probably to set fire to the ruddy street!

Alan the Gray

Bjarney mentioned the Series street-lighting system way back in this thread.
I've been reading an old "Line-mans Bible" printed in 1961, it goes into quite a bit of detail on these systems, I'll see if I can scan some pages and throw them in the Electrical Nostalgia area.
That book has really made for some interesting reading.
BTW, we did use vertical reticulation here at one time for LV distribution, I never knew that.

Mike, We still have vertical recticulation in Auckland in some areas, i can make some pics if you are interested.

The council put up 37 new sets of these 250 Watt Metal halide lamps, about 2 months ago to light pedestrian crossings in the West Auckland area.
And they are bright allright !

As we had intermittand tripping on one of our streetlight pilots, we found a crossed polarity near a school which had the pole live at ± 200 Volts to earth.
The contractor, who installed those lamps, made a non fused joint to our OH pilot system, then breach joint to get power to both sides of the road.
We got the network safety auditors out, discussed the issue and isolated all circuits concerned as a matter of safety.

Now all 37 Ped. xings are out and the contractor is kicked of the Network who wasn't even warranted to do the work.
Also coc's and paperwork were signed off without checking polarity and loop impedance.

Interesting what is gonna happen in the future with these lights. I keep you posted.

Mostly hi pressure sodium around here for municipal lights, private lights could be anything and everything. I personally like to install only metal halide, if you need a light you might as well be able to see when it is on.

Update... the municipial lighting web site has been completely redesigned. Some info is gone, some new appeared. There seem to be new HPMH now which confirms my suspicion.

The control system is explained now too. The street lighting wires originate in switching stations, which are controlled by superimposing a signal on the regular distribution lines.

You mean vertical reticulation on 230/400V?, yeah I'd be interested in seeing that, I had no idea it was still around these days.

Crikey that street-lighting sounds like a bit of a nightmare, especially considering a pole managed to get livened in the process.
I'm not sure about some contractors.