ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Street lights voltages

Our streetlights are generally 120 volts. Most branch circuits are fed with #6 and O/C at around 20 amps.
Completely urban.
Hyway lighting is usually higher voltage to address VD and can be 600V or 347V. We don't see much 480/277 in Canada except in motors and industrial sites that have US owners.
I can't speak for Southern Ontario where the cars are made but I would be surprised to learn the Canadian GM plant used 600 volts when the Detroit GM plant used 480.

Here in northern NJ, it seems like they mostly use Merc Vapor with some areas just getting into HPS. They will use a multi tap and use 120/240 what ever is available at that pole. Heck there are still some old incandescent lights around. They are great to practice on with sling shots! Not that I would do that.

I also forgot, as you drive down the road you will see the lights go off/ then go on, then go off/on. The bulbs get old and "cycle" over and over all night long.

Our lights are just multiple-lugged off the transformers or those black crimp butt splices or those boxes taped shut containing those hydraulic splices.

Let me cover the European side most of the street luminaires are useally wired either 230/240 or 380/415 volts depending on what they tapped to the grids.

Of course we do have couple series circuit( ring circuit ) as well. If you run into series expect them to be anywhere from 1200 volts to much as 4800 volts depending on the layout and they will use the constat current transfomer to downstep the voltage to the street luminaires.

The only few spots I know they still use the series is airport runway luminaires or large number of street luminaire in such a tight cluster or very long run one of the two.

Last warning with series connected luminaires never remove the bulb without shuntting the constant current transfomer otherwise you will get nailed pretty hard which it did to me before. { about 1600 volts that time }

Merci.
Marc

Thnaks a lot to all for your insights!

Yeah,230 V where I live.

230V 1ph in Vienna, neutral and two switched hots (one of which is hot dusk to dawn, the other only dusk to 11 or midnight), double-isolated lights, mostly two 35W fluorescents, HPS or some mercury vapor in busier streets (generally HPS, warm white mercury in historic areas and places with lots of pedestrian traffic). The lights are switched in zones controled by photocells and can act quite weird sometimes. Either they're on all day long or they shut off completely at midnight (and sometimes switch on both circuits at like 3AM), or both hots are on all night, or they don't work at all. Especially the area I live in has had quite some fun over the past 5 years (ever since they disconnected a larger section of overhead wire to allow for fire department ladders a few streets away).