I asked a local lineman why they replace Mercury luminaires with Sodium, even though the lamps are still produced, and I swear, without missing a beat, this was his response.

"The damn things are so resilient!  They never burn out, and us linemen are concerned for our job security, so we know with Sodium, we'll get called out to fix those.  Same with LED's, those things are such pieces of (...), we're having to hire more full time linemen to fix those damn things."

I was laughing my ass all the way to the ground!

Yes, they replace Mercury luminaires with Sodium even when all parts are working.   

Sucks, but it's funny as hell!

I asked a local lineman why they replace Mercury luminaires with Sodium, even though the lamps are still produced, and I swear, without missing a beat, this was his response.

"The damn things are so resilient!  They never burn out, and us linemen are concerned for our job security, so we know with Sodium, we'll get called out to fix those.  Same with LED's, those things are such pieces of (...), we're having to hire more full time linemen to fix those damn things."

I was laughing my ass all the way to the ground!

Yes, they replace Mercury luminaires with Sodium even when all parts are working.   

Sucks, but it's funny as (...)!

To be honest, that is pretty funny. I guess that is one good thing about LED lights. 

Ameren still hasn't made the complete switch to LED.  They replace Mercury Cobras with either of the following... At least in my county.

1) M2RR25S0A2GMS3358
2) M2RR25S0A2GMC2108
3) M2RC10S1N2GMC2108
4) M2RR10S1N2GMS3358
5) MSRL40S0A22RMS335

1-2 are M250R2,  3-4 are M250R2 FCO, 5 is M400R3

They replace the Mercury NEMA heads with the following

6)SAH10S1N21108  (201SA)
7)M2RC10S1N2108  (M250RC FCO)

They have even replaced a few of the Mercury NEMAs with #1 and #5, but 99% of the NEMAs get replaced with #6.  I've only seen 1 NEMA get replaced with #4, and 3 NEMA get replaced with #1
I watched as they replaced 2-175W Merc NEMAs with #5 (I don't why)

I kept checking to see the postdate on this topic..I thought maybe it was 2006 or 1996.. but this topic is frightening not funny.

To me, operating a luminaire 11.5 hours/night, is insane. MV is inneficient for this purpose, CASE CLOSED. So is incandescent. We are intelligent, environmentally consious beings. Collect them, admire them, operate them privately but don't ask me to fork over more taxes to cover electrical costs. I would rather have 55w LED FCO instead of 100w HPS or 175w/250w MV. Yes maintenance is higher but the electrical cost in some areas plus the lumen depreciation in robust MV is often significant.

If you would suffice with 55W LED FCO why not with 50W HPS FCO ? And if you would, question that must be asked is why wasnt the 50W HPS installed there in the 1st place ?

Yes, but "which watts to install?" is another topic. In many cases such as pedestrian only paths and outlying sleepy residential roads, 50w even 35w HPS is more than sufficient, but these are never used. Why? It's the same thinking mode for dusk-dawn lighting - more is better, crime is too high, need to profit from the job, justify taxes, yada yada.

Exactly

Now, did they drop this logic when it comes to the LED revolution ? Then who is saving energy, the LEDs or the sudden return of sense in choosing light levels/power use ?

Well, with the HID the lower wattages become more expensive than the higher one, because in order to retain at least some efficacy, the technology gets pushed to it§s limits (high pressures,...). The consequence is shorter life and still not that much impressive efficacy. So it came, the 70W HPS is the cheapest HID light, even when it means many times more lumen output than really needed. There are 50W lamps, but these are shorter lasting, so more expensive to operate.

With the LED's the lower power means lower cost. Not only the LED's alone, but as well the other main contributor in a LED lantern cost - heat management. These factors made the utilities to really rethink what is really necessary.
With HID's, the cost is about the same, whether the illumination is really just what is needed, or ten times stronger, so they just picked up the stronger option.

Here one street was using originally HPS lanterns, but just used there 75W incandescents there. It was still enough light there, with the benefit of really nice warm light. Dunno the relamping costs though... Now most places here are replaced by LED lanterns, looks like something around 20W or so. More than enough (compare to the previously used 36 or 40W PL-L's)

There are the 70W HIDs and down to 18W PL-L's or T8's, all of which exist for the latest 30 years, provide good lifetime and excellent lighting properties. Yet everywhere those could be used, atleast double power HIDs were installed for no reason

The problem is, here use to be quite chilly winters. And then the fluorescents just do not work, their efficacy drops to something comparable with incandescents (and a 40W incandescent really does not make that much light). When combined with their rather large physical size (so impossibility to focus the light where needed), the result was nearly no visibility at winter nights.


Regading the dayburners in outer air above 40degC:
Decent LED system has a thermal power foldback, so reduces the output power when the LED's approach the maximum design temperature. That should prevent them from exceeding it, so shorten their life too much. Of ocurse, it means way lower than rated output power, but who cares with a dayburner during the day (at night the lower temperature causes the power, so output to rise back).
Of course, prolonged dayburning will take it's toll on the reliability, but so it does with HID's (the few examples dayburning for years are really exceptions, I would guess because either worn out lamp or degraded capacitor in a CWA made the currents way lower than rated...)

The temps here go to maybe -5..-10C for the few coldest nights of the year, and typical winter night temps are about 0..+5. Further down to the south it rarely goes below 0 at all

In one of the -5 nights last winter i tested 36W/865 T8 and 11W/840 PL-S outdoors, in ordinary weatherproof plastic luminaires. They worked fair enough and definitely not like Incandescents

So atleast for us the Fluorescents can do good work for the entire year, but are not. So i think the temperatures were not the key factor atleast for us. Its plain and simple, peeps choosing the lighting wanted the more the better

And temperatures dont explain why take 150..250 HID where 70 can do the work either



The "lamp in deep bowl" sort of optics for Fluorescent provide for wide light spread everywhere, but at the same time the lowest glare from any direction they are viewed. The visibility with them is not bad at all

Unnecessary & over-illumination in dusk-to-dawn lighting is a symptom of a way of life. Street-lighting permeating bedrooms or back yards & now causing measurable sleep disorders & melatonin supression is of no big health concern yet. We need lighting but some areas of cities are obnoxious.

Commercial & industrial lighting "recommendations" by the IES are old and are still taken as the word of god. New recommendations are said to be in developement but are slow to be implemented or not out yet. But the IES states that it's the responsibility of the designer & installer to interpret the recommendations for suggested lux or foot-candles then adjust them according to the surrounding environment or context (IES Recommended Practice RP-33). But when companies are hired to install lighting systems, their main concern is to make money. So the biggest job - more installations, light-bulbs & ballasts AND more expensive MH or CMH systems - are chosen for highest profit.

I've come across (great) images (ebay, post-cards, ads from American City magazine) from a period of between 1957~1965 with huge fluorescent fixtures installed as street-lights! Although fluorecscent & induction systems are far more reliable now, those vintage fixtures simply couldn't last in cities like cold Chicago or Mineapolis/St.Paul. I realized that throughout the history of lighting there is the suggestion of a competitive escalation in amounts of lumen-flux & extensive ornamental lighting for a gain in profit, not just for the requirement of copious quantities of light. Probably therefore, we will continue to see larger than required light-levels & extensive installations pretty much everywhere (snif).

Unnecessary & over-illumination in dusk-to-dawn lighting is a symptom of a way of life. Street-lighting permeating bedrooms or back yards & now causing measurable sleep disorders & melatonin supression is of no big health concern yet. We need lighting but some areas of cities are obnoxious.

Commercial & industrial lighting "recommendations" by the IES are old and are still taken as the word of god. New recommendations are said to be in developement but are slow to be implemented or not out yet. But the IES states that it's the responsibility of the designer & installer to interpret the recommendations for suggested lux or foot-candles then adjust them according to the surrounding environment or context (IES Recommended Practice RP-33). But when companies are hired to install lighting systems, their main concern is to make money. So the biggest job - more installations, light-bulbs & ballasts AND more expensive MH or CMH systems - are chosen for highest profit.

I've come across (great) images (ebay, post-cards, ads from American City magazine) from a period of between 1957~1965 with huge fluorescent fixtures installed as street-lights! Although fluorecscent & induction systems are far more reliable now, those vintage fixtures simply couldn't last in cities like cold Chicago or Mineapolis/St.Paul. I realized that throughout the history of lighting there is the suggestion of a competitive escalation in amounts of lumen-flux & extensive ornamental lighting for a gain in profit, not just for the requirement of copious quantities of light. Probably therefore, we will continue to see larger than required light-levels & extensive installations pretty much everywhere (snif).

Well, with the fact the LED cost is about proportional to the installed power (that was never the case with any other technology - there certain cost was per piece and the cost of the higher or lower power variants difered only a little; with LED's you really pay for each watt installed), I would guess many lighting owners will reconsider the really needed amount of installed light (with HID, the 50W cost the same as 70W or 35W; with LED's a 48W model usually costs nearly twice what does the 24W model)...

The IES may be old, but when it is not followed, it is no wonder we have overilluminated streets with a lots of consequent problems.
The matter is way more complex to just saying "10lx is the best", therefore the standard gives more a guide how to come to decent lighting, but no exact figures.

I also have noticed that people have hard time to understand how little saving per unit can make huge amount of money when we are talking about something like all the streetlights in city.

Like, if I would have HPS lantern in my front yard that is on every night from 8pm to 7am and I would change it to LED that would save me something like 10w. in a year, that would save me 40 kwh of electricity, now that is not so much electricity but if it's like city that has tens of thousand streetlights and you replace everyone of them with a led version that uses 10w less energy than the old one that's easely pretty high number of kwh and money that got saved. with thousand streetlight the saving would be something like 40MWH in a year

Its a matter of what wattage you install. You could as well change to a lower wattage HID and save.. And then we come back to the starting point : If lower illumination was ok, why it was not done in the 1st place ? If no, then lower wattage LED won't be able to achieve anywhere near what a proper HID achieves for the same power input anyway

The "nearly identical cost of HIDs of all wattages" is not true - 70W luminaires are usually smaller than higher power, so less material (into a low tech product which cost is mostly cost of materials), and often made of plain Plastic while their bigger counterparts made of Fiber or Metal. Same for gear (less metal in the ballast). The lamps all cost about the same up to 400W. So thre is no cost preference to use >70W where 70W is the right size in the 1st place