Okay, I seriously hate LED flyswatters now. There was a parking lot that had 20 Line materials Unistyle 175's, each 150w HPS. They were mounted quite low so the parking lot was lit very well. Just a few days ago, I saw them at night and was thinking about how horrible it would be if they got replaced with LEDs. Well, tonight every single one has been replaced with LED flyswatters. As usual, 3 have failed already. I hope they know they are doing the environment no favors by doing crap acts like this. The very least they could do is use LED retrofit lamps. 

But not the Corn-On-The-Cob type, those are really ugly!
And near the sideways bucket light, I saw a shoebox flood light with a sloppy looking circular board with lots of tiny LEDs. You could even see the wires in it!
For now, consider these LED lights an experiment. If it goes well, then LED isn't so bad after all.

But not the Corn-On-The-Cob type, those are really ugly!
And near the sideways bucket light, I saw a shoebox flood light with a sloppy looking circular board with lots of tiny LEDs. You could even see the wires in it!
For now, consider these LED lights an experiment. If it goes well, then LED isn't so bad after all.

It's just that they are DESTROYING perfectly good stuff for this. It would be better for the environment if they would just leave the stupid lights alone!

But are you really sure they just throw them away? I got told that there is a warehouse full of old things from the city, including lighting.
But I don't know if it's real or not.

get used to it, it'll only get worse. 

get used to it, it'll only get worse. 

Crap like this makes me want to move somewhere that can't afford LED streetlighting and is keeping mercs and metal halide street lights alive.

If they do a LED install right, it actually looks very decent and it grows on you.  XCEL Did that right for the streetlights here.  VERY pleased with them.  Although if I drove to a different community that decided to not do the research and jumped right on into things a few years back, they used 5500/6500k colors and it looks horrible.  Not a comfortable place to be at at night. 

HPS and MH will be around for a long time, so don't be too worried, however for municipality controlled areas, they are going to do what the majority of the public wants and will take advantage of tax breaks or discounts or whatever to upgrade to lower spending.  Yes, I know there are arguments over cost/pollutants for cost to build of these new LEDs and how actual environmental friendly they may be, but the fact of the matter is that they are here to stay and as technology improves, LEDs will eventually be replaced with the next best thing 20-40 years down the road.  However - LED is not ideal for everything.  Right now there isn't a cost effective way of replacing HIDs on non-cobra head fixtures.  Sure there are LED bulbs that you can simply screw into the socket that put out some nice light, but for the kind of discharge output needed, most of these screw in bulbs have fans built into them to help keep them cool and are very prone to failure.  And not to mention they are very expensive at the moment, costing $99.00 to get a 150 watt HPS equivalent LED replacement screw in bulb where-as the new LED Cobra heads and other new fixtures have the circuitry and ballasts and protection built into them to where most don't require cooling fans and can easily handle bitter cold -50 degree to 140+F degree temps.  (if you get the right brand, and right now I only know of a few brands that will handle this properly, while the other brands fail in the extreme temps, as many on here have witnessed) 

It will be interesting, but again, HPS & MH will be around for many more years to come.  They are efficient lamps when used in the right settings. 

Quote from: RyanF40T12 on August 18, 2016, 08:10:29 AM

get used to it, it'll only get worse. 

Crap like this makes me want to move somewhere that can't afford LED streetlighting and is keeping mercs and metal halide street lights alive.

Countryside places usually don't have LED. Just MV bucket lights!

Was at a country type store not too long ago, gone were the MV bucket lights.  They still sell MV bulbs, and a few HPS bucket type fixtures, but had a variety of LED fixtures as well.  Just a matter of time for the old country/ranching/farming communities

Was at a country type store not too long ago, gone were the MV bucket lights.  They still sell MV bulbs, and a few HPS bucket type fixtures, but had a variety of LED fixtures as well.  Just a matter of time for the old country/ranching/farming communities

I'm confident that Florida country/ranching/farming places will continue to use HID.

I've seen NEMA bucket lights start to be converted around southern Minnesota.

I've seen NEMA bucket lights start to be converted around southern Minnesota.

I have seen them too. At least they are keeping the old fixtures. I don't see why they are incapable of retrofitting cobraheads.

From what I've seen they've been replacing the entire fixture. Areas that use NEMA area lights are staying with that pattern, they're using either small LED araa lights or American Electric ATBMs with the optional drop refractor.

Retrofitting cobraheads make no sense to me. You're trying to put a directiona; light source into a fixture designed to convert an omnidirectional source to directional. Can you imagine the kind of optical losses in that configuration. A lot of what makes LEDs so efficient is not lumens per what, but how precisely the lumens can be controlled and directed where needed with fixtures designed for them.  Better to just replace the whole fixture with one designed for LED optics and recycle the old one which is mostly valuable aluminum, meanwhile you have decades old refractors, door seals, hardware, etc. The people in the world that think a M250R is cool to look at are pretty much the population of this board.

The materials of same M250R2 are Aluminum and in the better case the refractor is made of Glass. Those materials take more than a few decades to degrade - Remind that Aluminum Oxide forms a film that protects from corrosion the rest of the luminaire body, and Glass is ageless anyway. The ingress protection of the luminaire is not high originally (usually IP44..IP54, and often as low as IP23 for the gear) - by design. For this protection level the gaskets dont have to be much more than some dry felt. Those gaskets can stay there for decades, without degrading to an extent that would impact the ingress protection level of the luminaire. The Magnetic gear is maintainable and replaceable. The "they are too old and worn out" excuse fails

As for being pleasant to look at, it is possible to argue which one's appearance is nicer in the day, but not possible to argue which one's appearance and performance is better in the night. LED lights have very high glare and inferior spectrum, which first wipes out any efficacy advantage over HID, and second makes them absolutey NOT pleasant to look at in the night

The materials of same M250R2 are Aluminum and in the better case the refractor is made of Glass. Those materials take more than a few decades to degrade - Remind that Aluminum Oxide forms a film that protects from corrosion the rest of the luminaire body, and Glass is ageless anyway. The ingress protection of the luminaire is not high originally (usually IP44..IP54, and often as low as IP23 for the gear) - by design. For this protection level the gaskets dont have to be much more than some dry felt. Those gaskets can stay there for decades, without degrading to an extent that would impact the ingress protection level of the luminaire. The Magnetic gear is maintainable and replaceable. The "they are too old and worn out" excuse fails

As for being pleasant to look at, it is possible to argue which one's appearance is nicer in the day, but not possible to argue which one's appearance and performance is better in the night. LED lights have very high glare and inferior spectrum, which first wipes out any efficacy advantage over HID, and second makes them absolutey NOT pleasant to look at in the night

Don't forget the wiring can degrade over the decades. There will be time insulation on them will fall off and short out. Not an easy job to rewire the entire fixture in the field on the pole. (Even with Powerdoors. There's still wires on the fixture itself.)

Try rewiring a fixture outside in the sun while wearing thick high voltage gloves. The company forbids you to touch the fixture without the gloves. Not an easy job nor is it a speedy one.

Easier to remove entire fixture and have them refurbished in a shop that does that. Put a new/refurbished fixture in its place or a LED fixture. I know some utilities sends off fixtures to the refurbish shop.