How many lumens is a street lamp?

StainlessSteel · #1 04-19-2005, 11:33 PM

How many lumens does your "standard", low pressure sodium street lamp produce?

I have been looking everywhere, but i cant find it.

I KNOW is has to be a HUGE amount, because GE makes a high pressure sodium lamp, for homes, which, at 400 watts, will put out 51,000 lumens.

thanks.

SS

BatteryCharger · #2 04-19-2005, 11:42 PM

I would say that they use something very close to a 400 watt HPS. If not that, it's 1000 watts, but I doubt it...

Lynx_Arc · #3 04-20-2005, 12:05 AM

From what I have read low pressure sodium puts out approx 180 lumens/watt so a 100 watt bulb would be 1800 lumens, a 400 watt bulb would be around 72,000 lumens using that figure.

enLIGHTenment · #4 04-20-2005, 12:20 AM

Most street lights in North America use 250-400 Watt high pressure sodium lamps which produce up to 140 lm/w.

MaxaBaker · #5 04-20-2005, 04:42 AM

I have a street light assembly and it's only 150 watts. It's made by GE. I'll take pictures of it when I get home.

Zelandeth · #6 04-20-2005, 04:17 PM

35W standard SOX streetlamp. 4800lm (at 100 hours).
250W SON: 26'000lm.

Those figures should be pretty close provided memory serves correctly. Afraid I don't have data to hand on 55W SOX though.

BB · #7 04-20-2005, 06:09 PM

Here is a good general industrial supplies web site: www.grainger.com -- I like it because it has 3,800 pages of everthing from motors to lights to pumps to HVAC stuff. And they list manufacturer's names and list prices (nice to have an idea of what something costs).

If you go to their Grainger's PDF Catalog link and type page number "651" you can see some information on GE low pressure Sodium and Mercury Vapor Lamps.

-Bill

MaxaBaker · #8 04-20-2005, 06:45 PM

Here the pics.....

The broken sodium vapor bulb....

cobb · #9 04-20-2005, 07:10 PM

WOW, interesting subject. Ive wondered that too as well as traffic lights. I know I have seen a range of traffic lights. White or bluish ones, then the orange like ones. The orange ones always seem brighter, but not sure if its the color or higher wattage bulb. In the shop where I use to work they used white ones over head.

I have seen those type of fixtures in lowes as well as bulbs, but never looked to see the wattage or any other specs on them. If i remember correctly I think they are more efficient than anything else except led.

BTW, I was on an led site a few months ago and came across some led lamps to replace the light in a street light. It was over 100 leds in a fixture.

LITEmania · #10 04-20-2005, 07:47 PM

for the street lamp of pedestrians, this is enough..

yuandrew · #11 04-20-2005, 08:01 PM

Hey, I used to be a streetlight nut myself and here's some info I remember when streetlights.net was in operation.

Well, to tell the wattage of a streetlight and the type of bulb it uses-look on the bottom of the fixture. Normally, you should find a colored lable with a number on it. Multiply that number by 10 and get the color of the lable

Blue-Mercury Vapor (bluish white)
Red- Metal Halide (bright white)
Yellow- High Pressure Sodium Vapor (Yellow-orange)

In my case, the streetlight in front of my house has a yellow lable and a 10 on it so it makes it a 100 watt High pressure sodium.

Note; Streetlights with wattages over 1000 watts will probably have X-1 on the lable instead of 100

MaxaBaker, that bulb is intresting; why does it have 2 arc tubes instead of one? Is one of them a backup?

BB · #12 04-20-2005, 09:13 PM

If you look at the Grainger's link above and type in page "649" for High Pressure Sodium Lights... This seems to be a standby tube for extra life:

Entry:
LU150/55/SBY/XL Clear, Standby, Extrailfe, Dual Arc Tube
Average rated hours: 40,000
Lumens Initial: 16,000
Lumens Mean: 14,000
Color Temp: 2,000
CRI: 22
Price (qty 1): $142.70 each

It appears that a single tube version is rated somewhere between 24,000+ to 30,000 hours and is somewhere around $22 to $36 each.

-Bill

NewBie · #13 04-20-2005, 11:17 PM

See page 12 LU150

Also see: GE LU150/55/SBY/XL

Zelandeth · #14 04-21-2005, 01:38 AM

Yep. the second tube's there for two reasons. Firstly to effecitvely double the lifetime of the lamp, secondly to give the lamp a hot restrike capability.

Never proved to be particularly popular though due to high production costs and the fact that the second arc tube gets in the way, tending to make a mess of optical control - the fact that the tubes have to be positioned off-centre in the outer tube adds to this problem.

A quick trip to Lamptech Link shows that Osram tried out a similar design using a low pressure sodium lamp as far back as 1958. Slightly different idea though in that this was designed to be dimmable, and the two tubes are wired independently of each other rather than being wired in parallel as in the SON lamp shown above. Link