New Luxeon Streetlights in the Netherlands

See story here...

Neat. I didn't see this article, but I saw something on this somewhere. Maybe in the general lighting forum. I miss mercury vapor lights blue moonbeam though, hate sodium ones orange-pink color, though it's probably better for fog and light scatter.

I wonder how these look to the eye?

I'm guessing that they cast weird shadows because of their layout - amber Lux-1s on the perimeter and white Lux-3s in the center with no apparent diffusion. Also with a mast height of 4 meters (12 feet) they're probably only suited for pedestrian plazas. But it's a neat idea and a good start.

There was another mention of it here earlier but I think the previous article didn't have a photo. I would like to see a closeup of these including the heat sinking on the back.

From the article, for Torchman:

"The colour temperature of plain white LEDs is too high (5,500k) for street lamp use. "It looks too cool," said Lansink, "You need warmer light for street lighting."

As such, the luminair has six 3W white Luxeon III LEDs and 12 amber 1W devices which brings the colour temperature down to 2,700k, 3,200k or 4,000k as requested.

With 8m between 4m high masts, ground illumination averages at 10Lux, which means the lamp posts are suited to pedestrian areas."

What this means is that they have 18 LEDs per panel, two panels per lamp. This is something you could build for yourself. I wonder how they did the radiator? It would serve as a structural support, brainbox housing and wire run enclosure too.

I wonder what the rationale for this is:

"The colour temperature of plain white LEDs is too high (5,500k) for street lamp use. It looks too cool. You need warmer light for street lighting."

5500K is close to sunlight, so why on earth wouldn't it be perfectly appropriate for streetlighting? Many halide stadium lights and parking lot lights have CCTs in the 5000K area. In the days of old arc lamps with similar CCTs lit the streets. After all, the streets are lit with 5500K sunlight during the day so why not do the same at night (ditto for indoor lighting)? That's the color temp that our eye is best adapted for. Anything much higher or lower just looks wrong. I can maybe understand color rendering concerns, but once LEDs become efficient enough for widespread streetlighting those concerns will be moot as well.

IIRC, the old mercury vapor streetlights, which I liked much better than sodium vapor, had a CCT in the 5000K area even though they had lousy color rendering.

The fog penetrating ability of sodium vapor is greatly exaggerated as well. On nights when it might make a difference, the fog is so heavy that you can't see three feet in front of you. Outside of maybe places like London, fog that thick rarely, if ever occurs. On one of the foggiest nights in recent memory in NYC a few months ago I honestly couldn't tell any difference in penetrating ability between halide lights in parking lots and the sodium vapor streetlights. The halide lights were a lot easier on the eye, though, and made what they lit look a lot more natural.

Thanks Ken,

What I really mean is I would like to see it in person. From the pics of the light itself, and the color K in the article, I can gather it's orange.

I do have a few places with Kelvin color temp info bookmarked, but would always appreciate any links, especially if they have a color chart with it too. Mostly what I have is written stuff, from photography sites, equating degrees K with sun/sky colors and different times, and a few mention shade. Maybe it doesn't lend itself to correlation with a color chart, because of white, but I've seen white defined with an exact Kelvin, close to 5500 but more precise.

What I was really wondering is if the white Luxeons might smooth out the colored ones to the eye. Or at least be more pleasing than the hellish orange of sodium vapor. I'm sure something will show up in the future here in the states like that.

It would be easy enough to do a small-scale mockup of this at home.

I'm gathering that the outer ring of amber Lux-1s probably looks fairly orange next to the white Lux-3s in the center. I wonder how carefully they're binning the Luxeons for the streetlights?

I would like to see them in the street, it will happen,
we already have Led traffic lights, Led railroad signaling
lights