New LED street lights

[Wilson221 10]

As far as I know there is no new wiring going in, only when they move the location of the new light

 

As for leaving some on clocked control from what I was told this isn't going to happen eventually they will all be live

[AlexAtkin 10]

If the lighting pole is of the new type that they can just swap the heads on, they don't need to dig anything up. They can simply remove the timer for that group and have it permanently live.

 

This is why before the work is done all existing lights end up permanently lit up.

[Litotes 63]

As far as I know there is no new wiring going in, only when they move the location of the new light

 

As for leaving some on clocked control from what I was told this isn't going to happen eventually they will all be live

 

They moved a light opposite our house because when they had done the initial consultation there was a tree in the way - pity they didn't talk to the council (aren't they employed by them?) who were planning on removing the tree anyway - could have saved us taxpayers some money.

 

Now we have the Alcatraz style searchlight outside our house - oh joy!

[BEDROCK 10]

They moved a light opposite our house because when they had done the initial consultation there was a tree in the way - pity they didn't talk to the council (aren't they employed by them?) who were planning on removing the tree anyway - could have saved us taxpayers some money.

 

Now we have the Alcatraz style searchlight outside our house - oh joy!

 

Why not escape from Alcatraz ???

[the_rudeboy 12]

What confuses me though is they don't appear to do that with all the lights. Of the ten lights on this street, they dug up the pavement and put new wiring in for six of them. The other four have simply been wired to the same cable as the old columns, which I know from living here are controlled by a clock. However even the clocked supply has been on all day for the past few months.

 

I understand the need for a permanent live for the new control system, but why do this by digging up the pavement to connect to a permanent live supply for some, and simply leave the clocked live supply on all the time for others?

The existing lighting could be a combination of group switched and individually live. Even if a road consists of all group switched lights, they're not all necessarily part of the same switched circuit. Making everything live is quite complex and can involve a lot of work.

[Colin Foster 72]

The existing lighting could be a combination of group switched and individually live. Even if a road consists of all group switched lights, they're not all necessarily part of the same switched circuit. Making everything live is quite complex and can involve a lot of work.

 

All ten of them were controlled by the same clock until recently (they all came on at the exact time), but only six were put onto a live, and four left on the clock. I know the clock switch must be overridden at the moment because it also controls the lights on another street which is in a different zone and hasn't got the new lighting yet; they would always come on at the same time as well.

 

Another thing that really gets me with the lights that have been connected to a permanent phase supply, some have two cables and some just the one. I've measured the voltage between all the conductors of those with two cable, and there's 250v between the conductors of one cable but not the two conductors of the other. But there is 250v between neutral of the second and the live of the first. Basically one cable has a live and a neutral, the other just a neutral. There are also two fuses, one for the first cable and the other for the second cable and the output of the first fuse. Why did they need to use two cable with just a neutral on one, when there was already a live and a neutral on the other. I can't think why on earth (pun not intended) they would do that?

Edited September 14, 2014 by Colin Foster

[Wilson221 10]

Brave man

You wouldn't catch me going into columns, even though it's a fair few years since I've been on a building site I still remember those safety videos of people been hurt with electricity

[Attercliffe 10]

I think they are fantastic. A more pleasant ambience, brighter, clearer skies and cheaper in the long run.

[Strix 11]

They're orrid to drive through. Going from light patch to dark patch repeatedly plays havoc with your eyesight

 

I was sat next to a bloke on a train a few months back who was altering drawings for a motorway scheme. We got talking, and he said he'd resigned from the Sheffield street lighting project because the powers that be were insisting on having 'the wrong type of LED's'

 

Looking at what we've wound up with, I'm guessing these are display lighting type, intended to highlight features in pedestrian areas, not intended to evenly light a street

[Leadhammer 10]

They're orrid to drive through. Going from light patch to dark patch repeatedly plays havoc with your eyesight

 

I was sat next to a bloke on a train a few months back who was altering drawings for a motorway scheme. We got talking, and he said he'd resigned from the Sheffield street lighting project because the powers that be were insisting on having 'the wrong type of LED's'

 

Looking at what we've wound up with, I'm guessing these are display lighting type, intended to highlight features in pedestrian areas, not intended to evenly light a street

 

Im finding nothing fantastic about these new LED lights,

 

they may well be cheaper to run but i very much agree with Strix, its very patchy light and unless your underneath them they serve no purpose,

 

where i live we have them erected on the street and i can honestly say that the street is darker which is a worry (darkness encourages crime),

 

i found that when we had the old orange lights the spread of light was much greater, but if true as what Strix has said its no surprise sheffield city council has always been using cost cutting exercises with no benefit to the public.

 

Now we all know the old street lighting was expensive to run but what happens when crime rises due to insufficient lighting, who then is going to pick up the bill with already overly stretched police/nhs etc.

Edited November 8, 2014 by Leadhammer

[Mr Bloom 10]

I love the lights and and think they light immediately around them much better than the orange ones, however, there are just not enough of them. I reckon we've ended up with about half of the lights we had, now that we have the led ones. It appears Amey have put one LED street light where we had two orange ones, so we're left with parts of our street that are no longer lit, and it's a concern. We had a mugging on our street a few weeks ago for the first time EVER in living memory! Coincidence? As someone was asking in another thread, just WHO is overseeing these works?

[Michael_N 36]

Strangely enough Amey also work on behalf of Plymouth City Council and this issue made the press today down there by the looks of it also...

 

http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/New-LED-lights-leave-Plymouth-residents-dark/story-24465395-detail/story.html

 

Rotherham has lead the new LED lighting scheme and with most of their network covered I've not encountered the same problems as in Sheffield. The lights also look to be brighter and spread over a greater distance. Most of their roads are covered from the major arterial routes to the smaller estate roads. Some of the lights have also appeared on the parkway this way over the bridge at Catcliffe.