Sunday, April 27, 2014

LED Street Lights

New Town is a Solar City. It is trying to be a smart, environment friendly town. Zero carbon emission is a target that it likes to keep in view. In keeping with this vision, we have already started installing LED street lights in t-h-i-r-t-y kilometres (30 kms) of New Town. I took this picture this evening in Street No. 787 which is lit be LED street lights:
LED Street Lights in New Town
(On the far left, coloured lights of Banglar Hat are also of LED)
Recently, I discussed with Chief Engineer (Electrical) of HIDCo on the relative merits of LED lights. We jotted down a few points. Here are these:
- Lifecycle cost of LED street lights are less than traditional Sodium Vapour (those golden yellow lights) ones.
- Light from LED is white, day-like and so looks brilliant.
- Heat generated is much less from the light sources.
- All shades of colour can be easily generated in LED lights (think of LED TV and look at Banglar Hat facade lighting in Eco Park - partially seen in the photograph above)
- LED street lights produce 125 lumens of light for every watt of electrical energy consumed. For Sodium Vapour lamps it is 100 lumens per watt. System efficiency is 85% for LED, only 50% for Sodium Vapour lamps.
-LEDs are more environment friendly in terms of components as CFLs etc contain mercury, lead etc.
- At the end of their life, LEDs start getting dimmer instead of suddenly stopping to work like filament lamps and all others. This gives space to replace and avoids emergencies,

4 comments:

  1. Thats cool to have LED light for 30 k.m. in New town.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Dear sir,

    I want to draw your attention in a different topic 'Infrastructure development Beautification and Rehabilitation'.

    Now a days different infrastructure project like metro, widening of roads canal side beautification etc. are struck or going slowly. One of the main reason is obstruction from project affected people.

    For rehabilitation of any project affected people our approach is like fire brigade. After fire, we used to go to put it off.

    It is better to deal the problem in different way and systematically.

    There are plenty govt. land vacant (may be different state dept. land in odd location but closer to main city) where initial rehabilitation center can be build. These centers should be constructed in different locations simultaneously with a very fast speed. say 10,000 units in 1 year.

    Now for any infrastructure project like metro, road expansion, canal side beautification etc. can be conducted phase wise.

    The people should be shifted in the new location according to their choice close to their work space.


    After infrastructure development suppose 30-40% land remain unused. That land can be used for new rehabilitation center.

    This cycle continue in a proper time frame manner (this is must) such that
    1. we get proper infrastructure (metro/road)
    2. Beautification
    3. city will be slum-free.

    If proper rehabilitation center is prepared before the Infrastructure project there will be little obstruction from the affected people. Govt may charge for the shelters from the respective department whose project is undergoing(say rail) and can ask same amount of land in different location . In this way Govt. can save time and money both and even the project can get completed before the deadline.

    Regards
    Shubhashis

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  4. The LED street lights look very bright and the colour tone is almost like natural daylight ! This is an excellent initiative.. hopefully this will become the norm and within the next 5 years all of the city will follow suit.

    On another note, most new town roads have no footpaths / sidewalks for pedestrians (like the one in the picture).. so people walk along the road - thereby endangering themselves from vehicular traffic and also slowing down vehicular traffic. I would request you to take up the initiative to make new town more walkable by building footpaths and zebra crossings all across town, starting from the well inhabited areas of action area-I. This would not only help the neighborhood morning walkers / joggers, it would encourage more people to leave their car behind at home if they can take a safe and pleasant 5-10 minute walk to their nearest grocery store.

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