street lamps trial for Wirral gets the green light





A pilot scheme is being launched to introduce "smart" streetlighting in Wirral.

The energy-saving lamps will cut costs and are environmentally friendly.

Councillors have approved spending £137,000 on a trial of 350 new lamps, which will be centrally controlled by a computer.

A report by the authority's director of technical services says the introduction of a computerised central management system would allow the remote control of the lights.

The report says: "The system could be arranged so that the level of lighting was appropriate to requirements at any given time.

"For example, increased lighting in the vicinity of a theatre for a period when the audience was due to leave, but lower levels on nights when there was no performance."

Wirral currently spends £1.5m a year powering its street lamps.

The trial covers just 1% of Wirral’s street lighting, and only 9,500 of the borough's current 37,750 streetlights are suitable for conversion to the new system.

The system would also end the problem of lights burning during the day due to photocell failure.

Night inspection of lights controlled by the central management system would no longer be required, as faulty lights would be reported by the computer.

The report notes it will not be possible to connect the old-style orange sodium lighting units to the system, so the rate at which the "smart" network expands will depend upon funding available to renew Wirral's streetlighting stock.

The results of the trial will be reported to the council's ruling cabinet before the end of the financial year.

THE GLOBE

In certain towns in Southern Germany they actually turn the street lights off after a certain time say about midnight.
Also after 10 oclock at night all the traffic lights just flash amber and the traffic resorts to a give way scenario.
No more waiting at one in the morning at a red light cause your car failed to trigger the sensor - much better.

I actually think some traffic lights along roads (esp the A41) are systematically triggered to go to red so you have to stop at everyone. That's quite strange when you think about it.
I doubt WBC would have the ability to not mess this up anyway.

The switching off of certain lamps at (say) midnight is a great idea. It's not new, as in B'head up to the late 70's, before the widespead use of photo-cells, the lamps were timeswitch controlled.

In most side roads, alternate lamps went out at midnight. Quite a saving on juice and the lamps lasted longer. Still adequate levels of lighting.

Maybe that was too simple ?

I remember seeing the little dial when some of them had the 'door' off. I never knew about the photocells - wonder why they changed? You can turn them off with a cheap laser!

Photo cells are a fraction of the price of time switches. It's all down to cost I suppose.

Hadn't heard about the laser sketch. Mmmmmmmm.. ??

When will they make street lights that do not pollute the night sky with a sickly orange glow?

Don't they work better in fog ?

They make the sickly yellow glow better in fog!
Putting a dome over the top of the lamp would help prevent this, other countries do it.

The yellow/sodium colour is supposed to be better in foggy conditions (?). Lanterns are made open, semi cut-off and cut-off.

The cut-off lanterns only allow light to be thrown downwards at varying degrees ie.not above horizontal. Local authorities are supposed to use cut-offs for all new lights. Trouble is, there are thousands of the older type still in use. They make a grand job of lighting the underside of the clouds and folks bedrooms !!

Light pollution is one of my pet hates. Grrrrrrrrr !!

LOL what would you know about light pollution? I reckon you're about 5 miles from the nearest street lamp. Wait till you get to Shrewsbury, then you can complain!

Cheers, Chris.

Yes, and that's another thing... those stars and that blasted Milky Way thing. Glad I bought those old blackout curtains off Ebay!

Grumble, grumble.