Reading this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-42072498/how-we-are-losing-the-night - got me thinking about our LED streetlights again. New Ferry's bit of the Rock Ferry bypass cannot be said to be contributing much to the problem. The Wondrous LED lamps there have not worked since being installed.
More seriously, one big advantage of these lights is the ability to switch them on and off in nanoseconds without reducing their life. By doing this at high speed, and varying the on-off ratio, it is also possible to vary the brightness, with a concomitant reduction in power consumption. This can be readily integrated into the switch-mode power supplies which exist already in these lights and there is already a radio link allowing this to be done remotely. Furthermore, most of the roads which have them are already equipped with CCTV, so surely it's not beyond the wit of man to be able to detect that there is no traffic in the middle of the night and to switch them off. They could be switched on again on arrival of a vehicle and switched off again once it had passed by.
Much if not all the infrastructure already exists to do this sort of thing. All that is needed is to put it all together. This would reduce the power bill, reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and perhaps give us back a view of the night sky, now invisible over much of the Wirral. A win-win solution if ever there was one.
Wakey wakey Wirral council! Save us some money!
