Not until the 20th century did engineers start worrying about efficiency. In the early 1800s, whale-oil lamps and lanterns began to give way to relatively inexpensive gas streetlights, which were first installed throughout London, Paris, and St. Candles and oil lanterns brightened preindustrial cities, with some 3,000 streetlamps said to be used in Paris in 1669. The ancient Greeks and Romans lit terra-cotta oil lamps to illuminate their streets. The episode invites a few questions: How did an energy-saving technology that looked so promising wind up irritating so many people? Why has it taken so long for the impacts of blue-rich lighting to become widely known? And why did blue-rich LEDs so captivate municipal lighting engineers long before better options reached the market?Įarly innovations in street lighting were largely driven by brightness and convenience. They are welcome changes, but they’re happening none too soon: An estimated 10 percent of all outdoor lighting in the United States was switched over to an earlier generation of LEDs, which included those problematic blue-rich varieties, at a potential cost of billions of dollars. Some communities, too, are using smart lighting controls to minimize light pollution. Lately, lighting companies have introduced LED streetlights with a warmer-hued output, and municipalities have begun to adopt them. But months later, returning from a week’s vacation in rural Maine, I was shocked to find my neighborhood lit by a stark bluish blaze that washed out almost all of the stars in the night sky. I’m all for energy conservation, and I was happy with the LED bulbs in my home office.
THE BLUES INSTALL
When my city of Newton, Mass., announced plans to install LED streetlights in 2014, I was optimistic. That’s the year the International Dark-Sky Association, a coalition that opposes light pollution, started worrying that blue-rich LEDs could be “a disaster for dark skies and the environment,” says Chris Monrad, a director of IDA and a lighting consultant in Tucson. And these concerns have been heaped on the complaints of astronomers, who as far back as 2009 have criticized the new lights. The harsh glare of certain blue-rich designs is now thought to disrupt people’s sleep patterns and harm nocturnal animals. homes for one year-by converting all remaining non-LED outdoor lighting to LEDs.įor some, those first LED lights have been a fiasco. Consultants at the firm Navigant, in Chicago, have estimated that the United States could save 662 trillion British thermal units-the energy needed to power 5.8 million typical U.S. Another 60 percent goes toward lighting parking lots and garages, and much of that energy is still produced by fossil-fired power plants. In the United States, street lighting accounts for a whopping 30 percent of all the energy used to generate electricity for outdoor lighting. If the switch to LEDs had needed any more support, it came from growing evidence about climate change. They can last twice as long as ordinary sodium-vapor streetlights, and their prices have dropped to within range of the competition. LEDs are, after all, the most energy-efficient lighting option on the market. Like me, you might have welcomed this development.
THE BLUES TORRENT
You may have noticed them going up in your town’s streets and parking lots: a new generation of pole-mounted lights that pour down a cool torrent of lumens from an array of light-emitting diodes.
THE BLUES PDF
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THE BLUES FULL
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