A new LED street lighting system that greatly improves energy efficiency while also cutting down on unwanted light pollution has been developed by an international team of researchers from Mexico and Taiwan. The system is set up so that the high-efficiency LEDs only shine where they are needed, greatly reducing light pollution.
Image Credit: Optics Express
One of the most impressive features of the new system is its adaptability to a variety of street lamp layouts, streets, and roads; the whole time providing uniform illumination and very good energy efficiency. As an example, “some modern lamps that line a thoroughfare or suburban sidewalk lean into the middle of the road, lighting the street from above. But more often, lamps are posted to one side of a street, or alternating in a ‘zig-zag’ pattern from one side to the other — a layout that may be more efficient for roads with high traffic flow. The new design provides flexibility to be used for different illumination requests while maintaining a high efficiency,” says co-author Ching-Cherng Sun of National Central University in Taiwan.
Image Credit: Optics Express
“[It's] based on a novel three-part lighting fixture. The first part contains a cluster of LEDs, each of which is fitted with a special lens, called a Total Internal Reflection (TIR) lens, that focuses the light so the rays are parallel to one another instead of intersecting — a process called collimation. These lens-covered LEDs are mounted inside a reflecting cavity, which ‘recycles’ the light and ensures that as much of it as possible is used to illuminate the target. Finally, as the light leaves the lamp it passes through a diffuser or filter that cuts down on unwanted glare. The combination of collimation and filtering also allows researchers to control the beam’s shape: the present design yields a rectangular light pattern ideally suited for street lighting.”
The new lamp’s performance was quantified by the researchers by using something referred to as optical utilization factor (OUF) — a number that “describes the relationship between the flow rate of light at the target and the flow rate of light coming directly out of the LEDs.” The higher the OUF is, the better the performance. The simulations done by the researchers showed an OUF of 51% to 81%, a potentially huge improvement over other recent “excellent” designs, that achieved 45%.
The LED streetlamp also meets high expectations for power and brightness. And, as mentioned before, significantly cuts down on light pollution. In conventional street lamps, as high as a “20% of their total energy is directed horizontally or upward into the sky.” And even in the best LED streetlamps, this number is still as high as 10%. But in the new model, only 2% of the lamp’s total energy is wasted as light pollution. Take a look at this image of the Earth from space to get an idea of how much energy is wasted lighting what doesn’t need to be lit:
As a result of this all, the new system and lamp design have great potential as a means to reduce energy use. “A general LED street light could reduce power consumption by 40% to 60%,” Sun says. “The increased efficiency of the proposed design would likely save an additional 10% to 50%.
Something else to note: the module is very simple to produce, as it’s composed of only four parts, including the LED bulb, which is of a type that is very commonly used in the lighting industry and is widely available.
A prototype of the design is expected within the next 3 to 6 months, according to the researchers. Installations of the new street lamp may begin as early as 2014.
The new system was detailed in a paper published in the journal Optics Express.
LED Streetlight System Cuts Down On Light Pollution And Improves Energy Efficiency was originally published on: CleanTechnica. To read more from CleanTechnica, join over 30,000 others and subscribe to our free RSS feed, follow us on Facebook (also free!), follow us on Twitter, or just visit our homepage (yep, free).
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