Friday, May 30, 2014

Street Lighting In Modern Times

By Marci Glover


Raised sources are the most preferred for lighting our towns, cities, road edges and walkways. In street lighting, the source of light is usually turned on and off at certain times. In modern times, lamps have photocells that are light-sensitive. Their work is to automatically turn on the light at night and off in the morning. Previously, solar dials aided this function. It is common for sources to be on tall poles connected with wires between them.

Before the invention of incandescent lamps, candles were used in cities. Later, lamps needed a lamplighter tour every night to light all the lamps. This were then improved such that, an ignition device was used. It could strike the flame on its own provided the gas supply was active.

Invention of arc lamps made its mark as the foremost electric street illuminating method. Lamps made of carbon arcs using alternating current were used for ensuring that consumption of both electrodes took place at an equal rate. A departmental store in the French capital used this lighting system. The disadvantage with this type of illumination was the harsh intense light it emitted. It caused a lot of discomfort in towns, and maintaining it was time and resource consuming. They were replaced by brighter, cheaper and more reliable incandescent bulbs.

The operation of incandescent bulbs was often done using a lot of power through series arrangement of circuits. The high voltage carried by the circuits increased the usage of these lamps since they gave out more light per watt consumed. Series arrangement of circuits made controlling the bulbs less troublesome.

Currently, high intensity discharge lamps are used in lighting the streets. They are in most cases high pressure sodium lamps. They give out very large amounts of illumination while using little amounts of power. They are, however, inappropriate for lighting at night compared to white light. White light has been proven to help drivers see better at night, and react to brake faster than pressured sodium lamps.

White light emitted by induction lights gives better lumen than those produced by previous sources. New technology has, therefore, brought less power consuming lights to replace existing forms of light. The newly invented lights have, however, lacked official specifications making them wait for a while longer before being accepted by most municipalities. Most towns are of lit using LED luminaries because they are efficient in energy production and consumption, and they perform well.

A harmonized system of measuring energy was invented to help minimize the amount of power used in measurement. Two like measurements are employed in this method. It is cheaper as compared to preceding methods. This new method of lighting projects and measures various aspects of pollution caused by light. These aspects include: glow, glare and trespass. With this method, technicians can quantify the performance of available and planned lighting systems and applications with the aim of reducing excessive light from moving out of the borders of a premise.

Lighting on Streets is very vital because it keeps at bay the likelihood of accidents, and, at the same time, improves safety by aiding vision. If misused, however, it can cause accidents such as loss of vision, electrocution, and head-on collisions.




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