Testing New Lighting Technology in a Park Pedestrian Area

Abstract

European Union directives on ecodesign requirements of discharge lamps have also their effect on street lighting. The commonly used mercury vapor lamps have to be replaced starting from 2015. Pori, a middle sized city situated on the west coast of Finland, has about 17 000 mercury discharge lamps for street lighting. This was the starting point for Pori Energia, the utility that takes care of public lighting in the city of Pori, and for Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (SUAS) to initiate an investigation of alternative lamps. This paper considers the results of a practical experiment of four lamp types applicable for street lighting: high pressure sodium lamp, metal halide lamp, inductive lamp and led lamp. The lamps were installed above a park pedestrian area and the illumination was measured in various circumstances in the winter. In addition, electric measurements were carried out in the Electric Laboratory of SUAS. Also a small scale opinion poll among the pedestrian area users was included in the research. The results show that the luminous flux of all of the new lamp types was higher than that of the old mercury lamps. This was clearly proved even when the aging factor was taken into account. The led lamp seems to be the best choice relative to illumination/power consumption ratio. The park pedestrian area users were also satisfied with the chromatic tone of the white led light. However, the led lamp technology is not in mature phase and using it widely may cause extraordinary costs in the infrastructure of electric networks.