Difference between High Pressure Sodium and LED street lights

[@randomrazr]

i kinda liked th e orange, easier on the eys when driving at night

[@Hirotoro4692]

randomrazr yeah, but at the same time makes it harder to see people in dark clothing.

[@lesterantoniobonilla1998]

agree its better than LED

[@peterhoult]

Maybe use of "Warm White" LED would be better than the "Cool White" option that street light engineers seem to favour?

[@ajuk1]

The LEDs look crap at night in the older parts of town.

[@sG-ku5qm]

I would say the Sodium was doing a much better job

[@joeyaayeoj]

it's really hard to see ppl in dark clothing in the dark areas between LED streetlamps. at least with Sodiums u have dispersed light that covers that area.

[@alelectricll]

Why not try make a yellowish led street lamp. The sodium appear to has a brighter appearance of usable light.

[@1harryrobert]

Sodium lamps emit their light very near to the peak sensitivity of the human eye under normal viewing conditions. Far better than the white colour from LED's.

[@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305]

err you got that backwords..

[@evanpapp93]

a fair comparison would be nice, obviously that glare makes is seem less bright. but if you ignore that, the hps BY FAR has less shadowing under the table and behind the dresser. LEDs are cool in all; but for outdoor lighting, not a chance, they are to point source creating horrendous glare and therefore ruining your night vision, driving in fog or rain creates even MORE problems with glare unlike LPS or HPS. Until they can make amber leds as efficient as those disgusting and blinding blue/white leds i will not be a proponent to them. If you want efficiency and enviro friendliness use LPS (yes I understand S/P ratios but that gets thrown out when talking outdoor lighting) These new blue/white LEDs are ruining the night sky and your night vision, sodium vapor is much more friendly towards the night sky as long as you have a fixture that is dark sky friendly.

[@Hirotoro4692]

SuperBigEv So much false. Firstly, LED's are reducing night pollution, not adding to it. Secondly, there are already LED street light products by the likes of the top brands, Philips et al. that are designed to reduce glare. Some of these products are in testing and already produce less glare than HPS. Our local council switched to LEDs and I have noticed no extra glare. Due to their directional nature, there's actually less glare, and less overspill into house windows so home owners get a better night's sleep. Despite this, drain lids, potholes, and pedestrians are EASIER to see due to the whiter, more efficient colour temperature and higher colour rendering index. In particular high-vis jackets show up more easily under LED.

[@davidprivate5786]

+Will Davis Sorry, but I notice more glare when driving at night, especially in damp conditions.

[@peterjohnson3842]

+SuperBigEv I'm with this guy on this one. I know nothing about the science of LED v sodium street lights, but many of the LED street lights I've seen installed recently (and ouncils are crazy for them at the moment, the way everyone was crazy about concrete in the 1960s) just seem so dim and shadowy. Many streets which used to be properly lit up now look only half-lit in a kind of murky white light you'd associate with deserted warehouses. I understand the argument about white light not distorting colour, but see little actual evidence of this. Anyway, don't take my word for it. Just drive along a well lit up high sodium road at night and compare to an LED road, and ask yourself which one offers the better visibility.

[@evanpapp93]

The new holophane fixtures installed on I-96 are not bad. But still pretty horrid in the rain and fog. I still miss sodium, but oh well. Thanks for the comment!

[@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305]

l;ol the high pressure sodium has more light spread.. look at the ceiling even the guys body.. its orange.. and on the led side every shadow is black

[@KandiKlover]

Warm lighting is nice, wish I could get slightly warmer LED flashlight.

[@ROFLance]

Low and high pressure sodium lamps are the most efficient electrical light source existing today. At 200 lumens per watt, low pressure sodium takes the cake, with high-end LED lamps getting 70 lumens per watt.

[@cloviscareca]

LEDs are just terrible. Long life HPS

[@alelectricll]

The colour might be loss for sodium but the light is power. With the led you can see colours better.

[@oxforduniversity34]

incandescent light bulbs or High Pressure Sodium is much better than the LED lights. The LED lights are awful looking, not very bright and not very soft like and cover less. They installed these lights here in San Luis Obispo, California and they really look terrible. I am complaining to my City to bring back the incandescent light bulb or High Pressure Sodium light back, they are just much better.

[@GreenPowerFarm]

not spam!! I am impressed!!!

[@MMAfighter38113]

i've always liked the mercury vapor lights over the hight pressure sodium lights. I know the mercury vapor lights were not the brightest, but The sodium lights are too orange.

[@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305]

agree.. the orange HPS makes it hard to see people walking accross the street or animals or cars aor anything.. dont care if the lumens per watt is better.. the white light from mercury vapor is much better, and i prefer mercury vapor over LED because LED has a poor pattern spread even with diffusers and so forth

[@DiegoGene-fh3zp]

I rather have the mercury and hps over LEDs tbh with you

[@c5ec5e]

Lumens per watt is a poor metric to use to compare lighting efficiency. 120 watt HPS units are regularly replaced with 58 watt LED units that provide better lighting despite having a much lower overall lumen output. This is due to 2 factors: 1) LEDs are directional, sending their light output straight down where it is needed, rather than glaring wastefully in all directions 2) unlike sodium, the majority of the light energy output by LEDs is at the best wavelengths (daylight) for human vision.

[@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305]

mmmmm unless you want spot lights or something the LED is not better, the light being directed in one direction is a DOWNSIDE to LED's.. not a positive.. this is why its taken DECADES times over to improve light spread on LED's. Id rather have a HPS barn light for example that spread light all over my property.. than an LED that has a 30 feet diameter spread.... sorry

[@ecoutezmusic]

seems like the hps won

[@c5ec5e]

There is no comparison. LED street lights are superior in every way. The quality of light is far better - they provide sharp true color just like daylight from the sun - the way we have evolved to see. They direct the light straight onto the street with no dangerous side glare and light pollution. They use much less energy than other lighting technologies and last far longer. I have been rejoicing that they have replaced the dangerous ugly glaring HPS lights in SLO with quality superior LEDs.

[@lampmunchertv3861]

They can still cause light pollution, by the same effect that the suns light reflects off the moon, the moon is not white by the way, it is grey, much like the pavement of roads or atleast the older roads that have not been repaved which is most, I'll have you know there is HPS fixtures with optics that focus light downward exactly like these LED's you speak of, also you say they're dangerous for their glare? you realize that these things re mounted up high, so realistically there will be side glare no matter what light source it is, therefore that argument is invalid, also they are not the most efficient light source, Low pressure sodium (LPS/SOX) has reach efficiencies of up to 200Lm per watt, which still is higher than any available LED as of yet. and yes humans are evolved to see similar light to sunlight, but you don't need sunlight for traveling on a road, nor do you necessarily need high colour visibility, infact HUMANS DID NOT EVOLVE TO SEE THE SUN AT NIGHT! it is much more beneficial to have dimmer lights at night, to both humans and the environment, i might also add that the lack of color forces you to see certain details better since your eyes /brain are forced to adapt to their loss of ability to see colour information, and currently they do not last longer than ALL other lighting technologies, one technology that has been proven to last a long long time, and by long i mean decades is the mercury vapour lamp, which some have been burning bright for as long as 60 years, LED has not had the time to prove itself like this, therefore you cannot claim they last longer than ALL other lighting technologies

[@cemops8660]

so you just said LPS is 200 lumens per watt. then said that darker at night is better.??? the UK banned SOX lighting as it was deemed unsafe for lighting roads BECAUSE of its HORRIBLE lighting index rating. you can't determine any colours individually and road signs/ road markings will all appear yellow. Your point of 200 lumens per watt is true. But how many of those lumens are useful and being seen? In this case it's not just about how bright it is. It's about how clearly you can see. there are LED lights on my road that have been up for about 13 years. so they definitely last longer than HPS/ metal halide for bulb replacements.

[@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305]

@@cemops8660 exactly... people who love HPS always they talk about is the lumens per watt..... Listen Mercury vapor lights are even better than HPS.... MV is blue/white like LED.. with coated bulbs it allows you to see people and objects and cars much much better than a HPS light.. I have a HPS light on the electrical pole on my property its a 150w light.. puts out supposedly 16,000 lumens. However my single Mercury vapor light at 175 watts only puts out about 8k... but i can see everything much better under the MV light than i can the HPS light. People unfortunatly grew up with HPS lights.. from the 70-2000s.. They dont know what white light from Mercury vapor looked like, even with metal Halides which never took over. Instead everything was orange growing up for people. They dont realize the white LED and white Mercury vapor is better.. That 16000 lumen HPS light I barely can see someone walking across my yard even walking directly under it.. especially in dark clothing.. I bet you over the 40+ years for HPS tens of thousands of pedestrians were killed because of the poor visibility its creates. Sure its a nice orange pleasent glow for sleeping with some light on, or a nice glow for a wall light on a building... But LED for visibility is vastly superior.. they totally went backwords when they replaced mercury vapor lights... The other problem i have though is with LED reliability. Most of the fixtures out there are made in china... chinese knockoffs.. all the dusk to dawn lights i find all have a lot of terrible reviews with the lights going bad after 6-12 months.. its hard to find a reliable LED.. and to replace my 4 mercury vapor lamps.. it would cost $500 for the 4 LED fixtures to replace my mv ones, and this is only for a 70 watt led with 8k lumens like my 175w MV... the energy cost of MV would be $20 a month vs 8$ a month on led, so in 4 years i finally make up my $500.. and then it would take another 4 years to save $500... will those leds be working 4-8 years from now.. i highely doubt it.. I havent met a single LED light in any aplication that doesnt get burned out diodes and so forth and last for years... not one in anything i buy.... But my mercury vapor lamps are 30 years old... lol nearly as old as me.. all i gatta do is replace the bulbs.. as they do get dimmer over time even though they are running..

[@cemops8660]

@@jeepsblackpowderandlights4305 very interesting, thank you. I guess it depends on the quality of the fixture and the times that they are on for. My council did some trials with led lamps in 2008 and they are still on the same road, but these ones come at a premium.

[@elevatorexplorer1950]

My opinion led is better

[@dawnrussell5432]

I hate LED lights and they look ugly!!!!

[@lesterantoniobonilla1998]

true orange is better than LED

[@lampmunchertv3861]

No need to hate, but yeah I agree that they're harsher on the eyes than HPS

[@elevatorexplorer1950]

Fuck you

[@Digital111]

Glad they got rid of those hideous yellow lights on my street, the new LED lets you see all the colours, unlike the HPS which turned everything outside to a sickly yellow.

[@zerenio]

Spectrum I liked the sodium lights better because I have seeing problems and the LED lights damage my vision

[@jamesjameson7635]

I prefer the sodium lights, it was aesthetically pleasing and warmer more inviting and the walks at night were something else

[@DiegoGene-fh3zp]

​@@jamesjameson7635yea with the Bright leds feels like you in the spot light I prefer sodium and mercury vapor over LEDs anyday