More vaguely-informative ramblings about low pressure sodium lamps

[@TechnologyConnextras]

Oh hey, I just want to let y'all know (if you haven't already figured it out) that these were all shot in one go and released out of sequence. So when I said "set up the next video," well you've already seen that one. This is it for the Connextrasvaganza 2021, and I hope everyone has a happy new year!

[@Nah_Bohdi]

This definitely doesnt help my autism. Im not sure how to proced in life now.

[@keksilu]

i figured as much when i saw the knife on one video asking myself what it was for and gettig the awnser in the clock video.

[@Tardisntimbits]

Happy New Year, Alec! Thank you for the wonderful videos this year!

[@gazzabethyname]

Lighting one to this

[@pd1jdw630]

Yes these lamps do fail. For street use when emissions are less then 60% they get replaced. In greenhouses they get replaced when they fail ore Flickr. But most greenhouses are now converting to led.

[@thirdarc]

This man has absolutely mastered whatever technique it is that he's using to make boring things fascinating.

[@wmlindley]

Who was it said, "There are no boring subjects, only boring teachers."

[@melody3741]

Its cause he cares about it and doesn’t talk in a monotone voice.

[@thedavesofourlives1]

He could actually sell stuff on the shopping channel!

[@gaelencarter4804]

literally just stared at a lightbulb for 10 minutes

[@harrisbinkhurram]

He's my spirit animal.

[@PH-G]

LPS lamps are typically used around observatories as their monochromatic light is easy to filter out from images of the night sky more or less eliminating local light pollution while still providing adequate lighting for surrounding areas. The observatory at my school is surrounded by probably about 100+ LPS lights on the nearby buildings and streets as well as the adjacent parking lot. So LPS lamps still have a niche use case at least.

[@nbrown5907]

Can't led lights be made to fill that niche now?

[@absalomdraconis]

@@nbrown5907 : Supposing that LPS lamps are a variety of cold-cathode device (which I suspect they are), then they very likely have a _much_ "narrower" (and particularly "sharper") emissions peak than any LED other than Laser Diodes. The reason why is that the chemical elements that the electric discharge passes through will behave _almost_ like a laser element, providing an element-based tuning effect that you won't quite get with ordinary LEDs.

[@silicon212]

Flagstaff, the first 'international Dark Sky City', began replacing all of their LPS streetlighting beginning in 2018, for LEDs that emit the same wavelength, and thus have the same effect.

[@silicon212]

@@nbrown5907 They absolutely are.

[@Muonium1]

@@absalomdraconis This is indeed part of the correct answer as to why they can't so easily and perfectly be replaced by LEDs. Look at the spectral output of a monochromatic yellow aluminium gallium indium phosphide LED; the FWHM spectral bandwidth of the emission is about 25 nanometers. Fairly wide. Now look at the D-lines emission of a sodium lamp, it's a combined FWHM width of maybe 5nm at most. The reason for the difference though is not really that the sodium lamp is acting like a laser, but that the atoms of sodium are excited and emit light in near isolation while in a gas, whereas in a solid state device like an LED, the energy levels of the electrons in the valence and conduction bands are more smeared out due to their interactions with close neighboring atoms.

[@alasdair4161]

They must have an extraordinary long life. A car park near my last address had one way up a central pole that was just visible from my house, it was on 24 hours a day for the fifteen years I lived there. One day I enquired at the shopping centre about why it was never switched off and was directed to the maintenance guy. He informed me that the light had a faulty automatic switch and was wired directly to the street supply so nobody had a switch, but as the lamp itself was only 18 watts, nobody had any plans to hire an EWP to repair it until the lamp itself failed.. ten years on from my enquiry and it was still as bright as ever, and it probably lasted a few years longer (I moved interstate), but some of that life may have been a result of staying on without any thermal cycling. I was impressed and always expected it to eventually stay off whenever we had a power failure.. but, it always came back on... That totalled about 131,000 hours or more, but who knows how long it was on before I moved there... lol

[@lennytlm]

You should see if you can find it on google maps and see if it's still there

[@caprature]

@@lennytlm I second this.

[@TlD-dg6ug]

It wasn't the same bulb/ballast, the bulb would have gotten to be far too inefficient for the ballast to support, as well as the ballast would have gone far before that timespan.

[@Warp2090]

18 watts? A LED that size would probably draw the same or more.

[@themaritimegirl]

A fun fact you might not know - because they are low-pressure, you can run these on a modern electronic fluorescent lamp ballast, and many enthusiasts do. You get no buzzing, near-zero power loss in the ballast, perfect power factor, and no flickering (which is usually also better for the lamp, as well as your eyes). People often use the Fulham WH2 ballast for the 18W lamps, so I suspect the WH3 would provide enough power for the 35W lamps.

[@chistinelane]

ENTHUSIASTS?!?!! *YOU MEAN I'M NOT ALONE AND INSANE FOR YEARING FOR THESE TO THE POINT OF TRYING TO MAKE CUSTOM FIXTURES?!?!?!?*

[@thecrowcook]

@christine lane. For anything that you are interested in there are people that spend ridiculous amounts of time and money to do it better than you ever thought possible

[@two_number_nines]

electronic ballasts are pretty bad with the power factor and curve of the current. You get the same bursty behavior of consumption like any other switching supply without PFC.

[@themaritimegirl]

@@two_number_nines That's certainly true for the cheap no-name ballasts, but the decent ones made by Fulham, Sylvania, and Philips are better.

[@DinnerForkTongue]

@@thecrowcook Can confirm. Best example I can give: flashlights.

[@Ni5ei]

I grew up in the 70s and our house was next to an intersection. When I was around 6 years old I was so fascinated with these bulbs that during the winter months my mum would set up a chair by the window so I could watch them start up. I still love them as much as I did back then and I have enough bulbs to last me the rest of my life :)

[@Cheddar_Curtain]

What sort of fixture do you run them in? Getting very hard to find not only bulbs, but ballasts and housings too. Whatever is left of new old stock is it.

[@Ni5ei]

​@@Cheddar_Curtain I have several fixtures but my favorite is the Philips SRM. I have (legal) access to the dumpster of the company that maintains the street lighting here so I pick out the ones I like best. They also gave me their remaining stock of HPS and LPS lamps and ballasts so I'm well stocked 😅

[@JDSileo]

I really like the pace for "low effort" extra content. It's really cool going on the exploration journey with you

[@bookofb2098]

I really enjoy rough cut content that gets uploaded to various channels. Feels more "genuine" than highly scripted and edited stuff.

[@JDSileo]

@@bookofb2098 I also like the fact that there is so much recently. I would love a Connextras for every regular episode.

[@millenniumtree]

Hawaii, especially the big island, uses LPS lamps for street lighting, because the narrow emission spectrum is easy to filter out at the observatories on Mauna Kea. Today, they're using LED replacements, that actually still look exactly like LPS. You can tell you've got that spectrum if you have a red car, as we do. The car appears to be grey under an LPS lamp - the red is completely undetectable to the eye, unless some white light hits it from some other source. When we first visited Hawaii about 8 years ago, the lamps were obviously still sodium. Today, however, I can't remember when I've seen a real sodium lamp - they're almost all LED now.

[@MidnightGazebo]

Do the LED replacements have the same heads as the sodium ones? Where I live they went with white LEDs, but in a head that directs the light downward in a tight cone - the reduction in light pollution was really noticeable, and I can see much more sky even near built-up areas.

[@millenniumtree]

I think most fixtures have been completely changed, but some are undoubtedly retrofitted. The difference in light pollution between here and the mainland is STAGGERING. Very little is over-lit here, it's all directed only downward, as you said, and the highways are only dimly lit, and only near intersections. You have headlights, after all. :P I'm in Kona, Big Island. Other islands may have different lighting rules.

[@jantube358]

Do these LED replacements really have that monochromatic light? What are they called? I would like to have one for my room 😁

[@CoololdCars]

Anyone know the lps match LED bulbs? Where to get them?

[@magx1]

@@jantube358short answer - I seriously doubt it. LEDs probably have a fairly smooth spectrum, even though they can appear to be very monochromatic. Gas discharge lamps can have sharp lines.

[@Meatball2022]

These lights are common in many facilities because 1) they last a long time, and 2) they emit a frequency different than other types of light that does NOT attract bugs

[@shubinternet]

Ultraviolet Light is what attracts bugs. Fluorescent lamps glow in UV, and the phosphor is what converts the UV to visible light. But a lot of UV still leaks through. LPS doesn’t have any UV, and so doesn’t attract any bugs.

[@KasparOnTube]

soo.. moths aint gonna care about that lamp? :O

[@trueriver1950]

The absence of a blue component in the spectrum also means these lamps don't reset your body clock if you drive under them for hours at night. That is great for not giving you "jet lag" after a long drive on a sodium-lit motorway (freeway) which were common in England a couple of decades ago. The downside was when your body clock thought (correctly) it was night and sent you to sleep at the wheel... I once caught myself microsleeping on a motorway at 3am and when I had stopped safely at a parking area i instantly fell asleep still belted in and woke up at gone 6am. I was profoundly glad that I had fought off proper sleep as falling properly asleep at 70-80mph may not be habit-forming. That wouldn't have happened under mercury lighting and doesn't happen under LED.

[@shubinternet]

@@trueriver1950 - the reason it doesn’t happen under LED lighting is that white LEDs are actually based on blue LEDs, in a process made famous by Nichia in Japan. They take a similar phosphor as they would use for Fluorescent bulbs and repurpose it to take in the bright blue color of the base LED and then re-radiate light over a wider spectrum, thus giving the appearance of being white. But again, a lot of the blue light leaks through. There’s still no UV there, so they won’t attract bugs. And the human eye doesn’t see the blue light, but it is still there.

[@trueriver1950]

@@shubinternet just so :)

[@christophermoore6547]

You know, your channel has seriously satisfied my own ADHD-borne need to tear apart and learn about items that I have no time or money to seriously pursue. Every topic seems to emerge just as randomly as the ever changing subject of the never ending question in my head "how does that work?" You are an inspiration to me as someone who loves learning about how we interact with everyday items!

[@jeromeprater183]

As a kid I remember the prevalence of Mercury vapor street lamps. They glowed a blue white color. It was strange when Sodium vapor lamps became common later on. In some ways the high intensity LED street lamps take me back to the Mercury vapor days at least in relation to the light spectrum they produce.

[@henrycalde1991]

In my house I still have a Mercury Vapor clear coated lamp to light the backyard. The light as you said is a white/bluish color It really brings out the green color of the lawn and trees

[@DjResR]

I have only seen coated mercury lamps called DRL when I was kid living mostly on streets. You could easily see which were recently replaced as it turned from pink to green with use._

[@5roundsrapid263]

We had a mercury vapor light on our house when I was a kid. The icy blue/white was a very distinct color.

[@puffapuffarice]

I recall these as well, & this time of year especially. Boxing Day meant being dragged by parents to several boring parties. So I would often stare out windows putting my eyes out of focus to see more clearly the blue halo around the street lights.

[@gorak9000]

Yup, when I was little (mid 80's) all the streetlights where I grew up were mercury vapor. Then at some point they changed to sodium, and I really hated the orange light. I'm pretty sure they just changed the bulbs over, as the light head itself stayed exactly the same

[@jrmcferren]

Here's an interesting fact about LPS lamps. As we all know, as a lamp ages the efficiency decreases. Most lamps have reduced output as the lamps age, but LPS is special. When LPS lamps age, they start drawing more power. I'm not sure how much of your 72 watts is ballast loss and how much is the increase of the lamp, but if you try a fresh bulb you may see a reduction in power consumption.

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

They draw more power BECAUSE they are less efficient. Duh.

[@somethingsomething404]

@@DonnyHooterHoot yes but the interesting part is that they just draw more power instead of making less light and using the same power, like other lamps do.

[@Melds]

I don't know if it helps but I keep reporting the sex spammer on these comments. Do multiple people need to report them to get them banned?

[@mybuddyphil8719]

@@Melds I report them too, it probably just takes youtube a bit of time to ensure it's spam

[@Jaymac720]

@@Melds I report em too but they never disappear. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that same account on some of my comments. I wish blocking worked on KZbin the same way it works on every other platform

[@SeanBZA]

Lamp life is the emissive material on the filament failing, and then also sodium attacking the graduated seal that is there where the seal is, as they go from quartz glass to a softer glass that will handle the leadout wires going through, and also allows the vacuum system to pull all the gas out before introducing the Penning gas mix that provides the initial conduction. That is why your standard operating position is base up, or with the base no more than 15 degrees from horizontal, so the liquid sodium does not get near the filament area, and rapidly erode the glass, as it is a sodium oxide, so will dissolve in sodium, unlike the fused silicon dioxide of the rest of the arc tube. Warm up time is because you have to heat up the inner tube to the point the sodium inside turns to vapour, which is the yellow emission, and the indium oxide coating on the inner surface of the glass envelope and the outside of the quartz tube is there to reflect the IR energy back to the tube. Ballast is an autotransformer ballast with a tuned circuit in it, and likely the capacitors in there have changed value from self healing, and should be replaced. Identical value polyester motor run capacitors, one by one, and the power factor will improve, especially as the lamp warms to full brightness, and should land up at around 0.85 lagging when on for around 2 hours.

[@kemby9037]

i love that the connextras channel is , without fail, exhausted ramblings of an insane man (whom we all support) for around 7 to 25 minutes.

[@Josh_Fredman]

Sodium lighting is one of my favorite things. HPS lamps are my all-time favorite lighting source, and LPS are magical in how eerie they are when used out in dark sky regions (e.g., around astronomical observatories). When I lived out there, our cheery red car looked vantablack under them! Loved your videos on this a few years back and happy to see this one today. LPS lamps have been almost impossible to source for at least 3 years now; I'm surprised some enterprising young go-getter doesn't start up a new factory, given the apparent demand.

[@Jaymac720]

A little electricity lesson: In the AC world, there are 3 types of power: apparent, actual, and reactive. The apparent power is just Volts*Amps. It can be expressed as Watts or VA for volt-amps. The actual power is how much energy the component is using. For a pure resistor, the actual power is equal to the apparent power. For a pure inductor or pure capacitor, the actual power is 0. Reactive power is the energy that a transient component (capacitor or inductor) returns to the system. This is typically expressed as VAR for “volt-amps-reactive.” A pure resistor has no reactive power. A pure capacitor will collect the AC power it’s fed, then return it to the system 90° out of phase with the supply. Same for and inductor but in the opposite direction. A helpful mnemonic are ELI and ICE. In an inductive circuit, voltage (E) will lead the current by 90°; and in a capacitive circuit, current will lead the voltage by 90°. Now, the impedance (Z) produced by these components can be expressed using complex numbers. C will be the capacitor value in farads, L is the inductor value in Henries, and ω is the angular frequency of the circuit in radians/second For a pure resistance, Z = R For a pure capacitance, Z = 1/(jωC) or -j/(ωC) For a pure inductance, Z = jωL For a circuit containing a resistor and a transient, you can simply add these values together and get the total impedance of the circuit expressed in Ohms expressed as a complex number. Zc = R - j/(ωC) ZL = R + jωL These can then be used to calculate the current and power based on the given voltage simply using V = IR and P = VI = (V^2)/R = (I^2)R Ignore the current for now. Power is what’s relevant to the video. When you combine these terms, power will then be expressed as a complex number. Where P = Apparent + jReactive (X + jY) The magnitude of the actual power is the Pythagorean sum of the apparent and reactive components: Actual = sqrt[X^2 + (jY)^2] The power factor is then the ratio of actual/apparent. You can use either power or current because the values will still be proportional, just multiplied by V In a case with just a resistor, you have no reactive power, so PF = actual/X, and actual = X, so the power factor is 1. In a case with just a transient, X = Y, so the Pythagorean sum will come out to 0 thanks to the j term making it negative once it’s squared. Thus, the power factor is 0/X or just 0. When you have a resistor in the mix, it’s a little different. The X factor will be different from the Y factor, so the actual power will not be 0, meaning the power factor won’t be 0. That’s the case for this lamp with an inductive ballast. The lamp acts like a 35W resistor and the ballast acts like an inductor of some value. While the lamp doesn’t even need an amp to run, the ballast adds a lot of impedance, so it takes more current to push the same actual power through, thus the apparent power will be higher since the reactive power is higher. That’s why it’s pulling 3 amps, despite not actually using that much to drive the lamp. A capacitor can be thrown into the mix to balance out the reactive power. Since in a capacitive circuit, the impedance is negative, a capacitive impedance of the same magnitude can be added to the positive impedance of the inductor to make the imaginary component of the impedance 0, thus making the reactive power 0, the apparent power equal to the actual power, and the power factor equal to 1. By the way, the power factor can also be calculated directly by taking the cosine of the difference in phase angle between the voltage in current. I mentioned before that in a transient circuit, voltage will either lead or lag the current by 90°. cos(+/- 90°) = 0, so the power factor is 0. For a resistor, everything is in phase and the cos(0) = 1. As for a complex circuit, the difference in phase angle can be calculated by taking the arctangent of the reactive component (no j) over the apparent component: arctan(Y/X). Taking the cosine of that value will then give you the power factor. Reverse engineering this process, a arccos(0.2) = 78.5° which is ridiculously out of phase.

[@SquareCanine]

My art teacher brought one in once. The room was blacked out and we painted by the near monochromatic light of the LPS, then turned the normal lights on at the end to see our results. Was pretty cool. Also, sodium light makes everyone's skin a weird corpse like colour, so it was like being in a room full of zombies.

[@brick6347]

I like how the notification shortened the title to "more vag..." Thought you were taking the channel in a whole new direction for 2022!

[@karsnoordhuis4351]

Fun(ish) fact about power factor: because large parts of the Dutch power grid are underground and the ground is rather wet, the ground starts acting as a capacitor and reduces overall reactance. This means factories can have worse power factors without having to pay like in neighbouring countries.

[@russellhltn1396]

Nit pick: A capacitor is also a reactive load. But most factories are inductive, so the ground's capacitive reactance cancels the factory's inductive reactance. But you probably knew that.

[@justin8894]

Maybe the people doing the math are smoking pot.

[@pettere8429]

The field does not extend beyond the shield conductor of the cable so ground water does not come into it. The capacitance of a cable is only due to the close proximity between the phase conductor and the grounded shield.

[@robertlitman2661]

@@pettere8429 the proximity is less important than the dielectric. An oil filled capacitor has hardly any capacitance before the oil is added.

[@KOTYAR1]

What. What the heck 😯

[@phillipallen5564]

Dude the humming scared me as a kid you saved me from from my biggest childhood phobia and the gas dryer helped me from a mental breakdown in highschool when I thought our gas dryer gonna xplod

[@michaelimbesi2314]

“More vaguely-informative ramblings about high-pressure sodium lamps” basically describes this channel, and I love it

[@gabrielanderson1604]

The loading dock where i work has been illuminated by the same low pressure sodium lamp since the building was constructed around 1999. Grranted only one of the original four lamps are still burning, but aside from brief power failures that security lamp has been lit for over 20 years. I have always been amazed at the longevity of the simplest devices and how they can just keep working. Btw, this is at a government facility so the odds of anything ever geting replaced is pretty much zero, I figure we will have a power failure one day and the ballast will finally fail and then six months later maintenance will replace all four with integrated LED fixtures

[@Spanky2k]

You know this slow warmup is the kind of thing that's actually really nice in low light areas. All of the lights in my house are LEDs now because, well duh. However, two of them are not - the lamps on our night tables in our bedroom still have some old IKEA Compact CFL 'energy efficient' that take an age to warm up because that's *exactly* what we want form our bedside lamps. If you wake up in the night, you don't want to be blinded when you need to turn the lights on. They take several minutes to warm up to full brightness, enough time for your eyes to gradually adjust. I honestly don't know what we'll do when they fail as, as far as I know, there are no LED equivalents with fake 'warm up' time.

[@ZGryphon]

I got a new bed frame for Christmas that has a light underneath it. At first I thought that was deeply silly--why is it there? in case the monsters want to read?--but it turns out that it's actually really useful for navigating those late-night bathroom breaks. You turn it on, and it just kind of makes the floor around the bed glow.

[@CodingWithCameron]

I ended up getting the Phillips hue lights and set the default turn on to 10% brightness with a warm light. If i need more, i turn it off/on twice really quick and it goes to 50% which is plenty for me

[@ratchet1freak]

Dimmers and dimmer compatible LEDs, that way you can turn down the lamp before you turn it on and then ramp it up manually. Or hack the dimmer to be programmable to start them dimmed and then auto ramp up over time.

[@Jaymac720]

You can still buy fluorescent bulbs if it matters that much. I have a relatively new instant start CFL in my bedside lamp and it’s pretty dim when cold. The light doesn’t even make it to the opposite wall, and my room isn’t that big.

[@whitesapphire5865]

@@ZGryphon Hospital beds have small "puddle lights" under each side for just that reason - they cast a small "puddle" of light on the floor without the need for turning on the main lights in the room, so your new bed is actually following a safety trend. I'd say it's actually a good idea.

[@TexasNightRider]

The sound emitted during the bulb illumination was relaxing like watching an AMSR video. Enjoyed this video.

[@ZGryphon]

Faaaancy. Our safelight when I was a kid was a giant-but-low-power incandescent bulb that had been literally dipped in red stuff, like a cone at Dairy Queen. You could see where they got the paint on the first row of the threads and everything.

[@5roundsrapid263]

I remember those. You could buy multicolor sets, or single colors dipped in paint. “Bug lights” were just dipped in a yellow coating.

[@trueriver1950]

So called fireglow bulbs are still made like that. Very low wattage incandescent and dipped in red dye. Official use is in fake coal fires to give a comforting glow between the "coals" but can be subverted into use as a nightlight. Dimmer than the dimmest mains LED, but uses a lot more power.

[@shakeit995]

Power factor: I suspect that many who watch this channel have some understanding about reactive and real power, but if you're interested: with a power factor of 1, the voltage and current draw of a component in an AC system (e.g. mains electricity) are in phase, and since power is voltage times current, all the current drawn provides power to the component (real power: we measure this in watts [W]). This is the case for true resistive loads, i.e. their complex impedance have zero imaginary part (imaginary parts introduce phase shift). A resistor is an example of this. However, with inductive (e.g. electric motors) or capacitive (less common but exist) loads, the voltage and current are not in phase. With the voltage 90 degrees out of phase to the current, no real power is delivered to the load, but it still draws current. One half of the period, the device draws/stores energy; in the other half, this energy is pushed back into the grid. So this reactive power, measured in VA (volt-amperes) to denote that it is not real power, leads to losses in the electrical grid due to current drawn. Every cable has some resistance, and the power loss in the cable is equal to R*I^2. So if the current doubles, the loss is 4 times greater. The power factor is simply how much of the total current supplied to the load is used to do real work. If the phase angle between the current and the voltage is 45 degrees, cos(45°)=0.707... => 71% is real power and 29% is reactive power. In most countries, you only pay for the real power supplied to your home, but with high reactive power draw, it puts extra strain on the wiring in your house and on the electrical grid, and leads to higher losses.

[@raffitz]

The public lighting in my street used to be LPS until very recently. I grew up with a monochromatic orange light at night right outside my window. One of the minor side-effects of this was that in one of your colour theory videos, you said "monochromatic light makes the world look weird" or something to that effect, and to me it was pretty not-weird - it's how the world used to look when I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night for like 25 years. Now they replaced it with a lower intensity white LED panel, and it took a while to get used to, but it's less weird (no more orange monochromatic world).

[@Melds]

Same for me, though they went with very bright LED lights that cause a lot of glare. I wish SCE went with dimmer lights that are just bright enough to see.

[@russellhltn1396]

In my town, LPS was used in the rural areas and HPS was used in the city.

[@HAWXLEADER]

Guy 1: I'm so old that back in my day TV was monochrome!! Guy 2: I'm so old that back in my day Real Life was monochrome!

[@dustmybroom288]

I have never seen an LED light that wasn’t super intense and bright white. This is probably why I don’t like LED lights

[@gert106xsi]

They were very common in the Netherlands over highways en in rural areas. Yes if you aren't used to it, the fixtures containing the 180 watt bulbs look strange. I saved a couple of SOX lamps for nostalgic reasons

[@thelegalsystem]

I also have a strong nostalgia for these. Especially when it would be overcast, and the lights would cast an orange glow on the clouds at night.

[@ozricm]

I remember back when my whole town was LPS there was this one power outage at night that lasted for an hour or two, long enough for the bulbs to cool down. When the power came back the whole town was illuminated by the dim purple glow as all the lamps struggled to warm up, as they were pretty large, very ethereal experience, kinda sad I'll probably never see it again. The lamp outside my house went from LPS to daylight temp led, and boy I tell you what that's something to get used to.

[@matthewjc89]

Spent 10 minutes of my precious gift of life to watch an obsolete bulb warm up--and enjoyed it! What a time to be alive!

[@lohphat]

My dad was a cop in the 60s and 70s as SoCal rolled these out to save money, it made tracking of cars and people difficult as you couldn’t determine paint and fabric colors.

[@WSNO]

ah, a good reason to keep LPS bulbs

[@davewood406]

You knew exactly when you were in Long Beach.

[@jaysmith179]

Back the blue to protect us.

[@vaelophisnyx9873]

@@jaysmith179 ACAB. "The blue" are nightmarishly overfunded and have no oversight.

[@Doc_Hawk]

@@jaysmith179they literally have no (as in zero) obligation to "protect" anyone as the US Supreme Court ruled. "Protect and serve" is just marketing essentially, not a mission statement

[@c97f]

Brings back some memories. I used to work for Osram Sylvania making HID lamps. We had both LPS and HPS lines in the factory but I was a low watt metal halide guy.

[@silicon212]

Low watt metal halide in terms of vehicle headlights? Or like 35 watt MH security etc.

[@nudisco300]

Love metal halides - great for shops!!

[@c97f]

@@silicon212 we made 50, 100 and 150W lamps as our "bread and butter". Not vehicle headlights (that was a separate plant about an hour away). It was common outdoor commercial flood lighting in the days before LEDs. Not really street or parking lot lighting, that was more like 400W. Think small businesses with like a tiny parking lot or driveway.

[@silicon212]

@@c97fAwesome. I love the CRI of metal halide lamps, they work great for automotive shops. Very close to 'cool white' fluorescent lamps.

[@CarvachosNachos]

These are also widely used in San Jose, CA and the surrounding city’s in the Santa Clara Valley. Legend goes that they are used to reduce the amount of light pollution for the Lick Observatory on Mt Hamilton. I’m not sure how accurate that is but I do know that they are the exact same color as the yellow signal lights, so that can get interesting.

[@michaelladue5655]

Same @ Flagstaff AZ

[@Willard_guy]

Since they basically put out one spectrum of light they are very easy to filter out for astronomy purposes.

[@ArthurAllen2]

Thanks to you and Tech for mentioning this. I saw them in San Deigo in 2010 and thought they were fluorescent lights wrapped in a yellow filter to keep bugs from swarming over them. Then when I went looking for them in Street View, I couldn't find any examples. I now remember that the bulb shape is part of a design of a very politically incorrect bridge detail in Olympia, Washington where they have concrete representations of totem poles with the light tube under a bird's beak at the top.

[@richardmattocks]

Watching it warm up was strangely hypnotic 😊.

[@ethernet0]

The town I live in, Turnhout Belgium, still has a factory making mercury professional lighting. Not sure if they are still made here, but sodium bulbs were made here as well. They have a big lab where they test the lights, and it has been glowing this orange ever since I was a kid. The factory used to provide jobs to 2700 people, but now things are being replaced with leds there are only about a couple 100 people working there. Might be cool if I ever make a vid about it, because we have lots of different street lighting here, because those bulbs are made here.

[@indoinfra]

The so-called 'Lichttoren' (Tower of Light) in one of the former Philips buildings in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, used to be bright orange to testing purposes as well. Since 2009 there are LED's on at night to give somewhat of the old nostalgic feel/look back.

[@onufmi]

im glad i have something to watch everytime i feel lonely. like right now for example. happy new year everyone

[@jeremyloveslinux]

How I like to explain power factor and reactive power: think of a wheelbarrow- you need to lift the wheelbarrow up in order to move the stuff forward. Lifting up is reactive, pushing forward is real, and total work is apparent power. The being hard on the grid part is that you are flowing more current and causing resistive losses in everything, but not getting more work done. Grid equipment- transformers and generators among other things are rated in kVA (or MVA for bigger stuff) because that is a measure of apparent power which takes into account the bad power factor some loads have. Only when you have unity power factor does kVA = kW. Also - maybe the lamp does have a cap but has failed.

[@randacnam7321]

No PFC cap. These a high leakage reactance transformer ballast.

[@mjc0961]

That didn't explain anything at all. It sounds like you got distracted halfway through and started talking about kVA instead of finishing the wheelbarrow analogy.

[@plapbandit]

Britbong here, these things are absolutely all over the place in street lights where I live. They were slowly trying to replace them all with LED alternatives as they failed but some of the street lights around here have been going for at least 20 years without replacement, so they gave up and started swapping them anyway. My source is a mate who works as a sparkie for the local council

[@ericdoe2318]

The streetlight outside of my house is low-pressure sodium, this lamp looked old when i moved into the house 15 years ago. it has to my knowledge never been changed and runs all night long every night.

[@nom3nnescio]

Every night? Even on summer?

[@ericdoe2318]

@@nom3nnescio yeah even in summer.. and on Tuesdays too.

[@BobDingleful]

Fun video - I used to work with these lamps when I did photochemistry work. Instead of the expensive hanovia lamp, I de-glassed a 450-watt low pressure sodium street lamp to just the innards/discharge tube. With filters we got a high concentration of either the 220 or 254 nm discharges and had samples working very close to the light sources. It was so bright and produced so much heat we had to make a light-sealed cabinet with liquid and air-flow cooling to handle things for long operation. Good times, and it gave me ths sunburn of my life with very little exposure without the outer glass. The lamp will eventually lose the atmosphere inside the discharge tube, it is extremely slow but gases do diffuse over time through the glass.

[@Muonium1]

Na doesn't produce those lines. You had to have been using Hg of some kind.

[@BobDingleful]

@@Muonium1 You are right, forgot it was mercury, sodium lamps definitely for elsewhere.

[@jacobdykstra8499]

Hey Alec, long time viewer here, love your videos! Just want to give you a little bit more information on power factor and some of what's happening here. Power quality happens to be one of the areas I specialize in as an electrical engineer at a utility. Power factor is a little bit more than just voltage and current out of phase. Yes, the classical power factor everyone is used to seeing has to do with the current (usually lagging) the voltage. This out of phase relationship between voltage and current means more reactive (oscillating) power and less real (one direction) power. This is a simplified explanation that works sometimes. This however does not hold if the current is not a sinusoidal waveform. If the current is any shape other than sinusoidal, then it has harmonic distortion and can be decomposed using the Fourier series into many harmonic components. These harmonics other than the fundamental cannot transfer any real power but they do contribute to reactive power and low power factor. Fundamentally, power factor is real/apparent power, this always holds true and will account for the higher order harmonics orthogonal to the 50 or 60Hz voltage waveform (since they are a different frequency). It is entirely possible to have voltage and current perfectly in phase, yet still get a poor power factor due to these harmonics. It happens to be that arcing loads such as arc lamps or arc welders have significant harmonic components and this is likely contributing to the lower power factor here. This is even worse for the utility as this cannot simply be corrected with a capacitor anymore and needs some more advanced harmonic filters to correct the power factor. For larger loads, customers are required to keep their harmonic content within IEEE standard 519 limits. For fun, take an oscilloscope and measure the current waveform if you have a clamping current probe. I would bet if you put it to FFT you would see tons of harmonics on this light! There is also some classical displacement power factor at play here with the current lagging the voltage due to the inductive ballast. This is a real problem in the industry and is growing to be more common with more complex non-linear power electronic loads such as power supplies or inverters. Anyways, great video as always! Keep up the great work!

[@ahreuwu]

Thanks for the breakdown, I first heard about power factor on this exact video, and I've been curious about what that is and how it actually affects the power consumption, but I couldn't understand any explanation other than ELI5's. Your comment made things a lot clearer, so thanks. Also, harmonic lights? Yes please!

[@SalemXIII]

Somehow he always makes me interested in any topic he talks about. Digging the extras videos, too.

[@TechToCryptic]

When the lamp nears end of life, its reactions with the lamp's alumina (synthetic sapphire, really) shell have depleted much of the sodium from the lamp, raising the voltage required to maintain the discharge to a point where when the lamp is fully hot, the ballast can no longer provide that voltage, causing the lamp to extinguish and re-strike . the lamp uses more power (watts) as it gets older

[@Muonium1]

you can see through the discharge envelope here so it can't be alumina. It's either glass or fused silica. Same metal loss mechanism though probably. Also, the argon is slightly soluble in the glass and lost to the Penning mix over time. Only the HP Na and Hg lamps use sintered alumina envelopes.

[@housebuilder6738]

This is the case for High pressure Sodium Lamps. Not for low pressure Sodium.

[@adamburns1077]

I’m an electrician, I mainly come across SON and MH light fittings but I have worked on a few SOX lights, they last an age before blowing, quite a lot longer than SON which already last a while. I remember before I thought about the power factor and efficiency of the ballast, thinking that there was little to no point replacing SOX street lighting with LED seeing as they’re 35W and LED street lights range anywhere from 50W to 200W, but man take into account how inefficient these things are and it’s easy to see why. They’re still in use on long stretches of motorway here in the UK where it’s a pain to replace a faulty light and the most valuable asset is having a light that lasts ages, and they’re good for not causing too much eye strain at night.

[@mishkamcivor409]

Back before they replaced all the street lighting here with LEDs they were all low pressure sodium, and there were definitely some that failed and would stay a dim pink-orange all night until someone eventually came and put a new bulb in. Actually a lot of the light poles here used to be concrete too, now they're all metal

[@Stuff1646]

Most street lights over here are mostly metal sadly, altho there are still few that are either hybrid of concrete with new head fitting which is bit out of place and/or many street lights are still concrete with the original low pressure sodium lamps as they are left untouch thankfully.

[@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse]

@@Stuff1646 In my place of the world they're replacing all of the wiring with underground wiring. That causes many issues, and solves few. But the biggest motivation that is aesthetics seems to remain

[@stephenj4937]

Wait until you see some of the bad batch of LED street lamps that are turning purple!

[@Stuff1646]

@@stephenj4937 It's either that, or they fail in spectacular way that it pops the main breaker to all the street lights, and yes this has happend multiple times ...and is quite dangerous since you can't see whose around the corner!

[@NextDefault]

It has literally only just occurred to me that this is the same technology the street lamps used to be, and thats why they would turn on pink and then become yellow over time, literally seconds before reading this comment. I miss when street lights were like that. I unfortunately grew up in areas where they were virtually all metal (although there was a stone one right outside my old house. Its unfortunately been disconnected and had a metal one put up right next to it since then) but theres something very nostalgic about it to me. I also feel as though they are brighter than the led ones that have replaced them, although this may partially be due to the colour of the lighting instead of their actual brightness? But either way i feel much safer out at night, illuminated by the orange glow of sodium lamps than i do the newer led ones.

[@danielpirone8028]

The documentation of the decent is glorious. Thank you.

[@somegeezer]

Seen many of these lights die the red death back when they were more common to see around. Really more of a pink, I'd say. Most of them got replaced with bright white obnoxious LEDs. But they were so bad that they've started replacing those with a more mellow yellow again. Still LED, but toned down a bit. Easier to see than the old sodium monochrome lamps, but not as eye burning as the midday sun.

[@dustmybroom288]

I have never seen an LED light that wasn’t super intense and bright white. This is probably why I don’t like LED lights

[@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818]

@@dustmybroom288 in my experience form installing the things, the main problem is companies and cities often install lights that are too strong for what they are using them for. One job i did we replaced 1000 watt Metal Halide fixtures with 495 watt LED fixtures at a rail yard. Problem was, those fixtures where way too bright and they caused way too much glare for the railyard operators, probably because no one bothered to actually compare the lumen output of the fixtures. they probably could have gone down to about 200 watt LED fixtures and they would have been fine. Then another job i did, the Engineer wanted us to replace nineteen 80 watt fluorescent fixtures in an MCC with these massive 260+ watt, 36000 lumen LED fixtures. The engineer said, well i got them because they where bright. It didn't cross this guys mind that there was such a thing as too much light. We ended up wiring up the fixtures so that only a third of the LED strips where actually running and the mill safety guys still complained that it was too bright. Of course we couldn't even run all the fixtures at full power without tripping the breaker.

[@UmbraAtrox_]

Happy new year Mister. Thank you for making my room a happy place for up to an hour everytime you upload a video.

[@adamk2332]

The electrodes are the wear point. The exciting of the gas at startup requires the electrodes to "work hard" until operating temp is reached. The electrodes are in constant wear during use, yes, but nearly immeasurable. If left on, they will last "longer" than one that is cycled. The requirements of startup are the main life shortening factor. Similar to fluorescent tunes, threads may be blackened and yet the lamp works. Until you turn it off, and then try to turn it back on. It may have a low glow and flicker (maybe) but it won't light. Thats because the burn on the electrodes creates the extra resistance and it can't strike. Sorry for the droning on. But it is actually the same as that light bulb in the firehouse for like 109 years or whatever. They have it running low to preserve it. And they leave it lit to preserve the electrodes (filamant in that case) from the damage of on-off operation.

[@owensmith7530]

The million hour bulb in the firehouse is carbon filament so totally different to anything in use now. Something happened to the filament decades ago and it is almost semiconductor and it naturally runs very dim. At one point it got a lot brighter for a time and then dimmed again. There is some very odd stuff going on in that bulb. It's also a special brand that was sold as having an extremely long life, some of the other documented very long lived bulbs were the same brand - they eventually failed. If I recall correctly the carbon filament is coated with something else by that manufacturer.

[@KryptCeeper969]

I could listen to you describing ice melting and still be entertained. Happy new year!

[@harveybrooks2597]

I remember growing up catching the exact moment the light sensors on the street lights would kick in and getting to see the whole road lined with very dim bulbs glowing pink before eventfully turning to yellow/orange once warmed up. And now I drive down a dual carriageway in the dark and at around 4:58am seeing the entire road switch on instantly with white LEDS. Dusk/dawn and night time just doesn't feel the same without them. BTW I have seen some street lights not working and stay pink but only a handful over maybe 20 years.

[@SuperR167]

Thanks for mentioning SD! Always noticed them around campus at UCSD and it was always a neat tidbit to let friends know they were low pressure sodium vapor lamps 😊

[@EqualsThreeable]

It’s a nice orange color and the hum can be very pleasing. I know it’s subjective but they have a certain quality that LEDs lack. LED lighting has traits too, you have ones where you can make out the individual LEDs, then you have ones with opaque covers to more evenly spread out the light. LEDs also have different kinds of failure, sometimes partial outage/partial dimming of sections, sometimes you get really bad flickering or ballast failure similar to these sodium bulbs where it comes on for a moment and goes out for a moment. I find the qualities of each kind of light source is fun and unique, we literally have had the sun for thousands of years of humankind, then all of a sudden we invented fire/candlelight, incandescent, CFLs, neon, sodium, LED, etc. Our ability to control and manipulate photon emitting devices is a fascinating science. It’s also got a lot of draw on human emotions surprisingly.

[@pkguy3]

We had the long roughly 4ft version of these street lights that were specifically placed at each corner of a main road on some of the less travelled residential and darker areas of town, but not in the stretches between them where more regular smaller white type street lights were hung. The yellow glow from these lights made it really easy to tell ahead of time that you were approaching a side street corner.

[@bigjd2k]

They made electronic ballasts for these, they actually took 35W with a great power factor. Like fluorescent lamps the skin effect made the efficiency go up a few percent above 20kHz or so.

[@Ferraday]

I can’t find any details on this. Why would skin effect increase efficiency of fluorescent or sodium vapor lamps? It’s just worsening the current density throughout the lamp.

[@uriulrich4918]

In my town (southwest of Germany) they're using low pressure sodium lamps above intersections. In the main roads the street lamps are suspended above the road. So at night, when the traffic lights are turned off you have a visual attention grab when there is a yellow light above the road. Because of how densely European cities are built this really helps when you don't know the town.

[@VulpesHilarianus]

There's a few of these left on my street that provide light. They've started replacing them with LEDs, and it just... It looks hostile and harsh. They look like invaders between the trees. The yellow light of low pressure and high pressure sodium lamps creates a much more inviting atmosphere that makes it more pleasant to be outside.

[@CoololdCars]

Hit the nail on the head. They ruin historic districts where sodium light has made a great atmosphere and the harsh white LED is terrible

[@UncertainEarth]

I absolutely love the format of the latest couple of videos.

[@kirbymarchbarcena]

SODIUM LAMP: He's not that enthusiastic about me. INCANDESCENT LAMP: Don't be too SALTY about it FLOUROSCENT LAMP: He'll be enlightened someday.

[@brennanlukas5467]

You are correct, used in a relatively clean environment they go forever. The most common failure mode I found having just redone a bunch in a parking structure was the capacitor going thermonuclear or water getting into the ballast transformer causing corrosion and shorts in the windings

[@henrycalde1991]

In my area theres a house that has 2 Mercury Vapor(MV) lamps that appear to have been retrofitted with these LPS,the light looks dark yellow but warm My house still uses a clear bulb MV to light the backyard and has been in service for almost 15 years now and it still lights up a great amount and really brings out the green color of the lawn and trees. The light itself is still white/blue. Theres a house a few blocks over that also has a clear coated MV lamp but the people that have been around say that the bulb hasn’t been changed since the late 70’s. I believe it because that MV lamp looks green as can be and somewhat dim,it barely lights up the yard

[@randacnam7321]

If you are talking about yardblaster style bucket lights, those were made in 35W LPS versions back in the 1970s/1980s. The lenses will be a few inches longer than those on high pressure mercury/high pressure sodium/metal halide bucket lights to account for the longer lamp.

[@z06rcr]

There is a parking garage at the hospital where I work and the roof is illuminated by what appears to be a 1000 watt MV lamp that is on continuously day and night on a very tall pole. For the 20 years that I’ve parked there’s it’s been in use though now much dimmer and greener.

[@henrycalde1991]

@@randacnam7321 thats what it must be then,yeah i noted the lense was larger than a normal nema head one. I didnt know they made them in bucket style back then,thats cool

[@henrycalde1991]

@@z06rcr thats a rare find nowadays too, especially a mercury vapor with 1000W. From what I can tell is that mercury vapor lamps can last for an indefinite amount of time,but they depreciate in brightness instead of cycle like other lamps

[@randacnam7321]

@@henrycalde1991 Mercury lamp life also depends on the manufacturer. Westinghouse Lifeguard lamps as well as any Japanese made Iwasaki lamp are well known for their longevity. Chinesium ones, not so much. Especially 175W no name lamps from the 2010s where the arc length is too short and thus the reduced arc potential overloads the ballast.

[@Patrick_AUBRY]

The Engendering Mindset on KZbin as the best explaination of what is power factor in "Power Factor Explained" in way to short sentence: A load with current out of phase with voltage.

[@DigBipper188]

1: Doesnt' surprise me that the gear is inefficient in that light. Most US spec HID gear uses an autotransformer ballast to increase the open circuit voltage of the output to aid in stroking and running the lamp. these ballasts are quite inefficient compared to a choke and especially electronic gear. My Philips MI26 street lamp with a 35w choke draws about 42-46w with a standard 35w lamp in it. 2: it should also be noted that the U bend of the tube is the coolest part of the lamp even when it's at full operating temperature. this is where the sodium will normally start to condense first, and as these lamps are usually run tilted base up, the liquefed sodium will tend to migrate to wards this U bend. I have Philips lamps that have the dimples all the way down the tube, the dimples nearest to the cathodes are all empty and the U-bend is coated in sodium. 3: It wouldn't surprise me if ILDOT has been relamping their fixtures with regularity, although SOX (LPS) lamps have a very long average service life of around 18,000 hours. I should not that there have been documented cases of these lamps being run 24/7 and achieving significantly more life than this before the discharge tube cracks from thermal stress, or the emissive coating on the cathodes is spent, resulting in a lamp failure. Here's a few fun facts; - Low pressure sodium lamps only emit one wavelength of light at 589nm. This type of emmission is referred to asthe Sodium "D-line". - The outer bulb of these lamps are vacuum sealed, and they also have a coating of Indium Tin oxide (ITO) which reflects more of the lamp's heat back into itself. This is vital for the lamp's efficiency and performance as the discharge tube itself can't retain the heat it needs to be able to vaporize the sodium and produce any meaningful light. If you see a lamp that has a shiny black material at the base, similar to vacuum tubes, this is a getter material that is used to ensure the vacuum is well maintained. The getter material reacts with any gases that may enter the outer envelope. - In the 1960's and 70's, low pressure sodium lamps became a common replacement for mercury vapor and incandescent lamps in the UK due to an impending energy crisis. In an attempt to save as much energy as possible. the UK government and councils employed the use of low pressure sodium lamps exclusively as they were, at the time the single most efficient light source we had available. They remained so from then until the recent developments in blue LED technology which has lead to LED lamps with efficiencies on par with a 180w sodium lamp, but across the entire wattage range, making them more versatile. - Lamp wattage ranges for low pressure sodium are 10w (which is exceedingly rare), 18w (rare but did see use in bulkheads and low height fixtures), 26w, 35w, 36w, 55w, 66w, 90w and 180w. Some lamps also came with the "SOX-E" nomenclature. These lamps were designed to have increased efficacy and could be used as stand-ins for standard SOX lamps. Good examples are; 26w replaces 35w 36w replaces 55w 66w replaces 90w

[@cyborgsheep6077]

As an electrical trade school graduate your explanation of power factor was perfect

[@LakeNipissing]

Make sure Ray (Rodalco2007) is aware of this startup video of this LPS lamp!! Alec - you are looking more youthful than ever!!!

[@automaton20]

When I watched another video from this channel I thought it was from the main channel. I was like "huh something seems off with him, hope he's ok". Your main channel videos are so well edited that seeing raw clips from this channel was pretty jarring. Having said that thanks for the interesting content! We will be on the look out for these lamps from an industrial surplus company we deal with.

[@knurlgnar24]

It's sad to see LPS lamps go away. They are highly efficient, extremely long lasting, and the failure rate is near zero. LED lamps have a very high failure rate due to the complex power supplies and diurnal temp cycling. Overall lifecycle and total energy costs of LED is quite a bit higher. But they aren't orange and in the public's mind LED=good so that's what we get. On the plus side I'm happy to see high pressure sodium HID go away. What horrible detestable things - I curse them and their families for largely murdering LPS for outdoor safety lighting. Their constant failures, short life, failure to re-strike, horrendous aging curve, etc. :)

[@joshuaboniface]

We had an LPS lamp at the entrance to a townhouse complex in my neighbourhood. I don't recall it ever being replaced for the ~25 years from the time I was a kid until a few years ago when it was swapped out with a new LED fixture. Walked by it twice or more a day too. So I definitely think that, when operated correctly, they'll last a *very* long time. It was one of the ~3 foot ones (so I guess 120-180W) in a nice long fixture and it took a few minutes to warm up, about as long as this one, not significantly longer. But this one would start very pink, for about 30 seconds, then would go orange-yellow then full yellow after a few minutes. I had a ~2 foot (I think 100W) LPS bulb in my light bulb collection when I was a kid, loved that one.

[@raekmannen]

The silvery stuff stuck to the U-bend could possibly be the "getter" rather than the sodium. It is a reactive material purposefully left during manufacturing vacuum tubes are sealed to absorb any remaining gas that got left behind and gas that takes longer time to be released. These low pressure lamps might be manufactured similarly to vacuum tubes.

[@Ni5ei]

No it's the sodium The getter is near the base and in the outer glass tube, not in the u shaped tube.

[@RailBuffRob]

In Philadelphia Pennsylvania, the subway tunnels use LPS lamps. The stations have fluorescent fixtures with cool white LED drop-ins but the tunnels themselves are all orange. They're replacing some of them with new daylight-white LED fixtures which seem to make a world of difference, but they only seem to be replacing them every time a lamp dies rather than just going through and replacing all of them (although they did replace all the lights in the trolley tunnel all at once). Philadelphia also has the PATCO train and it's tunnels are lined with standard wall-mount parking lot lights.

[@NJRoadfan]

For years my family home had a sodium fixture installed over the garage (I think it was HPS). It lasted 30 years running from dusk to about 1AM until one day it stopped working. The bulb was fine, the damn ballast quit! I'd say most fixtures the ballast will fail long before the bulb does.

[@TravisTev]

That was certainly the case with the domestic HID fixtures I bought during the 2010s. Almost every one of those had to be returned at least once. Problem was always the ballast or ignitor, not the lamp.

[@Shawn_the_Protogen]

I studied to become an electrician (never followed that path, I became an auto tech), my teacher in Electrical class told me he was on a job to replace one of these sodium lamps that was originally from 1989, he said the only reason it needed to be replaced was the rubber gasket in the lamp housing failed and water got in, damaging the ballast. Supposedly, had the balast not failed, it would have still been functioning. I've wired up some HPS lamps before and aside from the monochromatic color and horrible power consumption, they are basically bullet proof. The balasts are super simple, the one I wired was literally a transformer and an igniter coil.

[@chrisingle5839]

I always liked SOX lamps. Managed to discover that they were disappearing 2 weeks before the end of manufacture. Bought 2 55 watt and 2 35 watt at that time. They were always neat to watch as they change.

[@20bluebug]

Hello :) I'd like to thank you for talking about these. I always liked these lamps but knew nothing about them till I saw your video "Why are some streetlights orange". From that video I understood the difference between LPS and HPS lamps. And that sparked me to research more about them, and got a few of my own. Thankfully, just in time because they stopped making them by the end of 2019 as I understand it. These lights will fail in time. Heavily made as they are, the weak spot with them is the electrodes. They have a limited number of strike times. The initial strike and warm up is hard on them, as a bit of the emissive oxide spatters off them each time they are lit. That's what forms light greyish deposit on the glass at the electrode ends. As I understand it, this is how the majority of them fail. Unless the lamp wasn't level at one time when in use, the reason the sodium has migrated to the bend is because when the lamp is operating, the bend, and the electrode ends are the coldest part of the lamp, and when the lamp is turned off and the sodium vapor condenses, it will accumulate on the coolest parts of the lamp.

[@JessHull]

I have 1kw HPS lights in my garage to over winter my plants. Yes I could use LEDs but I like the light the HPS puts out and I don't have to heat the garage because I get waste heat from the lights. So the excess heat from the lamps and ballast are actually a plus in this application. I do supplement with LEDs but I don't think I'll be completely replacing my HPS hoods anytime in the foreseeable future. despite their huge power consumption.

[@stephenbenner4353]

I’m an Electrician and I’ve replaced plenty of low pressure sodium as they burn out, but they normally have a mogul base or an E39 or E49 Edison size, so they would probably not fit too well in your fixture. They sell adapters for $3-5, but they might add 1-1/2” to 2” to the length. Edit: I haven’t changed so many bulbs in the past few years. I’m doing a lot more fixture replacements with LEDs, but I haven’t been doing very much lighting in the past few years either.

[@zspacecaptain8228]

Yes, SOX lamps have been known to significantly outlast their rated lifetime in many cases. Although they do fail, its not uncommon for them to last for 10, 15, or even 20 years without failing. They last longest when left on for long periods of time, just like fluorescent lamps.

[@Kitsudote]

I love that hum... It's kinda soothing and gives some nice technological place vibe.

[@thisnthat3530]

The thing I remember most about these lamps when they are used as street lighting is that they are almost identical in colour to yellow traffic lights, causing the red light to seem to appear out of nowhere on occasion.

[@TheKnobCalledTone.]

I like the humming. I'm also beginning to miss low-pressure sodium lights. I know LEDs are more efficient and probably brighter, but there's something nice about the light that low-pressure sodium casts into the street. Happy New Year btw.

[@zaprodk]

I'm no expert on LPS lamps, but i would think the wear mechanism is sputtering. The metal electrodes are being slowly eaten up and the metal being evaporated and deposited onto the glass envelope. Once the electrodes are burned up, it's dead.

[@Ironarcer]

ive also noticed on my bulb that the sodium content is a fair bit less than what was in it originally (apparently it reacts with the glass)

[@kenh6096]

I really like low pressure sodium lamps. I don't know if it's just nostalgia or perhaps just what I am used to. But the warm orange glow just in inviting and easy to deal with to me, yet modern LEDs just make me squint and recall from there harsh light.

[@blairwilliams136]

I remember the first time I stood in an alley way in Toronto that was lit by LPS lamps and noticing the everything , including the colorful graffiti on the walls were all in black and white.

[@iwontliveinfear]

My step-grandmother had one of these lights for her darkroom. She had to replace the bulb once when I was 10, that was almost 31 years ago. She developed film and arranged photographs at least once a month right up until she died from COVID in September 2021.

[@shodan2958]

Still have these in some UK areas. Long gone from motorways (Highways) mind. Seems to depend on whether the local council wants to spend the money replacing them or not, I personally prefer LED since it seems more light hits the streets making it more brighter and actually makes the street feel more safe on a personal level (Though I dunno if its a psychological thing). Interesting on the photography side too now since it gives photos of areas that have long since converted to LED a sense of time passing oddly enough.

[@peterking2794]

As a kid in the UK, I remember seeing early LPS lamps which had a separate glass vacuum 'jacket'. The failed U tube was withdrawn from said jacket, complete with its ceramic bayonet cap base, and replaced with a new one.

[@AgamemnonTWC]

I miss these. LEDs just don't look right on the road and in parking lots. Seeing these disappear from the road feels like losing an old friend somewhat. Heck, my elementary school gym and middle school cafeteria were lit up with them. Yes, I know, obsolete, etc, but man, I miss them.

[@spunker88]

Agreed, the LED bulbs have a more intense light output but doesn't spread as far out as the old sodium lights did. The color temperature of the sodium bulbs is also better for residential areas, its a nice night light color. The more blue daytime color temperature of LED bulbs makes it look like its daytime, especially when you live in a snowy area and get all of the reflection off the snow.

[@DripDripDrip69]

Look up phosphor converted amber led

[@VulpesHilarianus]

@@DripDripDrip69 The thing is even those don't look right because the falloff is much sharper. The blackbody property also is much wider because LEDs run much cooler, making certain materials appear white, others appear yellow, and others look very dark yellow-green compared to low pressure sodium lamps that provide a constant even yellow-orange. Low pressure sodium lamps get about as close to candelight provided by a traditional wax and vegetable oil candle as you can practically achieve through mechanical means.

[@GabryJ84]

I fell in love with LPS when I was 8 and I had one of these lamps suspended over the crossroad I used to live next to. When I grew up I did everything I could to get some of these lamps and now I own many LPS lamps (180W, 135W, 90W, 55W, 26W) and 20 to 30 different LPS fixtures.

[@shadowofcloud9]

The reason bridges and tunnels use yellow/amber lights is because it's the easiest light for our eyes to adjust to suddenly. Going from midday to a dark tunnel and then going back to midday can cause a lot of problems for the driver.

[@b.c.2281]

This is a factor I wish more design would take into account. I have a 2014 Audi S4 and a 2021 F-150, and while the Ford is incredibly nice and full of features, Ford also makes all the lighting in their interiors *bright* blue. The Audi is all lit up in red, and much better suited to night driving. Modern LED emergency lighting (the ones that come on when the power goes out) are also stupidly bright white, and could prove really disorienting in an actual emergency.

[@Posiman]

You are correct. In Czechia both high pressure and low pressure sodium vapour lamps are still used for street lamps (the low-pressure is only used in areas where the color does not matter that much like parks) and when they go bad, they just stay dimly orange-red the whole night.

[@techtastisch7569]

Hey, This is going to be a long Comment.. I really love those lamps, even have a 35W, a 90W and was also furtunate enough to get a (if pricey) 180W one. The 35w is running pretty much every day in my living room supplied with an electronic dual fluoreszent lamp ballast, meant for 2 18W T8 lamps paralleled up. Its drawing about 37W, 161mA with a pf of 0,98. I'm by far not an expert around these lights, but according to some sources these lights are a bit picky about their operating point. Likely mine is running at an too high voltage with too little current, due to the electronic ballast. Sadly I cannot measure that waveform with my multimeter, but it is still going strong. The 90W is running on an OSRAM QTP5 80W electronic ballast meant for a weird size of t5 tubes, while consuming only 70W there. Would prefer that a little higher, though the pf is still quite good at 0,93. The 180w is a beast! Not only because of the size, but also because of the gear needed to run it. I had spend quite some time experimenting with different circuits, and also bought wrong stuff. The odd thing with it is, despite stating 200V of arc voltage I just could not ignite the arc on our 230V supply with conventional ways. So I got a SX74 parallel Ignitor that was at least able to strike the bulb, but I was still not able to maintain the arc. Even did some tests running it between phases at 400V all with various chokes and resistive limiters. Ended up purchasing a BSX 131 leak transformer meant for 131W SOX-E bulbs. Because according to what I read, The supply for a SOX and next smaller SOX-E bulb is the same. It did work, but the Ignitor wouldn't stopp igniting. Manually disconnecting it when when the bulb was struck worked, so I built a small timer circuit that does that automatically. By the way: With leak transformers they put a capacitor in series to the lamp, it is important for their operation. Don't ask me why, but without it (or a broken one (dont ask😅)) the lamp only flashes, so its not only for pf correction. At least it works now and makes A LOT of light. The arc voltage is about 330V while drawing about 200W. I don't recall the current or powerfactor though. Alex if you want some footage or so I would be happy to share😉

[@Tony2dH]

Hey, thanks for your comment! I have a question if you have some time. I'd love to get an 18w LPS SOX lamp or two for some dim ambient light in my flat at night. It seems fluorescent ballasts are more readily available. Do I still need to get an igniter if I go that route? And do you have any recommendations on what to ballasts would work? (I am based in Germany and have a hunch from your username you might be as well?)

[@techtastisch7569]

@@Tony2dH Jupp, I'm from Germany as well. I think getting a regular florescent electronic 18w ballast should do the trick just fine. In my testing with the 35w bulb and a conventional 36w ballast, it drew about 50w. I don't know how much of it was consumed in the choke, but that suggest to me that a conventional one tends to run them a little over spec. Today I run that one on a dual 18w driver parraled up just fine. If they still carry it, you can get one of them along with a nice case from obi, sold as a dual 18w t8 light fitting meant for humid environments. With that you only need the one channel and no ignitor😉

[@Tony2dH]

@@techtastisch7569 Amazing, all the info I needed! Dankeschön 😄

[@techtastisch7569]

@@Tony2dH Gern geschehen:)

[@amnelruin4837]

I worked for a commercial electrical contractor in Arizona for a few years and we used low pressure sodium bulbs as temporary construction lighting. Around 2020 they stopped sending us replacement bulbs when they'd break or burn out. Now they ask us to send the whole fixture back to the shop and we get them back with an led replacement and I was upset by this. Mainly because in the winter I could stand under one of these lamps and get a little warmer haha. Not that it gets to cold in arizona ever but I enjoyed the gentle hum. And when the drywallers tripped the breaker by plugging in ten splitters into one breaker I could flip the breaker and they'd all still complain that the light was out for another 20 minutes because they took so long to warm up. Now it's just instant light with leds and they don't have to suffer any ramifications for lazy decisions to not bring an extra cord for all their corded tools.

[@Dukefazon]

12:15 - I think ElectroBOOM talked out this, there's something called real power and that's what you pay for or something... He called up the power company to ask about billing and they could hardly find a person that could answer his question. It's in the "Power Saver Scam EXPOSED" episode.

[@xyonofcalhoun]

It SHOULD be what you pay for, but it's worth checking! Big Clive in particular is dubious over smart meters and how they charge you for power and apparent power, etc.

[@Peter-pu7bo]

So 13 Comments on a Connextras video so far and someone is refering to ElectroBOOM and gets an answer that refers to Big Clive... You have love this community

[@igotes]

"actual power" vs "apparent power" aka volt amps I believe. I would have thought that the way electricity is billed is set by the government, and not up to the whim of the electricity suppliers. At least here in the UK, anyway.

[@xyonofcalhoun]

@@igotes yeah it's probably an ofgen thing I guess, I've never looked. Not that our present administration would blink twice about adjusting it.

[@igotes]

@@xyonofcalhoun I assume it wouldn't be introduced on the sly like Big Clive suggests. I don't have huge induction motors running in my house 24/7 so it's not something I'm too concerned about anyway.

[@lauraweiss7875]

I live in surburban Chicago, and I see these lamps all the time. In fact, there’s one on my garage since we bought our home in 1999, and we’ve never replaced the bulb.

[@marcberm]

Not sure how long it's been there, but I notice one of the e-ink tablets is now in the set. Don't suppose that bodes well for the future of E-Ink for Productivity.

[@herbertkeithmiller]

I think you're right about them having spares for the sodium lamps. I now live in Berwyn (that's just outside Chicago) and they recently switched over to LED street light from sodium lamps. They did so all at once it probably being cheaper for them to switch over then try to keep a running cab of which lamps are which.

[@planejet42]

I’m a much bigger fan of the amber warm color. I can’t stand when street lights get replaced with daylight LED fixtures. They’re too harsh for night time and also contribute way more to light pollution.

[@dylangergutierrez]

Hey, your first video on low pressure sodium lights inspired me to make my own LPS fixture. It's the end of an era, but with the infrequent use the light gets, I expect it to last my lifetime.

[@Stego27]

I'm not sure if I'm the only person who actually prefers these lights to the newer white LEDs. Blue light is known to affect sleep, which these lights don't emit, but the LEDs do. Surely that makes these lights preferable for street lighting etc. (however obviously not for highway/motorway lighting).

[@calsavestheworld]

Finally, a video of someone complaining about a light bulb for 15 minutes! Thank you, thank you.... THANK you. 👏💡