Current Status of Urban Lighting
In recent years, the scale of LA urban lighting facilities has continued to expand. At present, the city of LA has nearly 80,000 street lamps, nearly 110,000 lighting lamps, and the total length of the lighting line is 3,340 kilometers. There are 370 box-type transformers with a total power load of 10028KW. A huge amount of electricity bills for street lights and landscape lighting are paid every year.
As a functional department of LA urban lighting management, facing the current increasingly severe energy and environmental issues at home and abroad, assessing the situation, according to the requirements of the Ministry of Construction for urban lighting energy saving and emission reduction work, to accelerate the development of urban lighting industry and effectively achieve energy saving and emission reduction. In principle, the city’s urban lighting energy-saving plan was formulated.
The plan clearly pointed out that LA urban lighting energy-saving, we must continue to increase the implementation of green lighting new product development and application efforts. Insist on planning ahead and technology first. Starting from three aspects: accelerating energy-saving applications, increasing technological transformation, and strengthening scientific dispatch, vigorously promote green lighting products. Highlight the four major effects of energy saving, environmental protection, emission reduction and pollution reduction. The goal is to improve the appearance of the city, optimize the image of the city, and enhance the charm of the city. Highlight the bright spots and strive to create a green lighting system.
The Green Concept Activates the Green Starting Point
Green environmental protection is the basic strategy of LA, and the implementation of the national strategy of sustainable development has made an important change in environmental protection from awareness and practice. The LA city government started from doing a good job in energy-saving management of street lights, and implemented an automatic control system for urban lighting in a forward-looking manner. In 1995, it was the first to complete the automated monitoring, remote measurement and remote viewing of urban lighting facilities, which has a strong demonstrative effect.
Through this control method, the city’s urban lighting facilities are scientifically dispatched, key guarantees, and lights are switched on and off reasonably. On the basis of ensuring the city’s night road lighting needs and landscape lighting effects, the four seasons and four time periods of scientific adjustment and control are implemented for some roads and facilities with few pedestrians and low traffic at night. That is, the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter are respectively implemented with different street light switch schemes. And according to the lighting road conditions at different times and the flow of people and vehicles, especially the actual situation of few cars and sparse people in the second half of the night, some street lights and landscape lights should be turned off reasonably to achieve the purpose of saving electricity.
Green Innovation Promotes Green Lighting:
LA keeps up with the latest energy-saving technologies for urban lighting at home and abroad, and continues to increase the implementation of green lighting new product development and application efforts. Persist in planning ahead, prioritizing science and technology, speeding up energy-saving applications, and increasing technical implementation.
1. Take the lead in applying high-power LED street lights
Within the scope of CA, LA is the first to use high-power LED street lights for urban arterial road lighting.
In May 2005, LA and OSRAM cooperated to jointly develop environmentally friendly and energy-saving high-power LED street lights. Install 200 lamps on Beverly West Road, one of the main roads of the city.
After field tests, LED street lights have the characteristics of low glare, high illuminance, and no mercury pollution. Each lamp can reduce about 1 ton of carbon dioxide emissions due to the use of coal for power generation each year.
2, use energy-saving and environmentally friendly street lights
Energy-saving and environmentally-friendly street lights are widely used in new road lighting projects. A total of 1812 new energy-saving LVD electromagnetic induction energy-saving lamps were installed on more than ten major urban roads including Hollywood Freeway, Santa Ana Freeway, Pasadena Freeway and Aipine Street. It can save about 40% of power consumption. The Hollywood Freeway alone can save more than 200,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity every year. It saves more than 70 tons of coal and reduces CO2 emissions by more than 300 tons.
3. New energy-saving landscape lighting
New light sources such as high-energy-saving and low-pollution LED linear lamps are widely used in newly-built landscape lighting facilities.
In recent years, LA has completed more than 100 landscape lighting projects and nearly 700 high-rise buildings. Energy-saving light sources such as LED light sources, point-shaped cold light sources, and low-consumption linear light sources are adopted, with an utilization rate of 80%, and energy-saving technology transformation of large-scale lighting facilities is also carried out.
Replace the original ordinary fluorescent tubes with new energy-saving LED flat five-line lamps. Replace the original high-pressure mercury lamp with a new energy-saving lamp. A total of 11,000 LED flat five-wire lamps and energy-saving lighting were installed. It saves 350,000 kWh of electricity every year, saves about 90 tons of coal, and reduces CO2 emissions by 437 tons.
4. Lighting renovation of office building
Green lighting and energy-saving renovation of the office building. The old-fashioned fluorescent lighting equipment was replaced and replaced with green lighting, energy-saving and environmentally friendly products such as new LEDs. The office building of LA was built into a demonstration site of green lighting, environmental protection and energy saving office organization. The news media have reported on this many times.
Green Lighting Highlights the Green Concept:
Solar street light is an energy-saving and environmentally friendly street light with zero pollution, zero consumption and zero emission. It is also a major development direction to solve the future energy shortage. As early as 2006, LA took advantage of the CA silicon industry and cooperated with OSRAM and GE to jointly develop and install solar street lights.
In April 2007, 137 sets of solar street lights and landscape lights (more than 200) were installed in the Bay Area Sports Center, making the Sports Center the first demonstration area for large-scale implementation of solar lighting in CA. It is highly praised by mainstream media at home and abroad and the urban lighting industry.
In 2008, 148 solar street lights were installed on Avenue 21, and 54 solar street lights were installed on Highway 11 in 2010. As a typical low-carbon energy-saving product, solar street lights have been well used in LA urban lighting.
Implement Green Lighting, Low-carbon Illuminating the Future
1. Install street lights according to city needs
According to the LA urban layout and urban road lighting and landscape lighting monitoring and management needs, on the one hand, with the development of science and technology, the existing street light control system will be further upgraded to a digital monitoring and management system. On the other hand, build a new street light monitoring center in the Bay Area. After the street lamp monitoring center in the new district is completed and put into use, street lamp management will be controlled separately from north to south to ensure 100% monitoring coverage of the city’s lighting facilities. By then, the monitoring capabilities will be greatly improved, and the energy-saving management work will be faster, more timely, and more accurate.
2. Promotion and application of new technologies
Continue to increase the promotion and application of new products and technologies such as LED lights and LVD lights. In the next step, it will actively cooperate with lighting energy-saving research institutions and enterprises to jointly establish LA’s largest LED lighting energy-saving application promotion base. Strive to build LA into a world-class LED lighting demonstration city.
3. Promote solar street lights
Take advantage of the LA silicon industry and continue to promote the use of solar street lights. This year, it is planned to install 512 bases of solar street lights on No. 65 Avenue in the new district. In the future, the use of solar street lights will continue to be promoted on roads suitable for the installation of solar street lights.
4. Low carbon lighting
Vigorously promote low-carbon lighting products, highlight energy saving, environmental protection, emission reduction, pollution reduction and other technical measures. Intensify efforts in facility management, technology upgrades, energy-saving light sources, and electrical appliances applications. It not only guarantees citizens’ needs for night lighting environment, but also minimizes electricity consumption.
The Importance of Energy Saving and Environmental Protection to Urban Lighting
As a window of the city’s image, road lighting has been valued by governments at all levels in recent years. While satisfying the functionality of road lighting, it also paid attention to the economic and social benefits brought by energy conservation and environmental protection. For this reason, while ensuring the quality of urban lighting, improving safety, and reducing accident rates, a new trend has emerged to save energy and slow down the rise in energy consumption, reducing the burden of electricity to the greatest extent.
With the development of economy and traffic in various places, urban lighting facilities have become larger and larger in scale and quantity. The power consumption of urban lighting is rising rapidly, and the increasingly serious power shortage in many areas has made many departments realize the urgent task of saving power in urban lighting. Moreover, various market factors in the lighting appliance industry in the United States have begun to be mobilized around energy conservation and environmental protection. In this context, the following new trends have emerged in urban lighting on the road of energy conservation and environmental protection.
1, energy-saving inductive ballast
In today’s various lighting projects and municipal projects, energy-saving inductive ballasts are the first choice. The reason is that the reliability of electronic ballasts cannot reach the level of inductive ballasts, so energy-saving inductive ballasts are a must for permanent use.
2, variable power ballast
The application effect of variable power ballast in road lighting is very significant. The street lamp is equipped with a variable power ballast, and its power can be reduced from 250W to 150W. In the second half of the night, it automatically switches to a low energy consumption state, which not only meets the requirements of road lighting but also saves electricity. It is in line with the development direction of “green lighting” of “high efficiency, energy saving, environmental protection and health” of urban lighting.
3, solar street light
As the technology and equipment of urban lighting are constantly updated, the lighting methods are more abundant and diversified. Cities where conditions permit are also considering installing solar street lights. Although its cost is currently high, the solar energy absorbed by solar street lights during the day can be converted into electrical energy for night lighting. In the long run, it is in line with the development direction of energy conservation and environmental protection.
4, SCR phase control energy saving
Explore the use of a number of varistors composed of, mainly to absorb the transient voltage of the power grid. The “system power saver” with certain equipment protection effect uses the phase shift trigger of the thyristor (thyristor) to chop and adjust the grid voltage, thereby reducing the voltage and energy saving of the inductive lighting load (inductive ballast) “SCR phase-controlled energy-saving products”, etc.
5. Improve management level
Attach importance to street lamp management, take the modern management level of street lamp information as one of the important indicators for evaluating the maturity of the city, together with the conditions of energy conservation and environmental protection, as the judgement of the degree of urban development and sustainable development.