Grid alert as families face cold weather power cuts.

[Big_Spark]

PS..I forgot to add..

The reason they pay more for their unmetered services is to allow for the cost of electricity used by faulty units which are on for periods when they should be off and for days when light levels are low enough to trigger photo-cell operated units outside allowed for hours.

The agreement and prices were agrred upon every 36 months, and the last set of figures..those I used above, were decided on in 2001, so by now the figure has undoubably risen.

When we go back to work I'll try to see if I can get hold of a copy of the new figures..cost of electricyt and whether any other factors have been allowed ofr or even removed from the calculations.

 

[Stoday]

Further Costs making up the total figure of £5728.61 are:

You've use that figure as a cost per lamp per year

Lamp Replacement costs = £378.42

Lamps last longer than 4500 hours, so it can't be an annual cost

Photo-Cell Replacment Costs = £296.11
Time-Clock Replacement Costs = £421.22

You don't need photocells AND timeswitches

Head Replacement Costs = £920.01
Post Replacement Costs = £2773.26

Nor do you replace the head and post every year.

I think you will find that the costs you quote are per item not per lamp per year.

 

[AdamW]

A lot of offices are now built with lights that turn themselves off if there is no motion detected. I would reckon there are some lights that stay on, but it's better than having them all on I guess.

Now, with street lighting, a good compromise could be motion detection systems that light the road, say, 1/2 mile ahead on A-roads... I have done a lot of 3/4am A-road driving recently and you can drive for miles without seeing another car. Would still use a fair old bit of juice, but a lot less than now.

When I lived in London, about the only way I could see stars was to climb over the fence into Hyde Park and wander about halfway across. Nowhere else was dark enough apart from on a very clear night!!! Now I spend most of my time in Herts and Beds, and I am still amazed when I look up at the sky and can see thousands of stars. That's light pollution for you!

 

[empip]

Back in the 60's ... Country living, no street lights.
Nights were velvet black, concrete gateposts just about shimmering at 20ft or so on a clear night .. If cloudy PM then the torch was a necessity
The stars were just something else, brightest visible terrestrial lighting was the Welsh side of the Severn estuary some 17 odd miles distant. Magical views by night or day, thunderstorms were unbelievable.
It all cost me SFA ...

Light pollution is now pretty bad.

 

[andy]

So your £30 estimate is well out...

my 'estimate' is NOT out. i work for the council and worked on street lighting. its on our bloody paperwork! is was £28, when went to £32. altho this was a few month ago. that price is just to change the lamp OR cell. possibly come other part that can be easily changed. other faults like 2 part cel not workin has the head changed. obviously this doesnt come under the £32 for the work

 

[oilman]

We narrowly avoided the infliction of urban street lighting in our village, when the old witch who runs the parish council saw it as a good wheeze to get re-elected to the district council. The argument was that it would be environmentally friently lighting and would make the place safer. These people who make decisions do it with very few brain cells.

Look-ahead road ighting would be difficult to implement because of the long startup time of relatively low wattage, high luminance units.

 

[Freddie]

But to save even more energy and money it would be much better to restrict you all to drive at 30mph and a max of 50mph on motorways, just think how much fuel would be saved then.

If the average fuel bill was £40 per week and you saved £5.00 of that multiplied by 25 million cars thats £125 million per week multiplied by 52 weeks and save lives aswell as wear and tear on your car

 

[oilman]

SAVE LIVES??????? Where are the bits for transplants going to come from?

 

[kendor]

SAVE LIVES??????? Where are the bits for transplants going to come from?

off the backs of mice?

 

[Big_Spark]

Stoday, of course I used the figure of £5728.61 as a cost per year..THAT IS WHAT IT IS.

Lamps last longer than 4500 hours, so it can't be an annual cost

That may be the case, but never the less this is a cost that is factored in.

You don't need photocells AND timeswitches

Lamp posts are a mixture of types, some are Photo-cell operated, and some are timeclock operated and some are both, the time clock energises the circuit, but if it is not dark enough then the photo-cell stops the lamp being energised until such time as the light levels drop, equally the photo-cell turns the lamp off when light levels rise above a given point, which is before the timeclock shuts the circuit down.

Nor do you replace the head and post every year.

True, the head and post are not replaced every year on every post, many stay in place for years, but the figures take into account the fact that some posts will be replaced several times due to accidents, the fact that illuminated signs are replaced a lot more frequently than lamp posts, especially at roundabouts and many also get vandalised.

I think you will find that the costs you quote are per item not per lamp per year.

I think you will find your wrong, I am right and these figures are correct.

Now I am not saying that it is an efficient or even accurate way of doing the calculations, but this is the method used by local authorities, the Government and even the Electrical Supply industry. Now it is also highly likely that the annual budgets that local authorities put in place for this work is allowed to roll over to the following year, so the actual budget costs per year is lower than the calculated budget figure, however as it is extremely unusual for Budgets to be allowed to carry over to the following year I would be very surprised if this was the case.

I do know that within the information I have several local authorities actually stated that that any extra money within this budget was used for lighting new stretches of roadway, installing new signage, replacing existing road signage with new and redoing road line marking. Now whether other local authorities do the same thing I do not know, it was hard enough for the team to get this information as it was.

You also need to bear in mind that this is a NATIONAL AVERAGE figure, counties such as Cornwall, Cumbria, Dorset and other very riral counties actually quote quite low figures, in the region of £2000 per lamp per year, what pushes the figures up are the Metropolitan areas such as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Southampton, Leeds, Bradford etc tec, they have figures that are higher than the average, especially London. Each borough has it's own figures, and they are pretty similar, the average there was more than £9K per lamp per year, bear in miond the amount of road signage they hae in a given borough that gets damaged annually..I am not surprised by the figures.

I hope this clarifies it now.

 

[Stoday]

The numbers Big_Spark gives to justify his absurd figure for the cost per street light of £5728 per light per year are ludicrous.

"some are Photo-cell operated, and some are timeclock operated and some are both"

So someone's paying an extra £400+ a year for a timeswitch as well as a photocell to save - what? There's no energy saving because the kWh are not measured but assessed per kW of lamp (and control gear) load.

Post and lantern cost over £3600 a year. Observation in my neighbourhood suggests that changing once every five years must be very excessive. But that would put the cost of a street light at £18,000. That's crazy.

For the most part, lighting that gets damaged in accidents gets paid for by car insurance companies.

So we are left with the situation whereby either the councils don't know how to do their sums or Big_Spark has got it wrong.

Form on other threads of this forum suggest the latter.

 

[Slogger]

Well in the past 10 years i have watched this place change from no lights to street lights and traffic lights and you can see the glow of the towns getting brighter as they expand, there must be a lot of energy in wasted light.

But to save even more energy and money it would be much better to restrict you all to drive at 30mph and a max of 50mph on motorways, just think how much fuel would be saved then.

If the average fuel bill was £40 per week and you saved £5.00 of that multiplied by 25 million cars thats £125 million per week multiplied by 52 weeks and save lives aswell as wear and tear on your car

that isnt what this thread is about as you will save your cash what this is about is saving the cash wasted by the government

i am all for raising the speed limit on motorways to unlimited at certain times 180 mph fast lane oh my all them body parts

 

[empip]

Best thing since sliced bread (well, nearly) ...... self illuminating roadstuds..
http://reflecto.co.uk/products_active.html

First time I saw them, early doors, on a nearby A road, twas a longish double take in the wing mirror .. The cats-eyes were illuminated as they streamed away TO MY REAR, with no approaching traffic.
I thought my rear light lenses had been broken or removed .. but the pinpricks were too bright, no traffic around, headlights off ... amazing, there are our little friends curving off before and aft as if lit by major spotlights .. brilliant stuff, the approaching layby had the road edge marked with coloured types .. Very neat.
Anyone else experienced them?

 

[Spark123]

Yes, I believe they are ripping them out near me as they encourage young drivers to drive without their headlights on.

 

[empip]

Yes, I believe they are ripping them out near me as they encourage young drivers to drive without their headlights on.

Blimey, typical council wasting dosh ... How do they know about the youngsters? and if it is that many surely the law should have them before they turn to other crime?