LED Street Lights Turning Purple
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- The majority of the new LED street lights installed within the last decade are absolutely abysmal. Most of them have very poor optics leading to excessive light pollution around the road and extreme glare and blinding conditions to drivers. The color temperature is too high, resulting in poor visibility conditions particularly in rain and fog. Some are so cheaply made they just flat out fail to illuminate. Others will start to flash on and off rapidly, creating a strobe-light effect over the road, which is distracting at best, and potentially lethal to those with certain health conditions. Then there's those that turn purple...
This particular road previously had 70 watts HPS (high pressure sodium) street lights. The old HPS lights operated reliably for many years, with nothing more than a bulb replacement once or twice per decade. The fixtures were designed with good quality optics, spreading light all over the surface of the road while protecting drivers' eyes from the harshness of an exposed bulb.
Sometime around 2017, the old 70 watts HPS street lights were replaced with 70 watts LED street lights. Less than 6 years later, we have a 100% failure rate on this road. Since these fixtures are of the 'integrated' design, they will likely all be discarded and replaced with a completely new fixture, as opposed to the modular design of the old HPS lights where the singular component that failed could be easily and economically replaced.
In this case, the failure mode is related to the phosphoric coating over the diodes. Light emitting diodes are not naturally white; a phosphor coating is applied to the diodes to filter the color of light to create the desired color temperature. A very widespread manufacturing defect is responsible for the failure of this phosphoric coating. A chemist would be required to explain more precisely what the failure mode and cause is, but I believe it is some sort of delamination phenomenon, quite possibly from the heat produced by overdriving the diodes.
The old HPS lights were 70 watts. The new LED lights are 70 watts. 70 - 70 = 0. 0 energy savings! The fixtures draw the same amount of power, therefore using the LED fixture over the HPS fixture doesn't save any electricity!
The original HPS street lights, in good working order, were all discarded and replaced with new LED ones, of the same power draw. They failed about 5 years later (which is no surprise as the warranty on many of these lights is 5 years). They will now all be taken down, discarded, and replaced again, with more LED garbage fixtures that will likely have the same lifespan. That is a waste of money and resources with no benefit!
LED lighting could, in theory, be excellent. If the fixtures were designed and manufactured properly, they could be as good as the old HPS fixtures were. Unfortunately, they're not. Cheap, poorly designed, and poorly manufactured LED fixtures is consistently what's installed. This results in poor performance, poor reliability, poor longevity, dangerous road conditions due to limited visibility, and a lot of wasted taxpayer dollars.
I consistently get people in my comments box raving about how great LED lighting is, and claiming it to be so much better than older high-efficiency light sources like high pressure sodium. From observing how these street lights are turning out all over the country, I fail to see how this is the case. I fail to see how poorer optics with glare and abysmal light distribution, shorter lifespan, lower reliability, and non-serviceable fixtures is an improvement over what we had which was proven to be good and stand the test of time.
I've been told there's no point in discussing this issue as HPS and other older HID sources will simply not be returning. While the latter portion of that statement is probably true, it is absolutely worth fighting for better quality fixtures. I pay a significant amount of money to own a vehicle and use the roads every year. Part of that cost goes towards purchasing, operating, and maintaining these street lights. These street lights, and so many of the other LED ones recently installed, are unsatisfactory.
Many of the LED streetlights in my area are also turning purple. It’s pretty harsh on the eyes when driving at night. Some have developed a flickering problem. I also miss the old HPS lights.
This is completely outrageous!
Spot on, if it's not broken, don't fix it especially if the end result is them both using the same amount of energy. Talk about a waste of resources.
It's such a waste on so many levels.
@@AlexthefancollectorYou can still find incandescent bulbs at online retailers, but I'm sure the days are numbered. Stock up while you still can.
@@JordanU I see just how much you hate those LED street lights and I hate them as well as you do
@TasoV EXACTLY
Them purple leds are a classic i seen some in a neighborhood the whole neighborhood was purple
That's outrageous.
I believe that is ultraviolet light. I have an LED flashlight that I was cleaning and when I reassembled, accidentally scratched the phosphor off the LED, now it emits straight UV light. Perhaps the diodes are getting so hot that the coating burns off and you’re left with straight UV? Incredibly safe and forward thinking, incredibly energy star.
I suspect it probably is something heat related as the diodes are probably way overdriven and run very hot.
I love the HPS model. GE m250r2 50, 70, 100, 150, 250 watt ranges. I like the shape of it and every thing about it. Remember GE m250r2 is the model of the old one
Me too.
Your view on this is perfect. The school behind my house had perfectly working Metal halide shoebox fixtures and now they have replaced them with this led trash that is at an angle pointing right into the back windows in our house including the bedrooms. This is outrageous.
Government is like that at the moment. They are more interested in if you're doing naughty stuff in the bedroom than in actually lighting up the street.
Many of these LED fixtures are very poorly designed and installed, which results in poor lighting and excessive light pollution to surrounding areas.
LEDs are the Godfathers of complete Despair and garbage, whoever designs LEDs must be ashamed of themselves of creating such a dangerous hazardous light, I've been having LEDs 5 years ago because I was manipulated that these bulbs last longer and they're brighter, however I see them burning out almost everywhere in little over 5 months to 2 year, the existing incandescent light bulb in my light fixture still works after 4 years and LEDs come nothing close to that incandescent, high pressure sodium lights are so natural and if all of the LED street lights burn out there's no bulb to replace it with they have to replace the whole fixture with a high pressure sodium light fixture you just have to replace the bulb and that's it so simple and easy and yet waste less time.
Many of these LED replacement projects really have turned into a disaster.
These are the American Electric Autobauhn ATB0. They've been having this defect across a majority, if not all their LED street light models. I heard that they've eliminated the defect on their products recently. At least I hope they did.
Anyways, this defect is from the diodes themselves. The manufacturer of the diodes places a phosphor coating on top of the LED parts. This is the part that seems to dry out or simply fall off.
So, the phosphor coating is exposed to the elements? Ugh...
@@robertgaines-tulsa No they're not. They're behind plastic or glass refractors.
I had heard a number of times that the Autohauhn fixtures were supposed to be of good quality. Are there different tiers to the models?
@@JordanU Yeah, supposedly some of them are good. It seems though that this purple issue has been resolved though.
Apparently they turn purple because of a factory defect, where the phosphor coating either wears off or wasn’t coated at all during assembly. Luckily where I live still use high pressure sodium and I really prefer it to the harshness of LEDs
I discussed that issue in the description. There's still a few streets with sodium lights around here, but unfortunately they're disappearing rapidly.
Made in China.
Luckily we still have the HPS street lights in my neighborhood. Right when you turn on to the main road, they are LED, but here they are still HPS; which is really good because there is one right at the end of my driveway, and if it were LED it would shine bright blue light in my window.
I think the BULB in that fixture is around 7 or 8 years old, because I remember the last time it failed, and it was about that long ago. So the bulb in these fixtures lasts longer than the whole LED fixture which uses around the same if not only slightly less power to last a sorter life span and put out worse quality light with worse coverage.
Just give it time, there will be a hideous LED street light on that pole shining sleep-disrupting blue light into your house sooner or later.
@@JordanUI pay to keep the light turned on, so the day they do that will be the day I stop paying the $20 every month (yeah, absurd) for the street light.
@@WalterKnox can't they force you to pay, how does this work
if you pay you chose what light you want right?
if not you can always smash that light and be in the dark (better dark (where you can at least bring your own flashlight) then light you cannot turn off)
@@Veso266 I would rather it be lit by a nice warm HPS light which is not intrusive like what is there now. But I would much rather it be dark than having a bright blue LED light glaring all of the time.
Can't stand the color temperature of LED streetlights. The soft warm glow of HPS is so much easier on the eyes for night driving. Thank you for making this video; couldn't agree more!
This purple color is outrageous, but the design color temperature isn't much better.
Yeah, this has been an issue for a while. They had such an issue with them around here that they had posters up saying to report purple street lights and the number on the pole and they would replace them (with another junk LED of course.) It is very annoying, I don't like the color tone of the regular ones, but this is just much worse. Especially driving down the highway with intermittent blue and purple lights and normal ones, messes with your eyes.
Then there was a conspiracy about them because people cant stay in reality. Either 5g or aliens.
Trying to navigate in the rain with these color lights is just about impossible.
Whoever I see replacing perfectly good vintage streetlights with LEDS are going to get their kneecaps busted up!
OK then
I went to Florida to stay for a week a few years ago and I saw this purple street light problem
Not good.
The brighter the light the harder to see and adjust to darkness after without it
This is true, and yet another reason why the poor optics resulting in small spots of very bright, concentrated light is a problem.
i seen purple street lights and i hate them, thats why i still use high presure sodium lights in my yard
Same here.
Awesome, makes it look like we live in a futuristic laser tag arena.
No, it's not awesome at all. It's abysmal.
We’ve never had this problem in Australia. Well until in we had a whole bunch of them installed in Sydney that were from America and of course as usual they all turned purple when I was there. Though, due to unreliable LED streetlights all over Australia and mainly my state of Victoria we kept installing hps up until the end of 2023 and we’re still installing fluorescent T5 Street lights surprisingly.
Were they from America or from China? The majority of the ones we have here are made in China.
The LED street lights in Sydney are chinesium made.
If there was no reason to do something, people in government must have been paid off to do it. Once it's beyond the vendor, it's not their problem anymore. There is no way LED street lights were tested for longevity. If they did, corruption will find a way to do stupid stuff at the cost of everyone else. I wouldn't doubt the fixtures cost more, too.
I doubt they'll go back to HPS street lights. It will cost too much to replace all those fixtures they threw away. They say there are orange LED street lights now. Instead of purple LEDs with white phosphor, they'll be just orange LEDs in similar shells with no lenses as they are now. It will be inferior, but we can't go back to HPS without considerable investment. That's what happens when you get ripped off.
We all got severely ripped off in this case.
I live in Elgin Scotland (UK) and they changed all of the street lights from the low pressure sodium laps to LED’s 😡. I have recently moved house in June 2023 and the streetlight outside my house lasted and AMAZING WHOPPING MAGNIFICENT 30 minutes. They had changed about october 2023 time and it has failed to turn on some night, some night it flickers and other nights it does nothing apart from glare right into my room. Well i mean at least at night time there is not chance what so ever of me not seeing what i’m doing i’m my room, e.g. getting up at night to go to the toilet. I wish that they could of kept the old low pressure sodium lamp as the one outside my old house had lasted well over 11 years, as i am only 13 i don’t know exactly how long it lasted for.
Low pressure sodium is so efficient and lasts so long. It should have never been phased out.
@@JordanU If you can get any would you be able to do a video on them, if they are too expensive just don’t bother.
@@DillonCruickshank I've been trying to obtain some for quite a while now. They are extremely scarce around here, there's only one area I know of that still has them and they're sadly currently being replaced.
@@JordanU that is a HUGE shame that they are being replaced eith crappy LED’s
@@JordanU you can get new lamps and ballasts (sadly no fixtures) from glow object (be aware its from china so I am not sure if you will have philips quality from them), but its the only way nowadays if you want that lamp sadly
Not good... I think the reason why they turn purple is because of the cheap phosphors that are in the LEDs failed... And yes I totally agree. These lights are bad!
Correct.
Great video and commentary! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks
I prefer HPS than LED
Me too.
Like everyone should
i cannot STAND these stupid leds. this is so dangerous!
Me either. This is awful.
Where I live the roads are completely LED washed some of them will be blinking some of them will be purple some of them will not be working at all. There is nothing wrong with the old HID light fixtures they were built to last. But thanks to LED- ( lie Emitting deception. For talking HID lights out of service.
Same story around here, and all over the country.
Yeah I live in Connecticut and it seems like a real bad issue around here specifically
@@funstuff4521lmao well said, I totally agree, I FUCKING CANNOT STAND THE STUPIDITY IN PEOPLE TODAY
No warm up time, no restrike time and no mercury are about the only positive points LED's have over tried and true metal halide and high pressure sodium, I've also seen several LED street lights strobing, half of the diodes failed or what have you, they never seem to last nearly as long as high pressure sodium. Not to mention warmup time and restrike times are pretty irrelevant in areas lit by HID fixtures. In addition, in industrial areas or similar settings lit exclusively by HID fixtures where restrike times would create a safety hazard and/or widespread panic, special fixtures are (or were) available with an auxiliary high wattage halogen or incandescent bulb that turns on when the main lamp is extinguished following a brief outrage or voltage dip, and turns off once the main lamp warms up to around 50% brightness.
Overall, LED streetlights sucks, long live high pressure sodium or metal halide.
This is a good analysis of the situation. No mercury is about the only valid, relevant positive I can come up with as well, and even then I wonder how disposing a trace amount of mercury every decade or so compares to putting all the plastic and other materials found in these fixtures into the landfill at a higher regularity.
I have, and recently featured, 3 high end metal halide light fixtures with the backup halogen bulb in my garage. They are excellent lights which have already provided decades of reliable service and will likely continue to for just as long.
Strange, none of those in my town are town are doing that
Different models fail in different ways.
They go yellowish after a few years. They put new ones down the road and you can tell the difference. And there dimmer than the old sodium ones
I haven't seen any of the ones around here turn yellow.
Wow bro what a street light freak show this is not good
It is a total freakshow.
How many hours does a high pressure sodium bulb last?
About 15,000-20,000 hours, depending on how frequently it is used.
Sodium bulbs are typically rated for 24,000 hours.
@@achannelwithaprofilepictur6253The rudeness is completely uncalled for.
@@achannelwithaprofilepictur6253 that’s actually rude
Reason they turn purple is because the red portion went out. Bulb is failing and needs to be replaced.
Sodium lights use about the same wattage and do not have that problem.
They just are not quite as bright as the LED's though.
Mercury vapor lights are quite bright but use a lot more power.
They do make a shield that deflects the light downwards.
Best lighting I have seen was lights that ran along the gutter and illuminated only the street. No glare, no wasted light.
Think indirect lighting along your living room ceiling - sorta boxed - light reflects off the ceiling and lights the room.
That's not accurate. The failure mode is detailed in the description.
@@JordanU The info I posted came from my highway department. Red portion burns out earlier than the other portions (nature of the LED's is what they said).
Sodium lights statement is accurate.
Yes, they DO make a deflector/shield for traffic lights.
If you want a TRUE white light, Halogen/Xenon is the way to go.
LED's tend to be more on the blue side than anything.
Haven't found one yet that is a REAL white light like Halogen/Xenon.
This is a known defect of a particular model, not of LEDs in general. The defective ones in my local area were easily replaced long ago with a non-defective model. It ain't rocket science... your power company is just slow. I'm sure when high pressure sodium lights came out, people complained about their garish orange color. But at least with properly working LEDs, white lighting works much better than orange or purple. Imagine if your car's headlights were orange!
I've seen plenty of other types of LED lights change colors over time besides this particular model of street light.
HPS being too warm is a reasonable argument, but that doesn't make the solution an extreme on the other end. The stark white and very blue color of properly working LED lights is too harsh at night and also doesn't have good color rendering.
@@JordanU Properly working LED lights can be designed in any color temperature, with some offering multiple options in the same light. I agree that older ones with an overly blue tone are annoying and prefer my light on the slightly warm part of the scale. LED lighting has quickly advanced and today is available in vastly better quality versions than just a few short years ago, with excellent CRI. Of course, lower priced LEDs are still out there for those not concerned with light quality.
Not sure how you can complain about the color rendering of even a low-end white LED streetlight when an orange HPS light is clearly far worse. It isn't just warm, its light output is almost _exclusively_ concentrated in the orange area of the spectrum, with much lower red and very little past yellow. It's about as bad as you can get when it comes to color rendering. You've just become accustomed to expecting that type of light from a streetlight.
@@jasons8479 Higher quality LED fixtures with good light output are available, but being available is the keyword here. They're seldom utilized, which is a problem.
I complain about it because in addition to the same poor color rendering as before, we now have poor optics, which poorly distribute the light and create blinding glare, which makes it harder to see than before.
@@JordanU I have seen the poor optics ones with blinding glare in past years, but newer models don't have this problem either and have a warm color temperature akin to an incandescent, which gives vastly superior color rendering compared to orange high pressure sodium bulbs. Not sure why we're so picky about streetlight color rendering now... we weren't in the past, when it was far worse. Color rendering matters more in an art museum or theatre than a street.
My local power company swapped out all the defective bulbs long ago. Tell yours they need to get on the ball!
@@jasons8479 It depends on the fixture model, not so much the age. Some of the newly installed ones here are an improvement, some are just awful. There's quite a mix of models.
I'm harping on the color rendering because it's coming at the cost of poorer light distribution, increased light pollution, and glare. To me, those factors cancel out any benefit of improved color rendering.
The power company here will swap out fixtures, but only when there's a reported failure. I've been reporting every out street light individually for months now, and while they are answering all the complaints and performing appropriate repairs, I'd think the quantity of reports should have triggered some kind of quality control sweep by now.
I do like the new fixtures they're installing better than the old ones. Hopefully they prove to be more reliable.
I also hate LED street lights, LED is good on paper, but not in practise when people want to squize every penny out of everyone)
I could accept them if they at least kept the orange color (you can get LED street lights in orange), but no, they had to go to this hard white that makes my eyes hurt
We already had white street lights (they were called Mercury Vapor), but we switched to HPS for some good reason, that people probably forgot now (because they go to white color again and claim that orange was harder to see)
Can someone please explain to me, why did we shift from white to orange, only to be going back to white now?
1900k hps lights vs 999999k weird led lights
LEDs really do feel like they’re 999999K even though they’re only about 5500K.
I mean 999999k after Turing purple
These LED lights are awful.
Led are just a waste of material. They never last.
I agree.
Facts
The yellow film were worn out due to vibration of the traffic. They have red and blue LED chips. And then they put yellow fosters to make it white.
That doesn't seem like a reasonable explanation at all to me.
Fosters is a brand of beer.
Would have actually liked that because purple is my favourite color
Liking the color or not, this is still very difficult to see by.
Yes ! the old Mercury street lights used to give a very cold scary look to the neighbourhood , late at night , but are not used now as they are inefficient .... I have not seen any LED lamps go purple here in the UK ( ? ) ......... DAVE™🛑
Just give it time, they'll turn purple or go out completely sooner or later.
These rants are funny
They're true!
Yes they are!
@@JordanUyeah
In my area where a couple interstates meet up every single light (so like 50 of them i think) is like this, and yes its as bad as it looks.
It's absolutely abysmal.
How does this even happen
The phosphor coating falls off over time and causes them to be Chinese garbage.
Poor quality manufacturing.
I seen a street lights all around they are pretty weird who wants a purple LED street lights
Nobody.
That is like CRI (Color/colour rendering index)
Some people complain that HPS has poor color rendering. I sure would like to know what those people say about this.
I have LED lighting in my area, but they haven't gone bad.
The ( old fashioned ? ) Mercury vapour street lamps give a ( simulated lime light effect , although a touch more blue , than the yellow green lime light ? ) ...... DAVE™🛑
OK
Jordan U, do you think LED Modules that go into traffic lights and pedestrian signals are better or worst just like LED Streetlights?
I think LED is fine for indicator lights.
I’ve just seen a purple street light recently
OK
People say LED is better because they don’t require a warmup time, don’t contain mercury, are cheaper to manufacture, and supposedly save energy and last longer.
LEDs don’t meet most of these standards.
I’m sure there’s other reasons why people like LEDs more, but they aren’t directly coming to my mind.
They aren’t good and people need to realize that
I hear those same reasons over and over again, yet somehow people seem completely blinded to the reality.
@@JordanU I still see brainwashed comments saying that LED’s last 100,000 hours, hps only lasts a few years, and other bullshit that isn’t true
@@BRISTOLFORCE2009 I do as well.
I have seen the purple light of death before in manhattan KS at night
It's all over the place.
I cant stand them. Thankfully, the one right in front of my house is still working just fine with no issue, but to me, its days are numbered. I got several in my area that have gone purple and it really can bother my eyes when driving at night, especially since I wear glasses, you might as well shine a blacklight directly into my eyes. They suck!!!
It's just a matter of time before it turns purple as well, or experiences some other kind of failure.
@@JordanU that's what I'm not looking forward to. I know for sure it's bound to happen, just when is the question.
This is exactly why I hate these LED street lights.when they turn purple, they do more harm than good
Not good.
@@JordanU Yes it really is because it makes it harder to see
White leds are blue diodes with yellow epoxy to tune the color temperature. It either burnt up or broke off. Most of the time the failures are from the power supply crapping out while the diodes are still OK. Other way around here
Streetlights arent my derrant from night driving. What I do absolutely despise are new headlights that are borderline lasers. It should be banned/illegal. Totaly blinding as if im seeing a religious entity.
Most of the failures I see around where I live are complete outages or flashing, which I suspect is some kind of power supply issue as you mentioned.
I too take a serious issue with the vehicle lights. It's bad when there's a vehicle coming from the opposing direction, but I think it's even worse when there's one from behind. I don't have a small car, yet I can still barely see when the lights from behind are reflecting in all 3 mirrors plus through the car itself. I can't imagine how much worse it would be driving a small car that sits lower to the ground.
There really need to be better regulations for vehicle headlights. It's a serious hazard, and I'm shocked it hasn't caused more crashes.
i dont know if others have said this but they didnt turn purple they were made purple, most leds and these blue/uv leds with a phosphor. these junk leds were made wrong and some idiots didnt release until thousands were made. maybe some have phosphors that burn away and became purple, im not 100% sure. i would PAY thousands for towns to put hps or lps back
I discussed this in the description.
I would gladly take a reasonable increase in registration fees, car tax, license fees, etc. to keep the old fixtures running so I can feel comfortable while driving at night.
@@JordanUexactly, I may only be 15 but when I’m an adult paying bills and such, I would definitely spend extra to keep fixtures running that are actually reliable
I guess call your city about it, give a complaint report
I file reports about busted street lights all the time.
@@JordanU Well good
Oh well, at least the birds and insects won't be affected. ;)
How?
I like it
OK
LEDs are the best
They are the worst.
@@JordanU I use led bulbs all the time and they work just fine, lol😂
Not cheap street lights.
LED oh LEDDDDDDD!!!!! LED!!!!!!
Y’all are out of your fucking brainwashed minds if you think that LED’s are good
Lowest bidder. Enough said.
Quite possibly.
hi-iam-from-bc-canada-we-have-them-to-being-installed-to-thank-you-for-this-very-good-vido
Do you not have a space bar on your computer keyboard?
those are 250 or 400 watt hps not 70 watt!
As clearly shown in the video, the previous lamps were 70 watts.
Most HPS fixtures you multiply the number on the fixture by 10 to find the wattage, except “17” (and probably some others) which usually translates to 175 watts. A 250- or 400-watt HPS fixture would denote the number “25” or “40”.
Lol😂
This is no laughing matter.
@@JordanU sorry.
@@JordanUseriously, these Chinese manufacturers think they can produce so well! (Serious)
Now started happening near my grandparents
It's happening all over the country.
@@JordanU I know
You can't convince me.
There's nothing here that needs convincing, it's unedited pictures showing exactly how it looks and a discussion with what the issue is.
@@JordanU. I never said those were photoshopped, edited or something you want to see just to prove a point.
Must be a great life if this is what you got time to complain and post a video about. God blessed America!!! You should get out a bit more and travel to other countries. Cheers
I am well aware there are far worse issues in the world then this, but that doesn't make this acceptable.
@@JordanUsometimes in life you will need to live with things that you feel are unacceptable. I suggest you travel outside the US, perhaps the Philippines, Somalia, Cambodia or Sudan. Who knows, you might even come back with an appreciation for the fact that there is any sort of light at all. Even as purple as they are.
@@jeffmiller903 You're not getting it. To not speak out about things that are wrong leads to further decay. To accept what is wrong is foolish.
@@JordanU then keep up your good fight man. I wish you the best. Just curious though, what have you done to battle these lights?
this video can be summed up as "old man yells at cloud"..
No, it can't be.