Hampshire County Council are seeking to further dim street lighting on residential roads (i.e. the compact fluorescent Libras only).
The proposal is for dimming by 45% between dusk and midnight, 65% between midnight and 5am, and 45% between 5am and dawn.
This compares with a regime of 35%-60%-35% that was in operation from March 2015 to present, a regime of 25%-50%-25% from February 2012 to March 2015, and the original policy of 0%-25%-0%.
The proposals will result in a 10% reduction in power consumption over the present. Main roads (a.k.a, SON Iridiums) and CosmoPolis will be unaffected by the changes it seems, at least for now. As it stands, main roads apparently follow a regime of 25%-50%-25% whilst CosmoPolis is dimmed by 40% at all times, which is the maximum you can apparently dim CosmoPolis by. I'm not sure what the situation is with LED. Further investigation is going to be carried out to see if the SON lighting on main roads can have its dimming regimes adjusted, as well as dimming compact fluorescent yet even further to a 55%-65%-55% regime, as this would save 20% compared with the present.
Back when the PFI started and CosmoArcs started to appear on 6m columns, we thought it was madness. We questioned why CosmoArcs were being installed where 55W Libras were just as good. The policy of using CosmoPolis has therefore partially backfired, not so much at 8m mounting height or greater, but for all the places where it is installed at 6m mounting height, as they have now maxxed out their ability to dim this system. As for the SON lighting, they are restricted with how far they can dim without severely compromising safety on main roads. If the council still needs to find savings in the next few years I suspect the CosmoPolis and SON lighting will all be for the chop in favour of LED. The situation for compact fluorescent is starting to get a little out of hand.
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