Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Stewards of the Earth
LTK:
Engadget has reported this, seems to be the case.
The Seldom Killer:
Should be easy enough to design a traffic light model that eliminates this issue without significantly compromising the energy savings. Of course I retain my view that anyone unable to drive safely around an obscured/non-functioning traffic light should immediately have their license recinded permanently but that's for a different thread.
bhtooefr:
The limit on LED performance is typically keeping them cool, so low temperature performance on a LED bulb should be excellent.
It is worth noting that many of the better LED bulbs have phosphors in them (essentially, a good LED bulb consists of blue LEDs exciting a white or yellow phosphor - sometimes that's in the LED itself, sometimes it's a remote phosphor), and they'll all have some nasty stuff in the drive circuitry and the PCB. Also, the mercury emissions of a broken CFL are lower than the mercury emissions of incandescent bulbs powered by coal over the same lifetime, but you should still properly dispose of the CFL.
As far as vehicles... cold start is by far the highest emission operating regime for an internal combustion engine. Combine trips to minimize cold starting, you'll cause less emissions, use less fuel overall, and it's kinder to your engine too.
Orkboy:
--- Quote from: The Seldom Killer on 16 Feb 2015, 02:54 ---Should be easy enough to design a traffic light model that eliminates this issue without significantly compromising the energy savings. Of course I retain my view that anyone unable to drive safely around an obscured/non-functioning traffic light should immediately have their license recinded permanently but that's for a different thread.
--- End quote ---
Well, the problem is that if snow has any moisture in it, it sticks to pretty much anything, so redesigning the metal cowl around the light won't stop snow buildup in all conditions. If you also account for the ludicrous levels of ice that forms anywhere by a windy lake, then many places would require some kind of heated traffic lights, and if you're going to add a heating coil, you might as well just use a standard bulb anyways.
bhtooefr:
Except the heating coil only reduces efficiency to incandescent levels in winter - the other three seasons, it's not needed, and you get full LED efficiency (and lower maintenance) the rest of the year.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version