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STREET LIGHTING
Image 1: LEDs illuminate a roadway in Sydney’s
CBD as part of the City of Sydney’s LED Project.
Members of the public have commented on the
high visual appeal of the new lighting.
Case Study
– City of Sydney LED Project
The City of Sydney is in the process
of replacing 6,500 conventional
lights with LEDs in central Sydney,
Glebe, Darlinghurst, Zetland,
Pyrmont, Kings Cross, Newtown
and Redfern. More than 2,600
street and park lights have now
been installed.
The City announced in August
2013 that it had already saved
almost $300,000 and reduced
energy use by more than 25%
since March 2012. Public lighting
accounts for one-third of the
City’s annual electricity bill and a
large part of its greenhouse gas
emissions.
Importantly, more than 90% of
people surveyed by the City
said they found the new lights
appealing and three-quarters
said the LEDs improved visibility.
Image 2: This LED Project
installation shows excellent
illumination of a pedestrian
pathway on a Sydney waterfront.
The NSW Government is following the City’s lead
by encouraging 41 councils across Sydney, the
Central Coast and the Hunter regions to work
with Ausgrid to implement similar LED lighting
projects. (See images 1 and 2, above.)
performance, Lighting Council Australia – a
not-for-profit organisation representing
Australia’s lighting industry – has developed a
labelling-based certification program to assist
purchasers of LED products.
Quality issues
The Solid State Lighting Quality Scheme is a
voluntary industry program providing confidence
to the market that an LED product carrying
the scheme’s label matches certain critical
performance claims made by the supplier (energy
efficiency, light output, colour temperature and
colour rendering index).
Solid state lighting is a complex technology – far
more so than traditional lighting technologies.
It is of critical importance that the main
components of an LED luminaire consisting
of electronics, driver and heat sink are both
compatible with one another and manufactured
to rigorous specifications. Complicating the
manufacturing process further is the immaturity of
technical standards.
It is perhaps of no surprise therefore that many
LEDs on the market fall short in the quality stakes.
Unfortunately there are also exaggerated claims
about the performance of many products.
An Australian certification scheme for LEDs
In response to many poor quality LEDs in
the marketplace and exaggerated claims
from some suppliers about their product’s
Govlink Issue 2 2013
Registered products appear on Lighting Council
Australia’s website –www.lightingcouncil.com.
au – on a searchable database. (See Image 3,
above right.)
Review of street lighting standard
The Australian and New Zealand street lighting
standard AS/NZS 1158.6 covers luminaire design
and testing requirements. The existing 2010
edition was an update of the original supplierbased specification and incorporates some of the
requirements from the international standard for
street lights.