Let there be light

A party of 18 Cartledge customers and accompanying representatives recently paid a fact-finding visit to the Philips Outdoor Lighting Application Centre (OLAC) in Lyon, France.

The trip was organised by Cartledge (May Gurney's specialist street lighting business) and its supply chain partner Philips, as part of a regular programme of best practice forums designed to improve knowledge and understanding.

At OLAC, Philips is able to demonstrate a variety of lighting options for three different street scenes.

First, the party saw how a main road lit to BS EN 13201 ME2 standard with SOX lamps compares with the same lighting level using SON lamps.

The transformation was taken a stage further through the use of Cosmo Polis lamps, which were then dimmed to comply with ME3a requirements that represented an energy saving of around 20%. The demonstration showed that with the 140W Cosmo Polis lamps dimmed down, the naked eye adjusts easily to the subtle change.

BS EN 13201 allows the lighting level to be reduced or increased depending on traffic flows. Delegates were told that dimming the lighting level to a nominal 50% produced an energy saving of around 35%. When dimming lighting in accordance with lower traffic flows, the lighting designer must ensure that the uniformity achieved with the higher level is maintained at lower levels.

The second street scene showed a residential road lit with SOX lamps initially at a level compliant with BS EN 13201 to class S3.

While the lighting was very uniform, it was uninspiring and did not satisfy the group with regard to safety of vulnerable road users.

SON lamps were a distinct improvement on the SOX lamps - but the Cosmo Polis lamps stole the show as their colour rendering properties came to the fore. The benefits of a white light source with a colour-rendering index (RA) of 65 were very impressive. The street scene came to life with the vibrancy of the colours now visible.

Finally, delegates were treated to an inspirational display of what can be done with a little imagination and the right budget.

Different styles of lighting were shown in a town centre scene. Buildings were transformed with floodlights, colour changing LEDs and projected images - in a demonstration of just some of the variety of options available to the contemporary lighting engineer.