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Old 18-09-2019, 12:03 AM
StuTodd
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An LED city "success"

Hello from Dunedin, New Zealand.

I want to shout out to the Dunedin City Council for listening to research, as well as informed locals about their choices in new LED tech for our city. I am just an over the moon astronomer who lives in the city...

We all know that town planners across the globe are looking to LED lighting to replace old incandescent lighting, indeed, many already have.

The cheaper option is to opt for 4000K or 3000K blue-white lighting, which is great for visual astronomy as the LEDs don't light up the night sky and is far more efficient than the previous lighting but really bad for human systems and worse for wildlife, throwing circadian rhythms out and disrupting all manner of creatures.

The Dunedin City Council have announced that they are fitting 2700K amber LEDs to wildlife sensitive areas of the region, plus round the observatory which is pretty amazing in these cost-cutting times!!

I wanted to share this as the Dark Skies group here in town has fought long and hard with presentations and submissions to council seeming to bang heads upon walls, but they listened, they noticed, and they have acted!

If you are in a similar situation, I hope the efforts of the Dunedin Dark Skies group can give you hope and inspiration

Last edited by StuTodd; 18-09-2019 at 12:14 AM.
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Old 18-09-2019, 09:50 AM
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Rainmaker (Matt)
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Thanks Stu, that is great to hear. I toured NZ South Is. last year and was very impressed with how dark some areas are. Didn't get to Dunners but will make sure I do in 2020 when we tour again.

Great work getting a Council to listen....
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Old 18-09-2019, 03:57 PM
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Stu,

Why do you say that LEDs don't light up the night sky? Surely this depends on the design of the streetlight and whether it's adequately shielded from spilling light upwards? I'm seeing lots of white lights in my area but since the design of the housing hasn't changed some of this new blue/white light is spilling upwards and can't be filtered out since I assume it's broadband.
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Old 18-09-2019, 04:53 PM
N1 (Mirko)
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Hi Morton, upward spill is easier to shield on LED luminaires than on the existing fittings. The light itself is way more intrusive, incl that of the currently available amber lights. This isn't about reducing LP, or even just maintaining the status quo, it's about taking the edge off the inevitable environmental impact that a cost driven decision is about to unleash. What sets Dunedin apart from many other towns is the fact that they are paying any attention at all to the potential impacts of poorly executed street lighting. And any lighting design that only considers cost and yield is poor in my book.
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Old 18-09-2019, 04:59 PM
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MortonH
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Quote:
Originally Posted by N1 View Post
Hi Morton, upward spill is easier to shield on LED luminaires than on the existing fittings. The light itself is way more intrusive, incl that of the currently available amber lights. This isn't about reducing LP, or even just maintaining the status quo, it's about taking the edge off the inevitable environmental impact that a cost driven decision is about to unleash. What sets Dunedin apart from many other towns is the fact that they are paying any attention at all to the potential impacts of poorly executed street lighting. And any lighting design that only considers cost and yield is poor in my book.

Agreed.
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Old 18-09-2019, 07:14 PM
StuTodd
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Yes, what Mirko said.
A nearby town has converted to 3-4000K LEDs and you can see stars above the roofs of houses so the shielding is good. The white light at street level, however, isn't nice to drive under.
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Old 22-11-2019, 11:26 AM
N1 (Mirko)
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Another step in the right direction in the news today:

https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/l...ights-approved
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