Bright Idea? Citizen-Controlled Street Lamps

The German town of Dorentrup originally turned out the street lamps because it felt it couldn't afford to pay the electric bill. A frustrated citizen suggested that residents should have some way to turn on the lights when they needed to, and the county council in nearby Lemgo took his concerns seriously.

Now registered citizens can make a quick call or message with their mobile phones (called a "handy" in German) to a modem connected to software that can remotely control the on and off switch on streetlights. Turning on the lights requires the six-digit code from the area, but is said to take just a few seconds. The lights are also on a 15-minute meter.

This German Dial4Light system on on-call street lamps is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 tonnes annually. That's equivalent to 11 four-person households, according to the UK Guardian.

It also reduces light pollution.

After 18 months of piloting, Lemgo is now ready to launch Dial4Light to the rest of the world, as the council has made the system into a business idea, and says it has gotten interest from all over the globe.

In Dorentrup the cost of the phone call will turn on the lights for a quarter of an hour. In another German town, Rahden, getting an hour of street light will cost nearly $5.

While charging citizens for streetlamp use seems a bit twisted, it does help us all realize that electricity isn't free. On the downside, someone in need of lighting for safety probably won't have the time or ability to phone for light help.

Dial4Light says the system is really meant for low-use routes that seldom have any people around between midnight and dawn.

There are other innovations happening in street lighting -- LED lamps have lowered energy requirements in tests in Oslo and Stockholm. In Los Angeles, 140,000 street lamps will be retrofitted with LEDs. Solar-powered LED lamps called Solar Trees show promise on the streets of Vienna, and hybrid wind and solar lamps are working as far afield as Athens, the Canadian province of Ontario, and Aichi, Japan.

One intrepid tinkerer proposes piezoelectric controlled trigger switches that would light up the lamps or street lights right ahead on a roadway, so that even remote highways or seldom-traveled paths could have light when needed.

Putting together these more efficient and/or renewable-energy-driven street lighting with citizen-controlled switching seems like a great concept that with a bit of ingenuity could have lots of applications.

Read more about street lights at TreeHugger
::On Call Street Lamps: Light By Phone Saves Energy and City Budgets
::Visible Light Solar Combines Solar with LEDs for Big Savings
::Los Angeles to Retrofit 140,000 Street Lights with LED Bulbs
::LED Street Lights Are Coming
::The Autonoma: Self-Powered Programmable Street Lights

Read more from Graham Hill on Huffington Post
::Naked Bikers and the True Cost of Traffic
::Jellyfish Spaghetti and Your Own Carry Container
::Twitter Feeding Your World
::Electric Cars Will Be Cheaper Than You Think
::E-Bike: Car-Free Encouragement or Bike Balkanizer?
::Put Down That CAFO Pork Chop
::Your Ungreen Brain Needs More Nature

::On Call Street Lamps: Light By Phone Saves Energy and City Budgets

Follow Graham Hill on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ghill

Comments

[SonofLiberty1]

Wow...someone FINALLY gets it...LIGHT POLLUTION:)

Thanks but we are way ahead of you....

An even better idea is to replace those bad streelights with good ones that actually light the street instead of producing Glare or lighting the undersides of Clouds, Birds and Airplanes...

And The American Medical Association or AMA just came out in SUPPORT of the control of Light Pollution...

From the International Dark Sky Association:

"On 15 June, the American Medical Association adopted the support of energy efficient outdoor lighting technology into official AMA policy. Resolutions are as follows:

RESOLVED That our AMA advocate that all future outdoor lighting be of energy efficient designs to reduce waste of energy and production of greenhouse gasses that result from this wasted energy use, and be it further

RESOLVED That our AMA develop and enact a policy that supports light pollution reduction efforts and glare reduction efforts at both the national and state levels; and be it further

RESOLVED That our AMA support that all future streetlights will be of a fully shielded design or similar non-glare design to improve the safety of our roadways for all, but especially vision impaired and older drivers."

The complete Resolution...

http://docs.darksky.org/Docs/AMA%20Light%20pollution.pdf


"Darkness is as essential to our biological welfare, to our internal clockwork, as light itself."

-Verlyn Klinkenborg, "Our Vanishing Night," National Geographic magazine, November 2008

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text

[research]

Glad to hear it!

[research]

Switch over to motion sensing led lights.

[BannedNBoston]

Charging $5 for street light use another attack on the slaves.

[Semaj51]

Not a practical idea -- sodium-vapor street lights normally take 10 to 15 minutes to warm-up to full brightness. By the time the street is fully lit, out goes the light. Also the numerous on-offs will quickly wear out these lamps, and they are not cheap....