The thunder strikes out new LED lights – New Technology

     When lightning strikes can surges, transients, distributed hundreds of feet into the grid and beat out the street lights. Photo: Kent Eng 11089
     

street-lighting with LEDs can not handle surges in the power grid. Large areas dark is when you hear thunder. Swedish municipalities affected are now trying to protect the technology.

Large parts of Esbjerg in Denmark quenched down in October . A heavy thunderstorm damaged 500 new streetlights with LEDs, LED. Replacing them took several weeks. Just before Christmas was the Jutland Tim’s turn. There wrecked around 100 LED lights. Esbjerg Municipality spokesman sees the light fittings as time bombs, in an interview in Danish engineer.

The events puts his finger on a weak point of management lights: they are vulnerable to sharp fluctuations in voltage, and many lack adequate lightning protection. When lightning strikes can surges, transients, distributed hundreds of feet into the grid and beat out the street lights.

Denmark is at the forefront when it comes to replacing old streetlights to LED’s. In addition to significant energy savings counting municipalities with lower maintenance costs because LEDs have a much longer lifespan than traditional light sources. But calculus bursts of light fittings knocked out by lightning after a few years.

In Esbjerg replaced the supplier of the damaged lamps under warranty. Now, negotiations are underway about who will take the bill to protect the municipality thousands Leds against future lightning storm. The accident has received great attention in Denmark, and lighting Association Faba keeps the spring information sessions around the country.

This problem is also found in Sweden. Örnsköldsvik and Linköping is two-affected localities who now choose different strategies to protect the lights.

Örnsköldsvik has invested heavily in the energy-saving LED technology and has 5500 LED fixtures. This represents almost a third of all municipal street lights. A further 1300 will be installed this year. To save extra energy goes out the lights additionally down during the summer. But when the light was turned on again in September last year began complaints pouring in to Övik Energy.

– We got so many conversations about that it was dark in large areas, says Peder Nordin, Director of Technology and Development of Energy’s electricity grid.

It turned out that a hundred lampposts had been damaged by summer’s intense thunderstorms. In addition to LED lights so had electronic equipment to metallhalogenarmaturer wiped out. To correct the errors cost the municipality SEK 250 000. It took several weeks until all the lights shone again.

A lightning protection experts have now investigated how lighting can be protected. Luminaires supplied by overhead lines were especially hard hit last year, and therefore selected air lines new surge protector. The measure, which cost approximately SEK 100 000, protects primarily fixtures outside the urban area. To provide all of 5500 led lamps with high voltage protection would be significantly more expensive, and Peder Nordin do not think it is necessary.

– But hindsight, we have first to fall. Then we will know if it was enough to protect the air lines, he said.

Even Ljungsbro outside Linköping hit by hefty thunderstorms in the summer. Where injured ten of almost 200 LED fixtures. Johan Nilsson, network administrator for lighting on the technology departments in Linköping, it looks like a large percentage given that the municipality traditional light fittings can withstand lightning without problems.

– I have worked with street lighting since 1988, and I have never been involved in fixtures damaged like this, he says.

Now place the energy company stricter requirements on the 5000 new LED fixtures to be installed this year, an investment of 15 million. Only luminaires with a surge protector at 10 kilovolts are released into the net. But Johan Nilsson was not entirely convinced that this is sufficient.

– No, 100 percent secure, I am not. If that’s not enough, we must consider installing surge in lighting controllers also. But it would of course involve an additional cost, he said.

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