The Lamp Room

Well I've just been for a drive around the massive city of plymouth again this evening with Mr W to see the abortion the local council are ordering to the street lighting.
The main lantern of choice has been the urbis ampera in a 16 / 24 / 32 / 48 LED variety. The colour of these things seems to vairy quite a lot which is odd some are an 840 kind of white where as others are almost blue. It's a relieve when you get back on to a road that's still lit with SON. At first where the new amperas are concerned we only noticed a hand full of outtages, then when driving through the city center I happened to notice one of the 48 Led's had a strip of about 10 and corner not working. As these only have 1 driver and 1 pair of cables to the chips the Led's theirselves must be going EOLED.
Then when going down another street one of the first to be done almost a whole 8 months ago we noticed more 48 lanterns that seemed to have 1 to almost a quarter of the Led's out. Then we had a closer look at some of the 32 lanterns on another street and then noticed the scale of this problem when looking closely Id say 60/70% of the 32 lanterns had chips out some whole corners of the lantern were unlit because of the insane glare from these vial things you can't see this unless you look close! This makes me wonder if this is because the LED chips their self are driven hard I think the 32 led run at 68W and 48 are at 106W bare in mind these lanterns are at the most 1 year old it's making me think in theory if a lantern has a few indervidual chips out doesn't this cause the others to over run as the driver gives out a constant current?
We want to keep this floor secret from the council for a minute let them finish this waste of money then realise they have a major problem! Serves them right if there are that many out after just a few months to year the future looks dim lol

Do they have night patrol`s?, if not this problem may go un-noticed for a while, as the general public won`t look at the diode banks as close, until theres only about 4 still lit!

Then there will be a massive warranty claim going in against Urbis, and if this starts to happen all over the country, only THEN will the penny drop!
Even Philips are not immune to this, their fuel station canopy lights are now starting to have diodes go out!, it will become apparent within the next 5 or so years, that SMT diodes are NOT the way forward, and like James mentioned, we will start to see millions invested into high powered filament technology, then street lighting will go bake to the `lamp and lantern` set up.

The problem LED manufacturers WON`T admit, is that if SMT diodes were not run so hard, (as to falsely claim their super efficient), their TRUE efficiency is no better than CFL!, and that doesn`t sell products

Our main road R2L2s are 105w or something and they are 72 LED those 48 LED amperes must be getting driven to the maximum no wonder they are failing. Do you see why I hate Urbis? There is 2 of these 72 LED 105w r2l2s completely out on my road further round the bend however I hate to say this but I suspect that to be the photocells. Unfortunately I have never seen any of the lower wattage 11w, 14w, 16w, 20w & 21w out at all and neither has Jonny as he's got them too but I have seen a hell of slot of them day burning. With the thorn ones the Isaro and the small baby R2L2 that seemed to be used for a short while, the council here actually stopped using those as the manufacturers fucked A load of those up by wiring the photocells wrong. Mainly wiring the L0 and LI terminals the wrong way around and in some cases putting live to neutral causing the fuses to blow straight out so they stopped using those and went axia. The Axias have been better for the photocells slthough they're been a few wired wrong too. And also when I go out I see a hell of a lot of dayburners. Recently they've started using 3 module 40 watt Axias in places them things really are driven to the max as the 4 module as far as I know is supposed to be 40w. As of yet no failures but time will tell.

I`m keeping a close eye on our DW Winsor Kiriums, but its far too early to tell yet as they haven`t done a year?

There is a Keirum out at chiverton driver gone! The scale of this problem in plymouth is epic fail. Within a couple years there is going to be mass failure it's funny

Saying the led diodes are turning blue is hard evidence the diodes are failing due to overheating. Incorrect current and poor cooling.

How's the state of play (outtage wise) atm!

Not been up there lately Nick maybe Davy knows more?

We've been replacing a load of columns recently and refitting the Amperas. The majority of the 48s have chips out!

Are they using any Holophane Factors Davy?, how are they doing?