Sir,

This refers to the news item titled “LED street-lights not a bright idea!” in Star of Mysore dated Feb. 23. The feeling of insufficiency of lighting by the residents could be real. This can be a result of more than one factor alone of choosing LED as replacement to conventional street-lamps.

First and foremost is the gap between two lamp-posts. While the earlier gap may have been erratically selected without any scientific study (it has remained the same for both florescent tube lights, CFL or Sodium vapour lamps) while replacing it with LED, there is still an opportunity to select the same optimally by conducting a few experiments.

MCC has ignored this aspect because it has depended on the CESC poles (meant for transmission of electricity) to fix the street-lamps and CESC has not considered the street lighting as one of their services. This may be the main reason for this lapse.

Secondly, street-light brightness also depends on the reflectivity of surfaces on which the light falls. It is common scene that all our roads are in terrible conditions — thanks to dug up spots, mud covering, fallen leaves left in place for months, tree branches not trimmed thus further reducing the effectiveness.

Several intervening buildings adjoining the streets do not have bright reflective surfaces. Also the wattage selected for street- lights, as rightly mentioned in the report, may have to be reconsidered.

Since LED lights consume far less energy than other lamps and also lend themselves for smart operation of on-and-off, it will be wiser to ponder over reducing the gap between two street-lights rather than trashing it altogether. Even if an additional lamp is used in between the poles, there will still be a lot of energy saved.

– Prof. B.S. Shankara (Retd.), Mysuru, 23.2.2022

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