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Alan R
Planet Forward Contributor
April 25, 2010
Outdoor Lighting that Wastes Energy
I see a lot of green ideas about producing energy, but why bother if people just waste it ? I live in a very open area in Colorado and can see yardlights that are over 20 miles away. This is because these antique fixtures, send light out sideways and up. They lose about 30% of their energy doing nothing. It’s a poor design that produces useless glare. Glare makes it hard to see the road when you drive at night, so part of it is a safety issue. Here’s a no brainer …. If you needed to take a flashlight outside at night, would you shine it in your face, or at the ground ?
The photo below shows a myriad of these dusk to dawn beacons which are on ALL night, EVERY night of the year. It takes a lot of energy to keep these lights on and probably 70 percent of them don’t even need to be on. You can see that the bottoms of the clouds are lit up, which is a good use of energy right ? I’m starting to wonder if so called adults are afraid of dragons or vampires. The photo below is only a small portion of the view from my house.
Lighting solutions go beyond CFLs which are slightly toxic: Motion sensor lights don’t stay on so they save energy and LEDs are super savers which contain no toxins. In the meantime we need to outlaw wasteful lighting fixtures.
