KIT develops new and more affordable LED street lights with 20% reduction in power consumption

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany has developed novel and more economical LED street lights. The researchers used a special set of weaker light-emitting diodes to replace traditional high-performance diodes and successfully reduced power consumption by 20%. As a result, CO2 emissions are reduced and cities save millions in electricity costs.

Local utility company Pfalzwerke Netz AG installed street lights with new lamp heads for the first time in the municipality of Maxdorf, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany.

Michael Heidinger of KIT Lighting Technology Institute (LTI) said that compared with traditional LEDs, they have once again significantly improved the efficiency and service life of lamps. He designed a smart circuit that compensated for the aging and failure of individual LEDs. In the traditional solution, it is difficult to connect a large number of LEDs in parallel because the failure of a single diode will affect the entire system or part of it. This phenomenon is very common in Christmas light chains.

However, the alternative of connecting LEDs in series also has disadvantages, as the required voltage increases with the number of LEDs used, and the legally allowed contact voltage is up to 120V, so currently only a maximum of 40 LEDs can be connected in series.

But in the new design, a large number of LEDs (48 LEDs in one lighting module) can be installed on one circuit board at low cost. In addition, Heidinger's new switch concept can operate at 20V, which improves safety compared to the commonly used 120V.

New LEDs reduce power consumption, and cities will benefit from them in the future. Currently, LED technology has replaced traditional high-power lighting in many places. According to the public utility company of Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe is a medium-sized city with a population of 320,000. It requires about 55,000 lamps to provide lighting (35% of which use LED technology). In 2018, the total power consumption reached 10,800 megawatt hours, and the electricity and maintenance costs incurred were as high as 3 million euros. At the same time, the additional reduction potential is also high.

Stefan Lang, head of technology and long-term communication at Pfalzwerke Public Utilities Company, said that if all street lights used new LEDs, costs could be reduced by up to 30%.

In addition, new LED lights have light-emitting properties that are more comfortable for human eyes. Gratz Luminance GmbH, a company located in Weinberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is producing this new outdoor lamp. Klaus Müller, the company's general manager, said that the cost of low-power LEDs is lower than that of high-power LEDs. Therefore, even if more LEDs are used, the production cost and selling price of the new lamps are lower. At the same time, the technology of replacing new lamps is not complicated and the cost is not high. The company's lamp heads can be directly applied to existing lamp poles.

He also said that the city of Maxdorf will test this new street light and that other large cities are also interested in this technology.