Unusual street light failure
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.พ. 2024
- I've never seen this happen before. The aluminium core LED panel has actually delaminated. I don't know the full history of this light as it was sold as untested, although a flex had been Wago'd onto the original wire stubs! So hopefully it wasn't powered up with a saturated electronic driver.
As supplied it was covered in mud and had water in the LED section, suggesting it had been stood vertically outdoors for a while, with the pole port up.
It's possible that the standing water and a number of freezing cycles caused progressive delamination, and the submersion may also have resulted in humidity ingress to the LEDs too. So I don't know if the light was retired due to LED failure or if that happened in outside storage. It's not old, so it must have been removed for a reason.
If you work with these lights (Urbis Schreder Axia 2?) then let me know if you have had issues with them.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
as an RMA technician for an LED street light company. i can confirm every problem you have found and many more.
the main cause for all of them is usualy water ingress. most of the time this is from a trapped cable compromising a seal, or the nema sockets/photo socket seals failed.
the led boards will blister as you have seen almost every time they interact with water.
this is sometimes intesified as the dc current runs through them, you get gas production aswel as electrolitic corrosion.
part of my job is trying to figure out what the initial point of failure was and then trying to figure out what caused it,
was it user error?, bad manufacturing?, did they leave it outside in the rain upside down for 6 months?, or inversly did the leave it open and inside in the the dry for 6 months after water damage?
half the time its impossible to determine anything and i fix it regardless.
Would you say the high number of light sources is part of the problem?
@@rimmersbryggeri if you mean multiple leds instead of one larger led? probably not much. water damage will effect them equaly
@@jimmyhackers8980 I meant compared to other street lighting technologies.
as an engineer who oversees warranty and failure analysis at a non-streetlight lighting company, its always Water Ingress or Surge Damage. Very rarely a design fault or component failure :D
@@MetalPhreakAU - Of course, both non-warranty failure modes. *eye roll*
In my career in telecoms, we had actual relays for switching mains into horns, bells and lights. The bloody electronic replacements in latter years were such a pain, we would hoard the older (by decades) relays recovered from dismantlements and closed down businesses. I often had a series of new electronic relays that just didn't work out of the box. The only reliable circuit I recall was the old TRG (transistorised ringing generator) which took a 24v DC supply and put out 110v at 17hertz. They lasted bloody years and years.
You helped me understand a problem we had with kitchen ground fault receptacles. We could use them unless someone turned on the hall overhead light. Your explanation of how ground faults were detected led to a nail thru a wire (that I saw using a long otoscope) that was grounded into a 2x4. I ran a replacement around the fault and everything is fabulous. Thanks
Yes, you've just found a major flaw in the NEC requirements for construction. Plastic coated electrical cables are required to be stapled into place so they can't move - which means any sharp object penetrating the wall has this wonderful wire held in place for it to damage.
That driver looks absurdly complicated. Even with PFC and Dali it's hard to see how they managed to use so many parts - looks like there are two MCUs on there ffs!
2 different design teams, one for the primary side, and one for the secondary side, and they only ever got an interface spec for the other side, nothing more.
Its to power the 5G Death Beam, if you remember Clives response to that "Teardown" Video by some anti 5G Nutjob.
Yeah. Just over engineered to the hilt. It's partly because they are trying to make a one size fits all driver.
@@bigclivedotcom Trying to have as many possible points of failure as they could cram into a board that size.
Perhaps it's so complex because it was designed to mine cryptocurrency for the manufacturer using other people's electricity 😅
Even fiberglass boats sitting in water for an extended period will blister.
The "Osmosis" problem. Changes in the resin use for GRP layup have mostly eliminated that issue, although there are a great number of older vessels with this problem, and the cost of remediation (grinding off the gel coat, filling voids, and epoxy coating) is very high.
Dead streetlight, or DED, darkness-emitting diodes?
This failure is definitely caused by the way the luminaire was stored, like you mentioned. Water is the enemy of electronics. That is why these luminaires are IP66. That obviously only applies when properly installed.
LED luminaires are designed for 100.000 burning hours which is approximately 20 years of service life. The LED has no heatsink because the luminaires aluminium body to which the led board is sandwiched acts as the heatsink. This example is a 8 LED board, but this way of heat dissipation is used for luminaires well over 100 LEDs. It takes a separate sort of engineering to account for this in the design of a injection molded aluminium body. Over the 100.000 hour lifespan the light output gradually degrades. This can be accounted for by increasing power from the led driver. This is among the features that can be programmed with the nfc.
Interesting series with the streetlight luminaires! Please keep it up 👍🏻
Wow, the amount of circuitry just to drive eight LEDs. Sort of seems like massive overkill in my head.
Depends on how tall the street light is; short street lights ~ on residential streets and foot paths are nearer to the ground and can be much dimmer so only 2 rows of LEDs are needed [I have seen this myself] however the taller street lights on; main roads, A/B roads & motorways have a full matrix of LEDs because of being further away from the ground they need to be brighter
Yes... It does. Seems that a significant fraction of the board is EMI filtering. It probably has 95+ efficiency. It needs a supply to power its microcontroller, and the MCU has a ton of glue logic to control the switching components, and interface with the many sensors (current, outside illumination, wireless programming interface, a couple thermal sensors, etc....).
I work in software, massive overkill comes from inexperience and ambition in this industry as well.
@@pigrewpower factor correction is not simple either but is abdolutly nececary when 100s of lights are in use. Specialy so in 3phase systems unless you like a Neutral conductor.
Or it might just be the there to power the 5G Death Beam.
@@stephenlesbos6208 I laugh, thinking back to when I was taking programming in college and got my first IT job, I tried to make code that was self-documenting and sensible, all they wanted was something that worked, albeit temporarily, while they chased down the next fire. Then the company got taken over and hired 6 more programmers to try and salvage things.
Just noticed you broke 1M subs. Congratulations! You've earned it.
8:25 I agree; we've become besotted with technology for its own sake. I worked in automotive electronics. In the late 1970's I worked for a motor control company, in our spare time we made electronic ignitions (specifically CDI) which the company then started selling on a small scale. But in the late 1980's there was a quiet revolution in automotive electronics, namely electronic control of the engine and some electronic body control. To our delight the car finally came into the modern tech. age. Then came canbus. It was going to be the answer to all problems, real and imagined. Of course, it was planned and designed (as so often happens) by the ignorant. There was going to be one wire to all components, regardless of load, which was going to save a king's ransom in wiring and simplify everything. A signal was going to be sent down the wire to address components to tell them what to do, a bit like ripple control. Of course, as anyone with the most rudimentary experience of auto-electrics knows, it is a horrendously noisy environment. In the end it increased the amount of wiring manifold. And now the thing is complicated to the point of absurdity. For example, a German car manufacture (I won't name it, but it lied about its diesel emissions) has a microprocessor in its window motors. When the up (or down) button is pressed, a signal is sent to the BCM (body control module) the BCM then decides if the ignition is switched on and sends a signal to the winder controller which then decides which relays to activate to move the window up (or down). Previously there used to be switches which had sturdy contacts sufficient to activate the motor directly, requiring just two wires to the door, not four (minimum).
Previously, when the flasher relay failed it was removed and replaced at the cost of $10-20. Now the instrument cluster has to be replaced and re-coded to the BCM at obscene cost.
Simplicity really is the key to reliability.
Reminds me of a failed CCTV cable I investigated (from a UK seaport). The outwardly undamaged long cable had gone open circuit. When I sliced it open I found whole sections of it had turned to dust - It was cheapo copper coated aluminium cable. Water had seeped into the cable and the cable screen turned into white dust. It turned out to be very expensive way to make an inefficient battery let alone a CCTV link LOL.
It's why you should always replace a TV aerial cable when replacing the aerial.
Have driven around the american state of Florida a few times recently and they seem to have invested in LED streetlights with inadequate heat management. The phosphors have burned off and whole miles of highways and such are now illuminated by what looks a lot like black lights instead of white lights. They claim online that they are returning them and that all will be well, but it’s been years and they are still there and new ones are adding themselves to the problem all the time.
There's a good chance that the company that supplied them has done a runner. That's a common thing in the LED industry. Promises of huge lifespans and then suddenly disappearing when they start failing en-masse.
Water is life for the living, death for technology.
water will bloat and harm the living too, trench foot for example. It's needed in small doses
Public enemy #1, lol.
All the streetlights in my city are always flickering and flashing. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Sometimes just one, sometimes the whole block. Glad to know that that won’t have to change now that we’re upgrading to LED!
Got new LED fixtures in my neighborhood, some have discolored already. I wonder how much money they're actually "saving" maintaining these.
theres a single street light on the edge of my city that turns off every time a car or person goes past it lol. kinda counter intuitive
None of our LED street lights are bright enough but they have no intension of replacing any of them. There are so many dark shadows all over the town it's like going back to days of gas lighting.
mood lighting is great
The street lamp next to our house used to light up our drive, which was quite handy. Now it barely illuminates the road next to the lamp.
I guess it's lower power and more directional, which I suppose is good for our Council Tax bills.
Following a few complaints we have finally had our LED lights upgraded and at last they have diffusers on them, so we do not get the bright/dark alternating pattern any more. Have also persuaded them to not use the low brightness setting threatening to sue them if I trip over something or cycle over something when they are on extra dim mode.
It's happening here in Brazil too. I used to think the idea of replacing sodium lamps with LEDs was amazing. i've never been so regretful. Today I encounter dim, directional lights, creating large dark spots between the poles. Some bulbs burn out after 3 months of use, many remain burnt out for years. I need to carry a flashlight in my bag, I guess I need to buy a lantern to match the setback. Don't get me wrong, I love LEDs, but I don't love public lighting with LEDs.
Here I'm seeing the opposite. Where I used to live, they upgraded all the street lamps to LED, and you could walk down the street at 2 AM and read a book. It's like everyone's forgotten about light pollution AND that I don't particularly like the inside of my house lit up by the streetlight because they couldn't directionally focus it. A street light isn't intended to be a replacement for headlights. It's supposed to simply make it safe to walk from point A to point B without a flashlight.
That is one over engineered lamp. My experience with LED outdoor fixtures is this: Water Always Wins.
Makes you think how technology has changed over the years, when it comes to flickering lights we've gone from "just change the bulb" to "just change the whole streetlight" when it comes to road illumination, not built for serviceability, but made to look fancy with their designs, which sometimes are the achilles heel when more thought is put into how it should look over how it needs to perform, and when we have councils who are going bankrupt, changing streetlight units versus changing a bulb is a cost that they could do without...
It's more complicated than that. Cost matters a lot. Cost of acquisition, installation, operation, maintenance, and disposal are all factors which can vary across products and across time. For a while one of the biggest users of LED lightbulbs (when they were $100 each) involved certain types of decorative lighting in really high locations like fancy theaters and halls. This is because the cost of the work hours for multiple people to get out the scissor lift to safely change incandescent bulbs was exorbitant. Then you have to take into account product improvement. How much should you care about durability if you project that a 30% more efficient product will be available for the same price in 5 years? Maybe you are better off getting lower reliability now and planning to do replacements sooner.
@@garrettkajmowiczThe issue arises when the company fails to conduct maintenance properly, resulting in several streets being in the dark. It can worsen when the municipality doesn't fulfill its contract with the contracted company.
@@garrettkajmowiczExactly. Whole lifecycle costs can easily result in component maintainability being a much lower priority than modularity. In most places now the most expensive part of any system is the people. So anything you can do to reduce the amount of time and training it takes someone to do a job the more it’s selected for. This is where regulations come into the picture to place limits and discourage needless wastage. Imagine if suppliers or manufacturers were required to appropriately recycle failed modules and document it. Suddenly reliability and smaller modules would be commercially selected for.
Current power supply: New! Improved! Better! Component count of over 250 items and a 2-3 year service life...if you are very lucky.
Previous Power Supply: Component count of 1 and a service life of 60 years or more.
Just gotta love the "advancement" of todays technology 🤮
Just like my car. New, improved temperature controls: microprocessor controlled servos to change air flow direction. Previous temperature control methods: knobs with wired cable connections to air flow flaps. Result: after 15,000 miles, £640 bill on new car for replacing faulty servo motor controlled flaps. Old cables and flaps on other car still working after 43 years and 200,000 miles.
It does not matter that much. The point is to save electrical energy, and these LED lights do that. And having to replace the power supply or the LEDs or both every few years still pays off in electricity savings.
@@DashCamSerbiaIs it truly saving power if you included the energy consumed for raw materials, production, and installation replacement.
When "repairing" LEDs, the common practice now is to throw out the entire fixture.
The energy just for the production of the aluminum fixture for street lights being thrown away, not counting components, has to be insane. And yes, it's common practice throwing out the entire fixture for a simple faulty driver or a single burnt COB LED wired in series.
The devil is in the detail! A lot of people talk talk of advances and advancement, but no-one ever happens to mention in which direction...Advancement in the reverse direction seems prevalent today, sadly.
…including the working hours of the maintenance crew?
I doubt it!
Saw a street light the day before yesterday, the one mounted in a road sign where the plastic cover had been run over and taken away, steam pouring out of it in the rain 😂
Yup in the street lighting industry myself and agree totally, We've gone from one item that can fail to many hundreds of failure points with these LED drivers, the biggest thing though is their efficiency that wire wound ballast I suspect will consume 10-15Watts or more when running when these electronic ballasts can be as low as a watt and it makes quite a difference to your energy bill when there are circa 100K of units on the highway. Down side is they dont last as long so you end up spending more possibly replacing the dam things but hey that comes from a different budget 🙄
Can't beat a good old high pressure mercury vapour lamp.. LEDs are great for the home, office, but not for streetlights. Like someone said, it's like going back to gas lighting.
Yeah definitely from being submerged under water for a long time, as i am a Fibreglass Pool Resurface technician the bubbles slash blisters are called Osmosis
🙂
In Albuquerque NM, they replaced a bunch of street lights with LEDs about a year ago, and now a bunch of them are turning purple. Feels like you're driving around in cyberpunk. I wonder whats causing them to xhange color like that
Phosphor degradation or detachment from the base violet LEDs.
One of the disadvantages of putting the windings side-by-side is it increases the leakage inductance, which could be an issue depending on the topology.
Thanks again Clive...Very informative and interesting as usual!!
When I was growing up there was a nearby radial wave street light still in service with it's white enameled pie pan shade and clear incandescent lamp hanging below. Every other light in town had long ago been replaced by rather boring 60's era mercury vapor clam shells that may have been Westinghouse OV-10's. If I had been passing by on the day it was retired I would have begged for it knowing that my understanding folks would have let me keep in my corner of the basement. Often progress means that you lose more than you gain.
Amazing all the components Electronic /vs old coil.
Interesting analysis Clive!
Multiple transformer bobbins also offer more flexibility. More turns and finer wire boosts secondary voltage -- and vice versa. Finer primary wire allows the primary coil to be narrower and more secondary coils to be fitted. This strategy also allows the same coils to be used for longer cores having the same area and shape so that multiple secondaries can also be accommodated that way.
Clive, you should see how many Purple or UV looking streetlights we have here in the states... It's almost funny at this point, it looks like Halloween or Easter or something. I am not sure what is happening although early on I had heard they used phosphorus in the LEDs to make them white and I am wondering if they are slowly burning up the phosphors...?
Photo please 🧐
It's the phosphor filter that brakes. The polimer plate with the flourescent compound, mounted in front of de diodes. It deteriorates prematurely, exposing the original LED emission, full of blue and violet.
Cheers 💡
I'd love to see a photo of the inside of one to see how the phosphor has degraded or physically detached from the violet LED.
It actually sounds quite nice.
Sure those aren't mercury vapor? There's still lots of those in use.
@@PaulSteMarie no, they are the newer flat LED. It's not just here. I'm sure we can find news reports on it.
I've seen paint delaminate like this before. Once the water gets under the surface, continued heating and cooling will bubble the surface. Each cycle will make the bubbles bigger as the water vapor expands.
Meanwhile the metal halide street light out front is still going strong after 8 years. I really don’t understand adding fragility to industrial systems. Seems like a bad idea.
It's a shame to see planned obsolescence in something so utilitarian as street lights, but that's what I see in the overly complicated driver. It's designed to fail two days after warranty.
Clive, I read your lengthy video description, and I bet Ray (Rodalco2007) would be very interested to read it too. Very good points made.
Our local council changes its LED streetlights approximately every two to three years. When we went from incandescent bulbs to LPS, those sodium lights lasted a good thirty years, not the lamps/bulbs, obviously, but the actual luminaires. LEDs are without doubt the most unreliable and unsuitable form of lighting they've ever deployed, and at what cost? But I take heart, I notice a resurgence of sodium in some locations. It seems that if you're wealthy enough, and can muster enough clout, you can get your SOX back, and I also notice that there is an increasing number of what look like sodium, from a distance, but up close, they look like LEDs mimicking Sodium - Is faux sodium becoming a "thing" in street lighting, or is it just a local council pandering to the whims of a few people who can afford to twist the arms of its officials?
I have to confess, I like the new orange LEDs. The colour isn't quite right just yet, looking a tad pale, and slightly pink (like HPS in the start up phase), and lack the brightness of the SOX lamps we used to love so much. They are definitely easier on the eye, but I digress.
You can see a similar delamination of circuit board in some of the last VCRs and some TV sets and DVD equipment, But not usually until they've been abandoned in the weather for some months.
What was that quote again? Something about plumbing and drains! 🤦😇💨😸🐈
My council uses urbis schrèder axia gen 1s and have everything replacable, drivers actually last and the diode blocks are replacable like a bulb whilst giving the misleading Impression that they are built in.
By the way the ROHS directive are banning all discharge lamps after 2027.
Little do they know LEDs themselves have toxic elements in them.
Nice a new video i love street lights thanks CLive really interesting as ever!
Awesome Video Big Clive 😊
I don’t know if this is a regional issue, but I have noticed quite a few “purple” street lights. I understand that the phosphorescent coating has separated from the LEDs, but I have never seen one that appears to have some LEDs with their coating and some without. I would have expected a mix to be the common case.
The title of the video brought Roswell, New Mexico instantly to my brain. Some will get it.
Pardon my ignorance, but what do aliens have to do with this?
Pardon my ignorance, but what do aliens have to do with this?
The reason why most switching power supplies have as little separation as possible between windings is because any air gap between primaries and secondaries increases stray inductance, which reduces the coupling factor and increases the amount of energy that either needs to get absorbed as avalanche energy into the switching device or dumped into a snubber network. Meeting today's 90+% AC-DC converter efficiency requirements becomes difficult if you piss away 1-2% of the energy into snubber networks by adding more insulation than absolutely necessary between windings.
De-lamination results primarily from the difference in thermal expansion coefficients. Smaller panels separated by slip joints would help that since stress grows proportional to dimension. This panel's size is near the limit, but evidence suggests that it exceeds the limit nonetheless.
Mixing metals in a weathered environment is never a good idea; electrochemistry has taught us that. Aluminum screws are not as strong, but they also would not have corroded and galled.
A New York computer graphic company I worked for in the 1980s Decided to prevent anyone copying their new circuit board after this super board was finished they worked it over on a belt sander to remove all the markings on the chips. The result: They completely killed the board.
What caused those screws to break, was it galling? I dabble with LED fixtures and use stainless steel screws in aluminium heatsinks, should I be using some kind of anti-seize?
Amazing that your thumbnail has my name on it
If you're weird then you're definitely not a failure.
Not heard that for decades Clive, “Conking out’ 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
* Etymology. Possibly an onomatopoeic imitation of the sound of a stalling internal combustion engine.
Possibly coined by British motorcyclists circa 1910.
It's very common round our way
Read this: About the de-lamination I have actually seen this happen myself on lamps that been used inside my own house, these was 3 Philips G9 LED and they started having issues after about one year when the solder joints started to crack all over the board breaking the connection, I solder these about 2 times using leaded solder and the points I fixed did usually work until something else cracked instead, eventually the whole white top layer were bubbling off the aluminium sheet and the paint were falling off it too looking like a really sight for sore eyes, these were never in any moist but I figure it was due to heat and heat cycles made the thermal expansion break the different layers apart. The final blow that finish these bulbs off was when a main fuse blew in my house while my 400V 6KW 3-phase water heat pump kept running on two phases for a short moment now acting like a generator making the now floating phase reach so high voltages the components in the lamps and some other things powered by this single phase explode before the heat pump going into protection mode. And if you read it this far I had a dream about Clive this night, it was super weird
I'm in all the weirdest dreams.
The streetlight investigations are very enjoyable
Consider the freeze thaw cycle. Small aount of moisture in board freezes and expands... repeat... repeat until failure.
Some of those Aluminum boards are not built for the high temp that an LED can reach... Manufacturing sometimes contributes to shortening its life... Thank you for the video 👍🏻
Damn. For a moment I thought we would see another transformer unwinding video. Our loss!
That might still happen.
Back in the days when I worked for a living in the lighting industry, electronics were beginning to replace traditional ballasts and control gear. A colleague, seeing the circuitry on the pcbs was asked what he thought of this wonderful advance, he simply said, “ More to go wrong “ If I remember rightly, he also said I thought DALI was a painter ! Though I didn’t believe the colleague that told me that.
Makes me wonder; given the lifespan of the components that drive them are led street lights really that environmentally friendly?
At this point they are not environmentally friendly at all. It's just another high profit eco bandwagon.
Don't forget the energy expended replacing tge lifts and even indirect energy losses such as accidents where poor lighting may be a contributing factor.
I really don't like the idea of non serviceable LED-armatures and lights. In stead of replacing complete mercury-lamp streetlight armatures with complete led armatures one can just replace the bulb with a cheap standard LED bulb. That works just fine even with the ballast still in place. Much cheaper and less resources wasted and when the LED bulb eventually fails it is quick, cheap and easy to replace.
Our local Council have gone down the LED route. Rather than standardising over many Councils, each has done its own thing, and driving around at night you see a range of different designs. The "original" LED replacement near our home lasted all of three years, and has now been replaced with a "warmer" output unit. Let's see just how long that lasts!
I have seen such blistering a few times, but I have never found water in them nor do I recall seeing any extensive water damage, except once, and it was an emergency light that was sealed everywhere except the power cord gland, which allowed the water to ingress and not drain. The whole inside was flooded yet the LEDs were still on. Yikes.
That's a common issue with waterproof lights. Thermal expansion and contraction of the air pumps water in via the cable.
Thank you for the video, sleep well.
Pad LED made by Schrèder GIE group (Urbis in UK, Lumec in Canada,... for info Schrèder GIE group, is a Belgian Street light manufacturer made by Alphonse Schreder in 1907 in Ans City of Province de Liège - Luïkse Provincie🇪🇺🇧🇪)
Those 90 Volt gas discharge tubes ( without leads , solder sweated into a BIG grounded brass block ) , make 1st class dissipators of the secondary current from lightning strikes in the 50 Ω RF inputs to base stations .. DAVE™🛑
There is a point in Tech, that says STOP.
Had a digital camera, and it had a funny feature, that the battery was in constant use, as it didnt have a backup inside for the RAM, and it didnt have storage Ram that saves the pictures. And every month(even with no use) you had to change the batteries.
Mine did that, it sucked because every time I ran to grab the camera for photographing something, I'd find all the settings wiped.
@@tncorgi92 The Fuji camera was great, even had 50x magnification. Just forgot to put a Battery on the Tech, Computers have had these since the 386 to save the Bios.
So much more to go wrong.
The delaminated spot will for sure have less heat transfer, probably kills the led. Take a peak with the heat camera?
That's an interetsing idea.
7:07 Clive, that is called progress, the progress to save energy, to get it more "green". Manufacturers and politiics don't talk about short living waste produced for saving energy because that is not on top of the list. They don't care and it will stimulate economy. It is like an electric car, no emmisions at all however they don't talk about production, durability, scrapping and all kind of other stuff needed or required that produce (finally) more (e-)waste than before. Same with lighting or other things that were simple before. Waste was just an alloy, glass, isolator but now it is totally different. Take a look at a recycler bin, it is really shocking the amount of modern e-waste. For example, I had a 60 years old gas furnace, very simple construction, totally made out of metals and some plastics. Now I have an induction cooker (forced to do so), very complicated inside and full of electronics..... We need to know the both sides of the story, what do we save actually with all this "green" and efficiency BS.
That’s why I’m sticking with older technology - fluorescent and mercury lamps! LED could have been awesome but everything has been made over-complex and built by the cheapest bidder.
Thanks :)
**Abstract**
This transcript details the examination of a failed LED street light. The failure mode is characterized by a single LED flickering and eventually failing. While the exact cause remains uncertain, several observations are noted:
* **Water Damage:** The light was stored upright and filled with water, potentially affecting components.
* **Circuit Board Delamination:** The LED's aluminum core circuit board shows delamination and water intrusion. Whether this is a manufacturing defect or a result of water damage is unclear.
* **Suboptimal Design:** The use of stainless steel screws in aluminum led to seized and broken screws, hindering maintenance.
The transcript also compares the complexity and potential vulnerabilities of LED street lights to older, more robust sodium lamp designs. Further investigation is suggested to determine if the observed circuit board delamination is a common issue in these LED street lights.
i used gemini
summary of the top comments as of 2024-02-28:
Here is a concise summary of the top TH-cam comments on the failed LED streetlight video, presented as a bullet list and sorted by importance:
**Key Issues**
* **Water Infiltration and Damage:** Water ingress is a recurring issue in LED streetlights, leading to corrosion, blistering, and component failure. This is primarily because seals and enclosures are often not durable enough or improperly installed.
* **Design Overcomplexity:** The driver circuits are significantly more complicated than necessary, with an excessive number of components. This increases failure points while making repairs impractical.
* **Insufficient Lifespan:** LED streetlights are often advertised to last for 20 years or more, but many are failing within just a few years of installation.
* **Lack of Serviceability:** LED streetlights are designed as sealed units with no provisions for repair. When components fail, the entire expensive light fixture must be replaced.
**Specific Concerns**
* **Delamination of the LED circuit board** This could be caused by water damage or a manufacturing defect.
* **Corrosion from dissimilar metals:** Stainless steel screws used on aluminum components can cause galvanic corrosion.
**Comparisons to Older Technology**
* **Sodium Lights:** Many commenters note that older sodium-vapor streetlights were far simpler, more durable, and lasted longer, despite being less energy-efficient than LEDs.
Great to see the lighting industry moving forward with modern designs. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Well bits of it are OK but for street lights they are getting way over engineered. 👍👍
Interesting video 2x👍
I wish you could get one of the failing highway interchange lamps from here (Iowa). The phosphor coating rapidly degrades, leaving us with purple lighting.
I'd like to see inside one of those. It sounds like the phosphor has physically detached.
I've been looking at a LED floolight with the same white aluminium board, it's been a nightmare. I ended up buying an LED tester to try and figure out the path the LEDs were following but that was after I accidentily blew a few of up 🙄
8:43 Big Clive gets excited.
I was just thinking. In your series of household “A shape” LEDs, have you taken apart a 3-way LED?
Where they have 3 different brightness levels based on the extra contact at the base of the bulb? They’re somewhat common in the US, but I’m not sure about other parts of the word.
I was thinking about taking one apart to swap out the low power LED with a colored one, so you could have red, white, or a combination of the two.
They're not a common thing here.
IIRC the one ancient Cree I tore apart used a single fairly sophisticated buck driver and single string of LEDs, probably monitored which of the two live pins were live and adjusted output on that. I'd guess the more modern light weight ones are probably the usual linear regulated circuit, just two of them on one PCB.
More they make the plumbing complicated, the easier it is to block the drain
most led tv's last two years max unless they are edge lit and the leds sit on a really thick aluminium heat sink plate.
It's not just a streetlight, it's an M&S (malfunctioning and submerged) streetlight. 😁
Was wonder how the aluminum handled the TC. Thought it was a miracle. I've painted aluminum, a special primer is needed which take days to finish its etching business.
0:04 It's a dead LED streetlight and it's our favourite type 🤣🤣🤣
Anyway, pretty interesting failure. I guess it delaminated because the water that got between the layers evaporated because of the heat generated by the LED's and it created those bubbles. And those LED streetlights don't hold up for very long. So why don't they just leave the sodium lamps?
They are cheaper, last much longer and sometimes they are more efficient.
Overkill on the PSU? I think yes.
The water probably made its way between the insulating layer and the aluminum. Probably happened while in use and heat cycling but not necessarily. Water is a solvent...
I find most led exterior lights a bit of a waste of resources. Just like interior home led bulbs the will fail and need replacement, . The exterior ones are usually a throw away item, making maintenance so much harder.
I have actually seen these blistering on multiple cheap "made in India" lights! (Cheap or expensive, "Made in India" always guarantees the lowest quality though)
De-lamination seems not to occur at both outer rows of LED's, as if heat from the two populated rows is involved.
Everything now is built with a short life expectancy.😢
That‘s just a form of planned obsolescence!
Now would a small heating element that comes in once in a few hours solve the moisture problem?
That's where the linear regulator in the Indo light would actually double up as an anti-condensation heater as is used in some photocells.
I bet replacing the smp gubbins and changing the LED boards etc with wages to do so, probably costs more than energy saved from traditional ballast unit run street lighting.
Gaz Yorkshire
Do these lights have or made to have the ability to send and receive data in the blue range ???
No they don't.
Well, there is a centennial incandescent light bulb that has been burning for over 100 years. Will there ever be a centennial LED?
I think it's more a case of everything nowadays being built down to a price and being disposable rather than repairable.
Does any fab make a really good quality LED?
Given that the lifespan of a bulb goes up exponentially with under-running and the efficiency also plummets. That's probably why their bulb has been lit for so long. The lifetime electricity cost data would be interesting.
What they have there is a glass enclosed heater.
As you say a board full of components has plenty of possible failure modes. I do wonder with modern cars if they have perfected planned obsolescence with all the electronics they now contain, much of which won't be available as replacement parts, and even if it is will probably require some custom programming from an authorised dealer. Perhaps why they aren't bothered about EV battery life as some other bit of electronics failure will junk the car before that becomes an issue.
2 years is normal life expectancy for modern LED lights considering the way they are over driven to compensate for the reduced diode count.
The question I have: Is there continuity between the aluminum and the power input?
The aluminium will usually be at ground potential.
@@bigclivedotcom Yes, but with all that water damage did something short to it.
I really do miss the orange of Sodium/Natrium lights...
isn't there a way to have a similar (powerful/bright) substitute using LEDs??
There's certainly LEDs that emit only in that narrow orange-red part of the spectrum, and I think even some streetlight manufacturers might offer them. Sadly, they're far from the norm.
They do sell monochromatic street lights.
Nichia, the japanese semiconductor manufactor, just presented (at Light+Building 2024 in Frankfurt) a new 1700K LED for an HPS streetlight look.
Cheers 💡
Yeah , was pleasantly suprised to see monochromatic yellow led street lighting in Tenerife recently 😎😎
Just like your smart water faucet, electronics for the sake of electronic.
Could the heatshrunk MOV have had a fuse sandwhiched to it?
That was my thought too, but I didn't see one. I'll probably cut the heatshrink off when I explore the unit.
@@bigclivedotcom otherwise could it just be for blast protection?
Maybe the water got in and then froze, which caused the bubbling on the aluminium PCB.
Another problem that would never happen with good old HID lamps and ballasts.
About a year ago they replaced street lights on 5km of road with LED. I noticed that so far 7 units have failed.
They replaced lights on 1km of road by me in 2008, and within 6 months had to replace almost all of them at least twice, as they failed. Mostly due to rather poor installation, as the council electricians are more arctricians than electrician, and they kind of do poor work. Beka must have had a field day refusing warranty claims on them.
Many of the current street lighting guys are just labourers hired off the street and sent on a couple of 1 day courses. IPAF for the access unit and G39 for "electrical knowledge".
Thay are low grade stainless steel.
They will break, as above.
I not surprised that they have not started degrading.
That may be why they are breaking at the smallest diameter.
Most led lights in this area fail beacuse the aluminum to copper barrier pcb fiberglass is inferior or too thin, thus shorting out.
Stainless steel into aluminum? That will definitely gall. They should have used anti-seize on those screws or simply used rivets instead.
I heard that Birmingham City Council is having serious financial difficulties and one of their cost saving plans is to reduce power to street lights.
I was wondering how much they could reduce the power and still allow them to be useful given that the lights where I live (near Liverpool) are pretty dim to begin with. They were changed to LED's about 6 or 7 years ago and I'm sure they were brighter than they are now, they have either got dimmer with age or the power has been reduced gradually !
It depends on what light level residents are willing to tolerate. From a technical perspective, however, LED's are able to produce light at power levels far below their rating. In fact, the lower they're run, the more efficient they become (in contrast to incandescents, which increase efficiency the hotter they're run).
They do reduce in efficiency over time, as the phosphor degrades. The #1 culprit of this is the heat the unit produces, making running them at lower power that much more attractive. The emitter junctions can also degrade, but that's a much, much slower process.
The ideal solution would be to source units that are rated for double or more the desired light output, then under-run them. Obviously this is more expensive up-front, but will yield electricity savings (at a given light output) and increased unit lifespans (theoretically at a superior ratio to the unit's over-spec).
I'm pretty sure they could save a lot of money by engaging on a bit of internal fraud investigation. Most councils carry a lot of freeloaders.
It's water cooled street light.
People and companies generally go way too far with things.
Nothing unusual about street light failing 😂 I’m always calling the council reporting them - LED is unreliable
I do wonder why don't they pot that fancy driver board like they do for washing machines 😅
Bring back the irn bru coloured street lights 😅