Effect of adaptive control on the LED street luminaire lifetime and on the lifecycle costs of a lighting installation

We report for the first time the effect of ageing due to adaptive control of lighting on the lifecycle costs of luminaire installations. Two types of LED street luminaire were aged (1) as the luminaire lit for 9 hours and then switched off for 3 hours and (2) under intensive ageing using adaptive control conditions mimicking presence of vehicles, where the luminaires were switched with 30-second interval between 100% and 20% power within the cycle of (1). The test continued for 32,000 hours. Luminaire lifetime was found to decrease by 10% due to the intensive adaptive control, which exaggerates the ageing as compared to real traffic conditions. We estimate that a realistic rate of dimming cycles would decrease the luminaire lifetime by 0–2%, increasing the lifecycle costs of a lighting installation by 0–0.7%. With a traffic-aware control system, capable of 50% energy saving in lighting, the lifecycle costs are estimated to reduce by 25% as compared to a similar LED luminaire installation without traffic-aware control, outweighing the costs due to the reduced lifetime. The smart controlling of lighting is considered as a useful way to meet future energy saving targets.