Life Cycle Assessment of Street lighting Technologies (HPS vs LED)
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Date
2017-05-03
Authors
Sawalha, Noor
Obediat, Randa
Qawasmi, Tala
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Abstract
The purpose of our` research is to study the street lighting in Nablus city. Street lighting is considered to be an essential public service that provides a safer environment for commuters as well as pedestrians. Proper use of street lighting is a protective method which provides economic and social benefits to the people.
This study focuses on how communities that pay an external utility for street lighting services such as Nablus can benefit from LED installation . It may be found that a significant portion of its lighting tariff rate goes to cover the utility’s materials and maintenance costs. By implementing LED technology and owning the fixtures, communities have the opportunity to transition to tariff rates that only charge for electricity, resulting in significant savings over time.
Additionally, the research conducts a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of two major technologies high pressure sodium (HPS) & light- emitting diode (LED) in Nablus city.
Most of the electricity used for lighting is generated from non-renewable resources. As a result, street lighting has many environmental impacts which vary during the manufacturing, operation and disposal stages. This study presents an overview of life cycle assessment (LCA) of lighting systems and answers the following questions:
• What are the environmental impacts of HPS & LED products over their whole life cycle?
• What are the strongest contributors to the environmental impacts of HPS & LED products ?
• How do LED products compare with conventional HPS technology in different life stages?
• How much savings will we get by replacing HPS system with LED ?
In this work, two street lighting technologies are evaluated and compared based on their contribution to the green house gas emissions, ozone depletion and human toxicity. In addition, the study includes an economic analysis. Results show that the accumulated savings over the projects' life (20 years) obtained from replacing HPS lamps with LED lamps during the use phase are 60,374,975 in KWH & 3,810,527 in NIS. Subsequent to this, a remarkable reduction in GHG emissions is noticed: 46,790 ton CO2, 1,147 ton SO2 and 120.75 ton NOx Also, we found out while measuring the light quality of currently installed LED lamps that 62.5% of the LED lamps are not with standards. Finally, we expect the use stage to dominate in terms of environmental impacts which are sensitive to the life of the light source & the used energy source. The average impacts of the transport stage are neglected.