Every year, about 4 millions of traffic lights consume about 3 billion kilowatt hours of the power or electricity. Huge consumption has resulted in endangering of available energy resources across the world. Hence, most of the traffic control departments, officers and authorities have started switching to LED traffic light systems, which are of energy-efficient lighting sources play big roles in reducing municipal budget and in reduction of nationwide energy consumption.
If you look over the scenario in different regions and cities of United States, you will find about 50 percent of traffic signals have undergone conversion to Light Emitting Diodes. Even one would observe this type of scenario in few big cities of United States, like Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Seattle and San Diego.
Light emitting diode is a small size semiconductor that emits lights whenever any electric current goes from it. Bulbs and lighting systems powered by LEDs do not have any filament. LED traffic signals utilize LEDs of very high brightness and connect them together to create a cluster that comprises of about hundred LEDs.
LED lights produce light of only desired colors, like green, yellow or red, which make them ideal solutions to use as traffic signals. In this case, individuals do not require filtration of the light by using lenses. In this way, such lighting systems produce true colors with highest possible efficiency and cause less possible wastage of heat energy.
One more noticing fact about traffic signal lights powered by LED is that they consume approximately 10 percent of the total energy consumed by any traditional incandescent bulbs or lamps. For instance, LED lights are able to consume only 10 watts to 25 watts than incandescent bulbs, which are able to consume 150 watts.
Moreover, traffic signal LED systems give benefits during harsh weather conditions, as light emitted from LED bulbs distribute equally across the complete surface. LED lamps usually last for about 100,000 hours, which is about 50 times higher as compared to any of the incandescent bulbs working only for 2 hours. Reason for this is that such lamps and bulbs do not have any filament for burning out.
Decrease in various projects related to emergency replacements also result in reduction of maintenance costs and thereby allow, staffs to dedicate more hours for accomplishment of several other projects. Last, but not the least, LEDs play major role in boosting traffic safety via reduction of signal outages and strong battery backup.