As the manufacturing and design of LED lights continue to get better, it is finding applications in many areas beyond the houses and industries. There are many countries in the world where LED has replaced most of the traditional incandescent lamps that were used earlier in traffic lights. There are many reasons that make LED best option for traffic signals. Let us look at some of the main advantages of using LED in traffic lights.
1. Provides better visibility:
LED traffic signals easily outperform the traditional traffic signals in terms of performance. Traffic signal using LED provides much better visibility especially when the weather conditions such as rain or dust can make it very hard to get a good sight of the things on the highway. LED lights come with specific divergence angle that provides them better directivity towards the desired direction. Thus, there is no need of reflectors to direct the light downwards. In this way, LED-powered traffic signal lights can deliver better performance with no loss of light due to reflectors. Also, LED lights do not require any colored films to produce the lights of different colors such as red, green, yellow etc. This also saves the loss of energy. Overall, we get high performance with a minimum loss of energy with LED traffic lights.
2. Energy Efficient:
The first thing that impresses everyone about the LED lights is the amount of energy that they consume to give the same output in terms of brightness. If we compare the energy efficiency of an LED traffic light with incandescent bulbs, we find that incandescent bulbs only utilizes about 20% of the supplied energy into visible light whereas the LED lights convert almost the complete energy into the visible light. Normal lamps waste 80% of the energy in the form of heat while LED traffic signals waste less than 5% at the most in the form of heat.
3. Long Life
When the LED lights were introduced for the first time, there were doubts about their stability and long life but now we know for sure that LED lights longer than any other lights. Traffic signal LED lights can survive better in the harsh conditions including the change in temperatures. Thus, they have evolved as the best solution for traffic lighting. LED traffic on an average can last 80,000 hours whereas an incandescent lamp can survive for just 1,000 hours. Even the halogen lights can last for 2,000 hours on an average. Thus, LED traffic lights continue to lead the way by a huge margin when it comes to longevity.