The old ones they replaced gave a better more spread out light pattern the LED ones just shine straight down.

That was my impression, they need to be twice as frequent as the ones they replaced, IMO they are about as useful as windmills, and installed for the same reason ie to suit some EU regulation. They definitely are useless in fog.

You say you don't like them yet have them in your house?

What a pathetic response! It rarely gets foggy in my home, absolutely no comparison.

Fine to save a few pounds on ones domestic bill, but not for penny pinching councils to play with both pedestrians and drivers lives in some 'green' wet dream.

As I suspected Brums post below proves my point, not only in fog but night time driving generally.

No, it's not a pathetic post - you said LED lights don't light up the streets well. Be it foggy or not. So wandered why you would have them in your house when you don't find the lighting any good from them. And you said yours didn't last long either so seems a strange ting to buy when you are buyinging them to save money.

The council wants to save money which is why they want to sue the, - it's doesn't have to be a 'green dream' or somethingt o do with the EU.

Anyway I find the LED lights better than the older ones so does come down to what you prfer yourself as well.

One thought: Fundamental LEDs have quite a narrow spectral band of emission: Why don't they just construct the streetlights out of yellow LEDs having a peak very close to that of sodium....?

"White" leds are Gallium nitride devices tweaked to emit in the Blue/UV spectrum, and then coated or placed in close proximity to a phosphor, which converts most of the Blue/UV to "white" light, in effect a solid state flourescent tube..although a large amount of the native Blue/UV still gets out. It would be possible to tailor the phosphor to give a more yellow light put an optical filter on to remove blue/uv, but that would spoil the manufacturers "lumens per watt" claims. Another problem is that leds are in effect point sources and you need many to achieve a useable level of lighting......

Low pressure sodium can still beat leds on efficiency, but they contain some mercury and have lower claimed life than leds so maybe the eu will ban them or something.

Some councils are likely to waste billions on crap leds, thinking they are making savings, before decent street led lighting becomes available, which will probably be a few years away yet. However the budget will have been blown, and you'll have to put up with sub standard lighting for a considerable time, for 25 years if some manufacturers claims can be believed!

Edited by brum on 01/12/2014 at 01:27

Fluorescent tubes' light output drops significantly with age, 'falling off a cliff' at first. I have not noticed this with white LEDs - is this because the fluorescent tube is a hostile plae for the phospor? and LEDs don't get dimmer? or something else?