Oops. It appears that old fashioned, power-hungry incandescent lights have one major advantage over LEDs – they get hot enough to melt snow. Unfortunately, cold weather cities are discovering this glaring oversight the hard way.
Obviously, if the lights are not melting snow, motorists are going to have trouble seeing the signals after a storm. So far, this problem has resulted in dozens of accidents and at least one death. Solutions are being tested in several states that range from weather shields to heating elements to water-repellent coatings. In the meantime, city crews must continue to stay on top of the problem and dust off the lights by hand. [Yahoo]
LEDchic
Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 4:05 AMSnowfall can be an issue for all types of light bulbs. Incandescent bulbs could not heat the lenses either… in this case. The benefits are far too important to ignore.
For more information on LED lighting, please visit
http://www.LEDchic.com
Save the planet…. one LED at a time!
LucasF
Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 12:25 PMTouche! Agree 100%. Putting heating elements in billions of traffic lights would obviously reverse a lot of the energy saving benefit of using LED lights. But as this very web site has sort of alluded to just this week….I am sure you could coat the lights in water repelling carbon nanotubes and the snow would just slip straight off. Far more efficient than heating the lights.