Outdoor lighting – Ivins Night Sky

Talking about color temperature raises everyone’s temperature

Should Ivins increase the permitted color temperature for outdoor lights from 2200K for city streetlights, city bollards, and new commercial and 2700K for new residential properties to 4000K for everything? Should Ivins treat all new commercial, new residential, and city streetlights the same or set separate color temperatures for each of these three uses: streetlights and bollards, new commercial properties, and new residential?

People opposed to colder, whiter 4000K lights express concerns about glare and harshness. People opposed to the warmer light from 2000K – 2700K lights express concerns about safety. Safety is important. But a discussion about safety should be based on standards rather than arbitrary opinions. Research by Kathy Barth shows that Ivins is not less safe than other areas.

What does color temperature look like in real life?

We used a professional spectrometer to measure the color temperature of commercial lights in Ivins so we can visualize what the numbers “look like” in real life. I won’t bore you with the dozens of readings we took from around the city.

Instead, an easy side-by-side comparison of the two extremes is Rocky Vista University and the Crimson Cliffs Student Housing next door. Rocky Vista University’s parking lot lights are 4000K LEDs but have amber filters which lowers the color temperature to approximately 2200K. The Crimson Cliffs Student Housing parking lot lights are unfiltered 4000K LEDs.

Amber filters used in Ivins City streetlights and bollards and installed at Rocky Vista University

Other commercial properties have lights near 2200K even though they were added when 4000K was allowed. And others have 4000K lights, which were allowed when they were put in and continue to be allowed, or grandfathered, regardless of changes to the Lighting Ordinance.

50 years of peace and then…

Everything was fine in Ivins for decades. Problems started appearing about four years ago.

1970 – 2017: High-pressure sodium (HPS) lights were used for streetlights and parking lots. Their color temperature is approximately 1900K.
2017: Ivins started replacing HPS streetlights with 4000K LEDs. The Lighting Ordinance permitted color temperatures up to 4000K. There were a lot of complaints. Solution: The City added amber filters, reducing the color temperature to approximately 2200K.
2019: Rocky Vista University had 4000K parking lot lights. Neighbors complained about the harsh white light and glare. Solution: The University approved adding filters, paid for and installed by local residents, reducing the color temperature to about 2200K.
2019: Because of the problems encountered in the prior couple of years, the City changed the Lighting Ordinance, lowering outdoor lighting color temperatures, for new construction only, to 2200K for commercial and 2700K for residential properties.

Placement versus intensity

When the filters were added at Rocky Vista University, a couple of areas were not illuminated ideally. But these same areas were a problem before adding the filters because pole placement was not ideal. Determining appropriate placement for lighting is just as important for ensuring safety, if not more so. So maybe the safety issue is really about the proper placement of lighting rather than the intensification of light.

So what’s the big deal?

Ivins is blessed to have Red Mountain block light from any source along its entire northern border. Increasing the color temperature to 4000K interferes with the beautiful dark skies we have now. Past installations of 4000K lights resulted in an outcry to lower the harsh, glaring white light. Why repeat past mistakes?

The population of Ivins doubled since 2000 and is expected to double again in just over 20 years. What will our night sky look like with twice the light pollution we have today? Will there be nothing left to see for our children to be inspired by, marvel at, and cherish? Will the wonderment of the night sky be just a distant faded memory for those of us who were once lucky enough to gaze upon it? We can’t let that become our fate.

Shedding light on crime trends in Ivins

This is a summary of research conducted in January By Ivins resident Kathy Barth based on FBI and Utah BCI statistics, which was a recommendation by Police Captain Rogers. The data source combines Ivins and Santa Clara. St George data is presented for comparison (see note at bottom).

The Planning Commission appears to assume that more lighting and whiter lighting (higher color temperatures) reduces crime and increases safety. Based on that assumption, St George should have lower per capita crime rates because they likely have more lighting and certainly have higher color temperature lighting than the Ivins streetlights and bollards.

That is not the case. Santa Clara/Ivins has significantly less crime, even adjusting for population. The statistics do not support the assumption that more and/or whiter lighting increases safety.

Captain Rogers ran a report of the times of calls. It groups “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” calls with “I’ve just been robbed” calls and “My home/equipment have been damaged” calls. Crime data alone wasn’t available.

The graph shows twice as many incidents during daylight compared to after dark. This also does not support the assumption that more and/or whiter lighting increases safety.

What’s the real issue?

Recent public comments expressed a desire for more lighting, so Kathy drove around the city. Some city streets appear to have fewer streetlights than others. So, the real issue may not be as simple as just more and whiter, but where.

A review of street lighting placement in the city would determine if there are areas where more streetlights and/or bollards may be appropriate and desired by the residents in those locations.

Notes: Additional information available: Data by type of crime; Incidents by hour and by day of week. Captain Rogers said it would take months to gather/collate that data for Ivins only.

Rocky Vista University installs anti-glare shields and blue light filters

We just installed anti-glare shields and blue light filters on 8 parking lot lights at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

This demonstration project is a study the University is conducting, sponsored by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative, to see if the shields and filters can be effectively retrofitted into existing lighting to reduce glare and blue light emissions while meeting the university’s need to provide nighttime safety for their students.

Glare

The City has long required outdoor lighting to be fully shielded, meaning light fixtures can’t aim light up into the sky. But even fully shielded fixtures send light out horizontally as well as down. That not only wastes light by sending it where it isn’t needed, it creates a glare problem.

Our technical Committee came up with a way to reduce glare significantly while still providing adequate lighting where it’s needed; on the ground.

This is a screenshot of one of the Technical Committee’s analysis to determine the appropriate design for an anti-glare shield

The new anti-glare shield (top) mounted to one of the University’s fixtures

Blue light

LED lighting is quickly replacing High Pressure Sodium lights and other older technologies because LEDs are so much more energy efficient. You can easily spot the difference. The older technologies produce a softer, warmer, more comfortable light compared to the bright white light from LEDs. That’s because LEDs emit a lot of blue light while the older technologies emit very little, if any blue light.

Blue light rays have short wavelengths just above ultraviolet light. We’ve known for a long time that ultraviolet light can be harmful. It can burn. That’s why we wear sunscreen. We’re learning that too much blue light can also be harmful.

The blue part of the light spectrum is responsible for creating most of the glare we see. Glare constricts your pupils, diminishing your eyes’ ability to adapt to low-light conditions, like nighttime.
Scientists are just beginning to understand the negative impacts on health, including blue light’s contribution to cardiovascular disease, sleep, metabolic and immunological disorders, obesity, cancer, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and more.
And blue light is disruptive to plants, animals, crop pollination, and on and on.

Blue light filters

Ivins City has found a way to use LED technology but take out most of the blue light. That eliminates the added health and safety risks from LEDs compared to older technologies and results in a warmer, more pleasing light.

The University’s study will help others determine the feasibility of retrofitting their own lighting to reduce blue light and glare. It will also help the city in its efforts to get designated as a Dark Sky Community by the International Dark Sky Association.

Summer isn’t stopping the Technical Committee

Our Technical Committee isn’t letting summer get in the way of having fun in shop working on projects. Last month the Committee started working on ideas for incorporating shielding and filters in existing lighting fixtures.

In the past couple of weeks they have started to turn their ideas into reality, buying a contemporary outdoor lighting fixture to dissect and test their ideas.

Technical Committee members transform their ideas from paper to reality and started testing a variety of shielding options this week on an actual outdoor lighting fixture on Tuesday.

Wilson Jimenez set up a portable light pole yesterday for testing the Technical Committee’s work. Here City staff help Wilson with position the pole, now mounted with the lighting fixture and the first filter test.

Testing shield angles
A mock-up shield and filter
Technical Committee in the shop
Tim measuring illuminance from mock-up shield and filter design

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect the night skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

A simple solution to uplighting

Jack, an Ivins resident attended a presentation by the Ivins Night Sky Initiative at Red Mountain Resort in April and was energized by what he learned about the problems created by unnecessary light pollution.

Artificial light at night not only impairs our view of the night sky, it adversely affects our environment, our safety, energy consumption, and our health.

So, Jack went home and modified his outdoor sconces on his house.

The wall sconces on the outside of his house, like so many others, aimed light both up and down. When he built the home there wasn’t an uplighting restriction for this type of lighting.

They did not shine light out horizontally, so they did not affect the neighbors, but the uplighting created unnecessary skyglow.

Jack’s simple solution was to put a Dixie cup inside the sconce on top of the light source, blocking the uplighting completely. Problem solved. So now there’s an alternate story to explain why this area is called “Dixie.”

But wait, there’s more. Now all the light was directed down with none of it wasted. Plus, the white interior of the Dixie cup made the downlighting even brighter… too bright.

So, Jack replaced the 40-watt equivalent LEDs with 25-watt equivalent LEDs in all his sconces. That reduced his lumen output by almost 40%. Granted, these sconces don’t consume a lot of energy. This change saves Jack about $30 to $40 a year. It’s not a lot, but every bit helps.

If you have you made changes to your own outdoor lighting to make it more “night sky friendly” we would like to know about it. Send us your story.

Red Mountain Resort takes action

Red Mountain Resort has been a supporter of our Initiative from the start and provides us with meeting rooms and audio visual equipment for our educational events.

Tracey Welsh, the Resort’s General Manager, recently commented about our Initiative, saying, “We’re pretty excited to be a part of this.” Excited enough that she has asked us to analyze their outdoor lighting to find out if it is as “night sky friendly” as they have always intended it to be.

Nathan Dupre, a member of our Technical Committee, has just finished design of a workbook with help from some committee members that will let us do this analysis for the Resort. We have taken a lot of photos, some spectrometer readings, and counted fixtures. The next step is to get some lighting specifications and do the analysis.

We will update this blog post when the analysis is completed.

More light doesn’t mean more safe

This is one of seven excerpts from a presentation by Marc Deshowitz, Preserving one of our most precious resources… the night sky. This video dispels the commonly held belief that more light means more safety, not only through practical examples but also from actual research.

We will post another video excerpt from Marc’s presentation soon. Here are the titles of the seven video excerpts:

Are we losing our heritage of dark skies?
The hidden danger in white light: Blue
More light doesn’t mean more safe
How light pollution increases air pollutione
Outdoor lighting harms nature and crops
Simple outdoor retrofit examples
What you can do to improve outdoor lighting

Let us know if this Initiative is important to you, if you are willing to get involved, and what else you think we should be doing to improve, preserve, and protect dark skies in Ivins. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Preserving One of Our Most Precious Resources… Our Night Sky

Updated with information about the evening’s topics and directions.

Please join us on April 24th, from 7pm to 9pm at Red Mountain Resort for a free, fascinating presentation, “Preserving one of our most precious resources… our night sky.”

Would you like to know how you can help preserve the night sky? Then join us for this presentation on the importance of the night sky to people throughout history, and the causes, impacts, and solutions to light pollution.

Do you remember the first time you saw the Milky Way?

Did you know over 80% of the people in our country can no longer see the Milky Way from where they live?

Did you know the increased and widespread use of artificial light at night is not only impairing our view of the universe, it is adversely affecting our environment, our safety, our energy consumption and our health?

Do you want to know how you can help preserve the Ivins night sky?

Topics

A personal light pollution journey to the dark side
A dialogue about our heritage
What is light pollution, air pollution, sky glow, clutter…
Health concerns – birds, bees, trees, and people
Safety – home security and driving
The collateral impact of neighboring communities
What does night sky compliant lighting look like or not
Economic incentives
Some inexpensive or free solutions
What you can do

Please join us for this FREE, fascinating presentation on the causes, impacts, and solutions to light pollution

For more information, or to RSVP, please Contact Us

Red Mountain Resort Conference Center

The conference center is next to the Resort’s Canyon Breeze restaurant.

Featured speaker: Marc Deshowitz

Marc is a native of the Boston area. Upon completion of his undergraduate and graduate studies in Geology, he went to work in the energy sector for 30+ years.

Marc and his wife Chrystal retired in 2008 and are currently employed by Dixie Road Scholar where they jointly lead educational excursions across the Colorado Plateau and beyond.

Marc’s interest in preserving our night sky has led him to perform independent research on light pollution and he has experience in the design and implementation of light retrofitting projects in our area. He has provided presentations and advice on night sky preservation at local and state levels in both Utah and Nevada.

LED Lighting: Good News Today But…

Dr. Bob Adams, with C&W Energy Solutions, has been advising us on outdoor lighting issues. He will be in Ivins next week to meet with us, Mayor Hart, and City staff to discuss issues we should consider as we work on revisions to the City’s existing Outdoor Lighting Ordinance.

Blue Light Impairs Vision & Safety

Here is a 37 minute video of a presentation Dr. Adams gave a couple of years ago. If you don’t have time to watch it all, fast forward to the 14:00 minute mark and watch for 60 seconds.

Glare & Age

Do you have a couple more minutes? Fast forward to 18:00 minutes and watch until 20:30 minutes.

About Dr. Bob Adams

C&W Energy Solutions was formed in 2011 as a spin off from Chips and Wafers, Inc. (C&W), a company established by Dr. Robert Adams, PhD. in 1982. After graduating from Brown University, Dr. Adams joined Texas Instruments and then Motorola where he was involved in R&D for new LED and microwave devices.

C&W focuses on night friendly / environmentally friendly LED technology for street lighting and other outdoor applications. The company website: www.cwenergyusa.com

Taking the City’s Color Temperature

The City recently installed some outdoor LED lighting with a color temperature of 3,000k. That meets the minimum requirement of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), but it is still a pretty bright white light compared to High Pressure Sodium lighting, because of the amount of blue light generated.

We talked about the problems blue light creates in earlier blog posts. So the City took an extra step by putting an amber lens over the LED. (see our March 5th post, “Changing Light With an Amber Lens.”

The lens creates a warmer yellow to orange light, essentially turning the LED into a “filtered” LED (FLED).

We wanted to see how effective the amber lens is at reducing blue light. That’s the part of the light spectrum that creates problems. So, Nathan Dupre and Paul Andrews spent a few nights collecting, among other things, the color temperature of lights around Ivins, with and without the amber lens. Then Nathan downloaded the results and analyzed them. Here’s a look at some of his findings.

The charts below show that the amber lens almost completely eliminates the blue portion of the spectrum and most of the green as well for all types of lighting. Eliminating blue goes a long way towards reducing glare and creates a warmer, healthier, more comfortable light.

High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lights have very little blue in their spectrum, even without the amber lens. The color temperature of the HPS lights Nathan measured were around 1,800k. Adding the amber lens didn’t do much, because there is so little blue in the spectrum anyway. For example, one light he tested dropped from 1,800k to 1,630k when the amber lens was used.

This warm light has been a common outdoor lighting source for decades. But because they are much less energy efficient than LEDs, they are gradually being phased out all around the country. The result is that the warm outdoor lighting we have been used to seeing for decades is being replaced by colder, whiter LEDs that create all kinds of problems.

Although LEDs are much more energy efficient, that benefit comes at a cost. They pump out a lot of blue light. Lower color temperatures generate less blue, but all “untreated” LEDs produce blue light. The LED in the chart above has a color temperature of close to 4,000k. When you add the amber lens the temperature drops to just 1,800k.

The addition of the amber lens creates a warmer light with less glare and virtually eliminates harmful blue light. That sounds terrific, so what’s the catch?

An Illuminating Study

In addition to measuring the color temperature of city lighting, Nathan also measured the illumination of the lights, with and without the amber lens. He found that adding the lens to High Pressure Sodium lights did not reduce illumination very much because this light doesn’t have much blue in its spectrum to begin with. So although the amber lens does not reduce illumination very much, there’s really no added value from using the lens because there’s not much blue light to deal with.

But LEDs are a different matter. They have a lot of blue light which the amber lens eliminates. The lens we were using also eliminates a lot of the green portion of the spectrum. The result is the amber lens cuts illumination almost in half.

Using a lens to modify the color temperature of LEDs and reduce blue light is a good solution and a worthy goal. We’ve just started to research the illumination issue, but it appears it is possible to filter the LED to achieve that goal but maintain 80% to 90% of the illumination. That would be ideal.

We plan to run some tests on possible solutions in the next week and will let you know what we find. Nathan’s research turned up some other important information. We will share these issues later this week in another posting.

Join us

We have lot more research planned, so if you would like to join our Technical Committee we would appreciate the extra brainpower. Just send us an email from the Contact Us page.