Disadvantage Of Street Light

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

It has been few decades since the existence of street light in urban areas. The first modern street light was implemented in Austrian Empire in 1853. The Austrian street lights were powered by the use of kerosene. However, carbon arc lights were introduced to replace kerosene street lights due to the risk of using kerosene. As in 1880, defective kerosene street lights caused nearly two of every five fires in New York City. Carbon arc light composes two carbon-made electrodes and alternating current is used to ensure consumption of both electrodes is in equal rates. It was the first widely-used type of electric street lighting. The title of ‘First City of Light’ was given to Tamworth, New South Wales in Australia due to the first location to implement the arc lights as the city’s street lights in 1888. Although the emergence of arc light as street light prevents the use of kerosene, it has its disadvantages. Most notably is the rapid consumption of carbon rods that causes heavily use of human resource as technicians have to replace the carbon rods after a short period of time, making it not user-friendly. The invention of incandescent light bulb replaced the use of arc light as street lighting. By heating the filament wire to a very high temperature with electric current passing through it, incandescent light bulb produces light without using carbon electrodes. This solved the rapid electrode consumption of arc light. However due to efficiency issue