I've been using this trick for some time, mostly to see the changes in my locations. Whether I lived or stayed there, visited briefly, or know about some fantasy location, I can use google "streeview" to see street-light changes that have occurred since around 2009, sometimes to 2007.
Here's an example of a new LED light I photographed while driving back from my cabin in November 2019:
And here's the Google streetview just 7 months earlier:
I can clearly see, via the tags, the watts & the make for each on my large jpgs or bmps, therefore, I can figure out the lumens and spill for each head. For the new LED head (on top), the label shows it's a LEOTEK GreenCobra Jr. model GCJ1-20H-MV-WW-2R-GY-700.., with 46 system watts. The initial lumens is approximately 6900 Lm while the WW on the model number indicates it's Warm White @3000°K.
The old cobra head appears to be a GE model (unimportant), the lamp inside was an HPS (high-pressure sodium) and the watts were 150. The initial lumens for these lamps is known to be 14,400 to 16,000 lumens. Assuming the lamp was old and it was inside an inefficient fixture, lets say that about 8000 mean lumens were distributed, about 5-10% of which was shining directly into the sky.
So there was a drop of about 1100 lumens with no direct up-light when the spanking new LED Green Cobra Jr. was installed. More importantly, the consumption went from about 195 watts to 46 watts!
It only recently dawned on me that everyone in this sub-forum should be doing this. For whatever desired reason, you can "see" the current & past NEMA lables/tags on street-lights on your very own street. This works perfectly for North American views of public streets, and it might also work for other continents (as labels were uncommon). Additionally, there are many streetviews for private mall lots, private business perimeters and floodlights, with heads close enough to a google camera to discearn a label.
Some key things to understand...As described in this thread, knowing the watts (label number) and type (label color) of the street-light, you can directly determine:
- The brightness of the head, i.e. the initial and mean lumens when the type of lamp is known.
- The spectral output of the heads.
- Exactly what happened..Did the actual mean lumens go up, down or was it unchanged?
This will save you a lot of aggravation, as well as consternation from a municipal/county official or utility spokesperson if you start complaining about your new LED street-lights. It's possible that the lumens increased, but now you can prove it. However, for public street-lights, most of what I've seen, the new LED lumens went down.
The procedure is simple:
Google your address, open up the map and full-screen it (press the F11 key).
Hover over the stick figure on the lower right. A pop up will show "Browse Street View images". Click on the stick figure to see all available (blued) routes.
Click on any point on the blue lines. Your screen changes to the latest available street view. Initially it'll be a medium-wide view.
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