Reducing Energy Consumption of LED Lighting in Tunnels to Become a New Favorite for Energy Saving and Emission Reduction

“70% of energy wasted on lighting in tunnels is not as bright as possible, half as bright as half, and this is a wrong practice...” organized by the Provincial Department of Transport at the traffic energy conservation and emission reduction technology exchange conference held in Lishui, the tunnel The energy consumption “king” of lighting has become the target of public criticism. The former Chief Engineer of Zhongnanshan Tunnel, the first tunnel of China, and the chief engineer of Shanghai Street Lamp Management Center shared their scientific research and practical achievements at the exchange meeting.

Highway tunnels have the advantages of shortening highway mileage, improving transportation efficiency, saving land, and protecting the ecological environment. With the rapid development of highway construction, especially the construction of expressways, the scale and number of tunnel lighting facilities are getting larger and larger, and the problem of tunnel lighting energy consumption is becoming increasingly prominent. For example, in Qinling Zhongnanshan Highway Tunnel, the longest mountainous highway tunnel in China, the monthly electricity bill for lighting reaches more than RMB 1 million.

According to statistics, Zhejiang Communications Investment Group has jurisdiction over 186 existing tunnels (double holes) with a single hole length of 263,141 meters. The lighting consumes a huge amount of electricity each year. The tunnel lighting costs have become a heavy burden in the operation of highway tunnels. The group had made calculations. If the tunnels it manages are all replaced with high-pressure sodium lamps using high-quality LED lamps, they will save about 35 million yuan in electricity bills a year, and the province will estimate more than 40 million yuan.

According to the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Communications Science and Technology, Zhejiang Province is the first province in the national tunnel. Each year, thousands of highway tunnel lightings consume 230 million kWh of electricity. According to Zhejiang’s current per capita electricity consumption of 3,000 degrees, it’s equivalent to The electricity consumption of 40,000 middle-sized towns and towns in one year is equivalent to the consumption of 83,000 tons of standard coal and nearly 220,000 tons of CO2 emissions. The bigger problem is that 70% of energy is wasted on over-lighting. For this reason, how to intelligentize tunnel lighting in order to ensure safety, “energy saving and emission reduction” has become a major research topic.

At the technical exchange meeting, Sun Qingxiang, chief engineer of the former Zhongnanshan Tunnel at the first tunnel in China, and Wang Xiaoming, a special lighting expert from the Ministry of State Housing and Urban-Rural Development, chief engineer of the Shanghai Street Lamp Management Center, combined their own work practices with those from the Zhejiang transportation industry, especially the highway system. Cadres and staff members exchanged information on energy-saving and emission reduction status of tunnel traffic at home and abroad and the development trend of LED energy-saving lighting in the field of traffic and development trends. They exchanged their scientific research achievements and believed that tunnel lighting energy-saving has come The era of the king.

According to Lu Yaozhong, deputy chief engineer of the Provincial Department of Transportation and Communications, who attended the exchange meeting, the state is implementing conservation and development and putting energy conservation at the top of the list. In recent years, the Zhejiang transportation department is no exception. The Provincial Department of Transportation has specially formulated six special actions for energy conservation and emission reduction in five aspects of ecological transportation in Zhejiang Province, and clarified the “12th Five-Year Plan” circular economy energy-saving and emission reduction in Zhejiang Province. Plan the tasks identified. In recent years, the energy consumption of transportation in China has accounted for about 8% of the total energy consumption in the society, while in Zhejiang Province it was 5.85% in 2007 and 6.02% in 2008 and 5.64% in 2009, both far below the national average.

According to the plan's objectives, by 2015, the energy consumption of lighting per kilometer of highway tunnels in Zhejiang Province will be reduced by 15% compared with 2010, saving energy consumption equivalent to 450,000 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 11,000 tons. To this end, the traffic department has also increased the application and promotion of new technologies concerning tunnel lighting.

For example, the “Intelligent Dual-control Highway Tunnel Lighting Energy Saving Control System”, which was led by the provincial and municipal road divisions, has been developed in the practice of the 49 provincial highway Lishui Lengshui Tunnel. The energy saving efficiency of the LED lighting solution has been improved. At over 60%, the economic and social benefits are very obvious. The delegates also visited the work process of the system on site. Its core technology is real-time acquisition of natural light outside the tunnel and traffic flow in the tunnel to adjust the contrast. When there is a car passing through the tunnel, the brightness illumination is matched according to the natural illumination outside the tunnel. When there is no car passing, the minimum brightness setting is adopted. .

In addition, at the technical exchange meeting, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Transportation Sciences and the Lishui Highway Administration also signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two sides will cooperate in jointly establishing a highway inspection and testing center to jointly promote the transformation of scientific research achievements.