First time I've seen this (Patreon)

Unusual street light failure

I've never seen this happen before. The aluminium core LED panel has actually delaminated. I don't know the full history of this light as it was sold as untested, although a flex had been Wago'd onto the original wire stubs! So hopefully it wasn't powered up with a saturated electronic driver. As supplied it was covered in mud and had water in the LED section, suggesting it had been stood vertically outdoors for a while, with the pole port up. It's possible that the standing water and a number of freezing cycles caused progressive delamination, and the submersion may also have resulted in humidity ingress to the LEDs too. So I don't know if the light was retired due to LED failure or if that happened in outside storage. It's not old, so it must have been removed for a reason. If you work with these lights (Urbis Schreder Axia 2) then let me know if you have had issues with them. As is unfortunately often the case with modern LED street lights, the power supply is massively complex and it's a toss up whether the LED panel or driver will be the first bit to fail. It was particularly disappointing that the stainless steel screws in the aluminium housing had seized, and two sheared off while trying to unscrew them. In real life that would result in those screws being left out, resulting in an impaired waterproof seal. Seized screws in outdoor lights is not a new thing. I've had to dispose of fixtures where the same situation occurred and it was impossible to even change the metal halide lamp in them. At this point in time the street lighting industry is making shameless landfill in the form of low serviceability lights installed en-masse by crash certified labour. The mass retrofitting of traditional sodium street lights is very lucrative because they can be sold at a very high price with the suspicious promise of long service life, and councils are not noted for efficient financial decisions. At this point in time a traditional sodium street light has a typical lamp lifespan of around 8 years, and when it fails a new £10 lamp can just be screwed into the existing fixture, with a replacement ignitor costing little more if it needs changed too. The power consumption of LED fixtures is lower for a similar light level, but the cost savings are soon compromised by the ridiculous cost of having to replace the entire LED fixture. In the future I'd like to see a system for LED street lighting that uses standardised modules that can be replaced safely in situ. At this point the intriguing DOB (driver on board) system made by INDO Lighting is a step in the right direction. Especially with it's lack of electrolytic capacitors, which are a common point of failure. Now about that "crash certified labour". In the UK, a company that represents the interests of street lighting contractors is offering a one day slideshow style course with an "open book" test (the answers are literally in front of you when you do the test). A half day version is also offered with no test, but an attendance certificate. Although the small-print implies that the slideshow is not intended to replace formal electrical training, it is being used by some companies as the ONLY electrical training other than "on job experience". That would be fine if the workers were ONLY swapping bulbs or complete heads with a simple wire swap. But when faults arise then the workers are literally working with live electrical equipment in one of the worst electrical environments possible - live electrical equipment with no RCD/GFCI safety net, and wet and very well grounded surroundings in tight metal enclosures where you often have to kneel on wet ground to work on them. Some of the supplies are also taken directly from extremely high current cables feeding an entire neighbourhood with the next fuse in line being at the local substation. So misuse of wire in place of a blown HRC fuse can literally have explosive consequences. It follows that there have been electrical accidents including death, shock and serious burns when mistakes have been made due to lack of formal electrical training. This has been made much worse by the increasing use of lone-working. (Just one person working on their own.) That slideshow is often referred to as "The street lighting ticket". But in reality it's little more than a liability transfer document to place the blame on the worker for their own injury or that of a member of the public. As the HSE (UK OSHA) likes to say - "death by misadventure". If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- https://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.