Discussion on energy saving of highway tunnel lighting

1 Introduction

As of 2010, there were 7384 road tunnels and 5,212,600 meters (shown in Figure 1), of which 265 were special length tunnels, 1.138 million meters, 1218 long tunnels, and 2.0208 million meters. As a major energy consumer, road tunnels have been highly valued by relevant administrative agencies, operating companies, research institutes and social organizations [1 ~ 3]. Through joint technical research, demonstration project construction and application of results, China The key technologies for road tunnel lighting energy-saving complete sets [4 ~ 7] have been basically mastered, and outstanding contributions have been made to the transportation energy-saving and emission reduction undertakings. However, from the practical situation, the development of “green lighting” work in highway tunnels is still unbalanced, and there are still many deep problems and weak links. Energy saving of highway tunnel lighting is a systematic project. Based on the investigation and analysis of the serious reasons for the energy consumption of highway tunnel lighting, this paper analyzes the necessary links of highway tunnel lighting energy conservation from the macro level, and proposes structural, technical and management energy-saving measures. It provides a useful reference for promoting the energy-saving development of highway tunnel lighting.

2 Causes of serious energy consumption in road tunnel lighting

Through the investigation and study on the operation and management of highway tunnels [8], the outstanding problem is that the highway tunnel lighting system is “affordable and unaffordable”. The operating expenses and maintenance expenses of the highway tunnel lighting system have become a heavy burden on the management company. . The reasons for the serious energy consumption of highway tunnel lighting in China are as follows:

1) Highway tunnel lighting system design exceeds the standard

Its main form of expression is that the actual lighting brightness of highway tunnels is much higher than the brightness of operational demand, resulting in the road tunnel lighting system being too large and the power is seriously wasted. This is mainly because the designer fails to understand and strictly implement the requirements of the specification [9]. The value of the basic parameters is too conservative, and the innovation of the design scheme is neglected, which makes it too modular and cannot be “tuned for tunneling”.

2) Road tunnel lighting control method is backward

Since the influence of traffic volume changes on the lighting requirements of highway tunnels is not considered, the brightness of each lighting segment of a large number of highway tunnels cannot be adjusted according to the state of traffic volume, resulting in unnecessary waste of electrical energy. Many medium and short tunnels often have only one or two lighting control modes, which not only cause serious energy consumption, but also have certain safety hazards [3 ~ 5].

3) The road tunnel lighting energy saving concept is incorrect

Road tunnel lighting energy saving is not simply to switch some lights, but to establish the maximum energy saving based on driving safety, that is, road tunnel lighting energy saving can not be at the expense of traffic safety. Some managers are blindly pursuing energy saving and saving money, which makes the highway tunnel lighting control scheme arbitrarily and subjective. This practice ignores the characteristics and essence of highway tunnel lighting and is extremely harmful to traffic safety [6]. In addition, in order to control the maintenance and repair costs, the management company can not clean and replace the lighting fixtures in time, resulting in reduced efficiency and increased energy consumption of the road tunnel lighting system.

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