I think I've put photos of lit examples in Preston into the first post of the North West discussion thread... from what I remember, the Stelas pretty much do beam straight down!Yep as somebody now living in an area which is gradually becoming overrun with these LED vermin, I can confirm that there is not exactly a good spread of light from them. Interesting to note in that WRTL news story there is only a 'before' picture of the road's lighting. That's probably because the road is lit nowhere near as well now. The light output from the Stela reminds me of the light output from an old top-entry mercury lantern, like a Beta 4 for example, where the lamp was beginning to fail and was dim and didn't cast it's light far
The Bedfordshire Highways Electrical and Lighting Manager who designed the lighting scheme, said: “If successful, we will replace Central Bedfordshire’s 21,000 traditional street lights with Stela LED luminaires. Upon completion of this programme we hope to also transfer Bedford Borough Council’s 20,000 units over to Stela LED street lights.” If Bedfordshire really do replace all their lighting with Stelas it's going to be one dim county! But wait, some of those '21,000 traditional streetlights' must be on Group A roads, right? They're seriously not going to replace Group A lanterns with Stelas? That bit can't be true, unless the figure quoted is for Group B lanterns only? In any case, they're certainly braver than Lancashire CC who so far have just used Stelas on footpaths and quiet cul-de-sacs (usually on modern 'Cheshire Plan' type estates) rather than on any type of Group B through road. Rightly so too. I think 70w MH Vectras are the next big thing for Lancs' side roads from a couple of casual replacements I've recently seen and hopefully this will be the case as Stelas simply aren't good enough yet. Come back with your LED lanterns in 10 years WRTL, when hopefully the technology will have matured to a sufficient standard.