Lighting Here and There

Glossary

B

BSL: Los Angeles Bureau of Street Lighting, a LA City Bureau responsible for the streetlights within the City of Los Angeles.

D

DWP: Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the municipal utility for Los Angeles and surrounding areas. It provides power to the streetlights amongst everything else it supplies, and maintains streetlights of its own, usually installed on its wooden power poles.

F

Fixture: An American term for a streetlighting luminaire, basically, the unit at the top of a streetlight pole.

G

GE: General Electric Company.

GSV: Google Street View.

Gumball: A term used to refer to a particular shape of lens of usually an American streetlighting fixture.

H

High Pressure Sodium: or "HPS". An obsolete type of discharge lamp used in streetlighting. Has a yellow-orange colour.

L

LED: Light Emitting Diode, the newest lighting technology to gain widespread adoption in streetlighting. Most municipality and private lighting systems around the US and the rest of the world, are being converted from older technology to LED. This process started in earnest in the mid 2000s.

Lens: Also Bowl, Refractor. The part of the streetlighting fixture that the light comes out of, this is part of the optical system of the fixture which is designed to direct the light in accordance with the fixture specification.

Loop: Here used in the context of series loop, a collection of adjacent streetlights which can number from a few up to several dozen, connected to a series regulator.

Low Pressure Sodium: or "LPS", "SOX". An obsolete type of discharge lamp used in streetlighting with a characteristic monochromatic yellow colour.

M

Mercury: or "merc", "MV". Mercury vapo(u)r, an obsolete type of discharge lamp once much used in streetlighting. Has a characteristic green-blue hue. Two types mentioned in these pages: Clear (with a clear outer glass) or Coated (with an obscuring phosphor coating).

Metal Halide: or "MH". Another type of discharge lamp, occasioanlly seen in streetlighting. White light, better colour rendering than mercury lamps.

Multiple: Here referring to multiple wiring for streetlights, this method of wiring consists of the streetlights being wired to ordinry line power, usually 120, 240 or 480V.

N

NEMA: National Electrical Manufacturers Association, a U.S. industry group representing those who design and manufacture electrical equipment. They used to publish fixture standards for lighting fixtures whose various parts would be, to a certain extent, interchangeable between different manufacturers.

P

Patrol Map: Referring to the City of Los Angeles, these are the maps used by BSL workers to maintain LA's streetlighting system. They are publicly available at lalights.lacity.org

R

Regulator: A unit, usually installed on a power pole or in a vault under the street, which supplies constant current to a series streetlighting loop.

S

SCE: Southern California Edison, an investor owned utility that serves most of Southern California with electricity.

Series: A type of streetlighting system, where all the lights are wired in electrical series, usually fed with constant current from a series regulator.

T

Teardrop: A term used to refer to a particular shape of lens of usually an American streetlighting fixture.