Interesting reading… also gives a 4-page Table of where/how/who … (Particuliers are shown on page 4)
In our commune, we had a vote on turning the public lighting off between 12pm and 6am. Nearly 80% of the people who voted were in favour and so it was implemented. One week later the decision was reversed because one person (who we found out didn’t bother to vote) complained. Not very democratic. I hope it will be reinstated due to these stated aims.
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It’s a fine line… meeting economy and safety… perhaps the majority can be turned off… this time… certainly worth asking about…
Not impossible to achieve though given the technology available. For example; Why not fit street lamps with movement detectors so that folks can walk safely after dark without there being constant illumination when it isn’t needed.
Some villages in our area now have solar powered LED street lamps whereby each lamp has its own panel on the top of the pole so that there is no drain whatsoever on the general electricity system.
We have some entirely solar powered exterior lighting that comes on at 30% power from dusk to dawn, and then goes up to 100% intensity when movement is detected. They give enough light to be able to see where you are going to, and then as you get there, there is plenty of light to be able to see what you are doing to find the right door key on the bunch.
A lot of energy can be conserved if folks would just stop and think about their usage. I mean the bar / restaurant across the street from us has interior lighting on 24/7 as well as the VMC. This is also the case during their closed days, and also when they are closed for 3 weeks for annual holidays. Daft thing is that turning those lights off would also benefit their finances.
I think the slogan should be; Cut waste and cut your bill.
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What annoys me is the industrial zones all lit up at night especially car dealers and brico shops. Who needs to go window shopping for a new Mercedes at midnight? Also office blocks lit up like xmas trees.
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The new guidelines/rules are quite clearly targetting dealers/shops/offices etc… it all makes sense… and fines will be issued for those who insist on wasting resources…
hoping we can all be less-annoyed in future… 
Less or no street lights in tiny villages like ours with no-one at all out at night makes huge sense. The rash of new lighting started probably 10 years ago and has got much worse. The night sky should become more visible. Better for astronomers, astrophotographers and very good for animals too. Leds are a mixed blessing…
Which fits me perfectly . I do astrophotography from my back garden. Fortunately, there are only two street lights nearby and I’ve been able to arranged the mount so that they are both behind two houses, so I’m in shadow.
Not sure if your links explain it, but the reason LED lights are bad for astronomy are that they are ‘broad spectrum’ lights that output at a very broad range of frequencies. Sodium, mercury and other lights give out light in very narrow frequency bands and you can buy special filters that remove the light from these narrow bands.
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useful explanation… as our commune are turning to LED’s… sounds as if we must ensure they continue switching-off minimum of 2/3 after midnight…
cheers
It’s likely to be to make entering without being seen more difficult. Burglary etc would be helped by keeping retail and industrial areas dark.
Ours has already converted to LED but being edge of village I’m lucky that they don’t cause more of a problem for me.
My old commune put the lights out in winter at 10pm and on at 6.30am for the Lycée kids to start their journey, didn’t even put any on inthe summer and it was good, so much sky to watch and no glare anywhere. On his first visit to us, my BIL couldn’t see his hands in the dark whilst going for a last stroll and ended up miles away, we had to go and fetch him and still rib him now about how he got lost inthe dark not being used to complete blackness.
The few lights we have in the town/village go off before 10 - must be around 9:30. Unfortunately that is exactly when we come out of choir practice and makes getting back to the car extremely hazardous if (as usual) I have forgotten a torch…
The other thing that I’m finding interesting/difficult about all this is that, being in a minority I suppose, we don’t yet have “central heating” so can’t turn any thermostats down or change from gas to something else. Mercifully, bois de chauffage hasn’t gone up hugely this year so that’s fine but our electricity bill is always big, even though we may be living with multiple layers of jumpers on plus thermal socks etc. I wonder how many other people are like us 
If you have a mobile phone with you,they usually have a torch light on the back.
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Yes indeed! Guess who hardly ever remembers to carry her mobile phone? 
I was using my stoneage mobile, as a torch, 'cos the lights went out before we’d finished clearing away after a village “do”…
Sadly, it kept switching-off… which had us in fits as we were counting money and tickets… 
I have one of those mobiles too! Since I don’t need it at choir, or most other places, I’ve taken to keeping a small torch in my handbag, along with the tooklkit and kitchen sink and other essential items but it got too heavy so I had a sort-out
I also don’t have central heating. My house was my holiday home before moving permanently, so mainly used in Summer and the milder weather months. I use a combination of the wood stove, localised petrole heaters and I also have a couple of the reversible units, but I did try to rely just on the wood stove, bolstered periodically (mainly morning and evening) by the petrole heaters. I would say that it worked out to be ok generally, but certainly not as simple as controlled central heating.
Over the Summer, I must admit, heating was the last thing on my mind, but as the season rapidly starts to change, it’s starting to move closer and closer to the front of my mind! I’m not sure what the ideal solution is long term, as like many others, I want to have a solution that optimises cost and efficiency. Still pondering, but I can see that very soon it’ll be getting chilly and I’ll be repeating the same MO as last year, that I vowed I wouldn’t be repeating for this year! Fortunately though, start of last year I ordered a large quantity of firewood.
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we’ll be better organized for next year’s summer season… Hi-Dee-Hi!! 
Just the same here, @letsmile !I don’t have the petrole heaters since I react badly to the fumes and the house is quite damp enough without them. By reverible units do you mean air source heat pumps? We’ve looked at those but they would be very difficult to fit to our house. We have small electric panel heaters on the walls upstairs. I think there may be many of us in this sort of situation. Last winter seemed to last forever so we have gone berserk with insulation but it’s certainly not enough on its own.