Nota de Prensa
27/01/2022
As a good friend of mine says, “Public lighting is an orphan” — nobody remembers it until the streetlight above our heads stops working or, even worse, when tragedy strikes.
That’s when concern begins for what we can see. But the real question is: what happens, and who cares about what we don’t see in public lighting?
The growing activity in the sector shows that the market has reached maturity. The IDAE subsidies through FEDER funds and the dozens of ESE projects undertaken during this legislature are clear indicators that, for many municipalities, public lighting has become a tangible reality rather than just a political goal.
This has brought not only economic relief to strained municipal budgets but also greater visual comfort in our streets at night.
Media outlets frequently publish articles about the importance of light pollution.
There is no doubt that we face an alarming situation — one that must be taken seriously when designing the lighting systems of our cities.
At EnergyTAS, we place the highest importance on sustainability and minimizing light pollution, but without losing sight of the real need of our lighting systems: to provide proper illumination and ensure safety.
We also see articles referring to the technical requirements for LED luminaires.
The effort made by the Spanish Lighting Committee (CEI) deserves recognition — they have developed a valuable tool that allows engineering firms to design lighting projects independently from manufacturers, maintaining technical autonomy.
These requirements help remove low-quality luminaires and unreliable projects from the market — products that once tarnished our professional work.
There are numerous articles about projects that experiment with color-changing lighting in certain areas, or different optical technologies to achieve better results, and countless reports from manufacturers proudly showing off their best installations.
Personally, what worries me — and alarms me — is how little is said about SAFETY.
And yes, I say it in capital letters. Because it’s not only about road safety or proper lighting levels (although even Google now offers a feature to highlight which areas of a city are well-lit at night — unbelievable!), but about TOTAL SAFETY in public lighting.
After more than 20 years of experience in the lighting sector, I can say that today the market is mature and LED technology is here to stay.
But my question is: what about the safety we don’t see?
More than 40% of the control panels audited daily by our field teams are in poor condition, with a high level of obsolescence, representing a clear lack of safety that seems to go unnoticed.
We still find electrical components as old as the lighting systems themselves — in some municipalities in northern Spain, control boxes still contain antique fire ampoules.
I invite all municipal technicians and local authorities responsible for these systems to spend just one hour searching online for “electrical failures in public lighting”.
Some will be shocked to find that “this looks just like ours.”
Articles such as the one published in ABC(3) reported the death of a poor animal that went out to the park with its owner and, after urinating on a streetlight, was electrocuted, resulting in the municipality of Pobla de Farls being sentenced to pay €7,585.
Surely, many of you — when speaking with municipal technicians, councillors, or mayors — have heard complaints about dogs urinating at the base of streetlights. These complaints are almost always about cleanliness or aesthetics, but rarely, if ever, about the safety hazard this poses to the installation and, consequently, to the residents.
It’s not just about animals — the deaths of people have also occurred, such as the one I had the misfortune of personally witnessing: the case of the little girl in Santiago de Compostela, who was electrocuted while playing during a festival night due to the lack of safety protections, with chilling headlines in some of the reports.
Perhaps the most striking was that of Vozpópuli, since it reflected the reality of a widespread problem across Spain: “A girl dies in Santiago after being electrocuted when leaning on a lamppost” — chilling indeed.
Everyone in the sector remembers this incident, and it must remain present whenever a new project is undertaken. This tragedy should never happen again, under any circumstances.
Here, I would like to note — for the public employees reading these reflections — that the case ended with the indictment of the municipal technician of Santiago de Compostela, as stated in the attached article(4), where the forensic police reported the lack of grounding in the luminaire.
The question is: was no one aware of this?
Almost half of the thousands of public lighting control panels analyzed by my colleagues over the past few years are in a poor — not to say deplorable — condition, with serious safety deficiencies.
The reality is that we have laws and regulations to comply with, and their enforcement must be demanded. Incidents like the one in Santiago de Compostela must never happen again.
It is still permitted for anyone to access and manipulate a lighting control panel, using it for all sorts of purposes besides powering the lighting system itself.
Two years in prison was the sentence given to an electrician working for a municipality in the Balearic Islands, according to report(5). In that case, some fairground workers connected their caravan to a lighting installation facilitated by the city council through its electrician, leading to the death of one of them on a rainy day.
How were the protections?
Why was a lighting control panel — which should serve only one purpose, to supply energy to public lighting — used for other ends?
Lighting panels where birds build their nests and rodents take shelter from the rain without paying municipal taxes.
Across the hundreds of audits I have carried out in different municipalities throughout the country, the lack of safety has been evident, and many technicians admit they are aware of it.
It’s even worse in small municipalities that don’t have a municipal technician — where the councillor or mayor acts as a lighting technician, unaware of the seriousness of the situation or the implications of their actions.
“The court found proven that the municipal employee in charge of the town’s electrical installations knew that the lamppost was giving electric shocks and was in poor condition. Despite this, he took no measures to prevent or eliminate the electric shocks.”(6)
To the technicians reading this article: know that the judge’s sentence acquitted the mayor but condemned the municipal technician to two years in prison.
Inaction leads to these outcomes.
The same report cites that industry inspectors carried out an inspection and stated the following:
“Two engineers from the Department of Industry who inspected the public lighting in Bunyola after the accident testified in court that all the lampposts along the promenade where the event occurred were unprotected due to a faulty main control panel. According to one of the expert witnesses, the installation feeding power to the circuit meant that ‘all the lampposts connected to this panel were without protection…”
Porque me gustaría destacar, que no solo es la precariedad en los centros de mando, la extiendo a las líneas y a las protecciones en las luminarias.
Detectamos diariamente en nuestras actuaciones a pie de campo, multitud de empalmes en luminarias no reglamentarios, empalmes en la propia línea con cinta aislante, eso sí, de color para no perder el control de la fase y un largo etc, que me atrevo a decir que es vergonzoso y poco profesional.
I have thousands of photos and videos of public lighting control panels in deplorable condition, where not only do rodents live openly, but birds build nests — even with chicks — and lizards get electrocuted after entering through exposed openings.
There are videos showing panels tied with ropes or makeshift fastenings, obviously non-certified.
This leads us to only one conclusion: maintenance plans are nonexistent, and actions are always corrective, never preventive, resulting in the consequences detailed in the previously mentioned reports.
I hope this note serves as a reflection. Of course, what is visible matters, such as road safety, but in many cases, what is not seen is the most important.
Lighting levels must be well defined and controlled, “but before installing a luminaire, one must ensure the safety of the control panels and their protections” — this is how we prevent liability, if not tragedy.
It’s not only people and animals who die — surely the technicians involved in those reports also died a little inside, regretting not having acted sooner.
Projects must be comprehensive — starting from the control panel, continuing through the installation and the luminaire, and ending with the light itself.
Each element must be analyzed and certified according to legislation.
If there is no budget for such a complete intervention, then divide the system by control panels and act one by one as a first step.
Those subsidies granted solely for the purchase of LED lamps should have a prior condition: safety.
Changing bulbs alone is bread for today and hunger for tomorrow, since without addressing safety, not even the promised energy savings are truly achieved.
We should not wait for a judge to seal off an installation(7).
If there is a safety issue, it must be resolved immediately — and if it means turning off part of the public lighting while it is fixed, explain it to residents and act at once.