Could LED Street Lights Drown Out Ham Radio Signals?

By Peg Quann | Bucks County Courier Times

When he decided to become a ham radio operator, Charles Dillenbeck, of Bristol Township, went all out for his new hobby.

He purchased the Cadillac of radios — an $8,000 model that allows him to chat for a few hours every night with amateur radio enthusiasts around the world. Five antennae surround his house.

Then one night this spring, the static he normally heard on different frequencies became much louder, so loud he could barely hear the the people with whom he was chatting.

“I can get rid of the noise (by turning down the volume), but then I wouldn’t hear anything at all,” he explained.

A few days later, as Dillenbeck — a Navy veteran and retired commercial heating and refrigeration engineer — stared out a window in his home trying to figure out the problem, the street light came on. Immediately, the static started again. Was it the light, he wondered.

It turns out Bristol Township installed a new LED fixture in the light in front of his house as part of its plan to replace incandescent street lights with cost-saving LED bulbs.

“The old lights didn’t interfere at all,” Dillenbeck said. He talked with another ham radio enthusiast who lives in the township who also had the same problem. He used a “noise finder” piece of equipment to test other street lights. The same static occurred, he said.

The electronics in the new lights appeared to be causing the static.

A recent report supports his theory. LED lights and other electronic equipment are creating more radio frequency interference for the more than 725,000 amateur — or ham — radio operators in the United States, according to the report issued in June by the American Radio Relay League, a national association for amateur radio users.

And the problem could affect emergency communication centers, because LED lighting is gaining popularity since the federal Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 required more energy efficient lighting equipment. National Public Safety Telecommunications Council statistics show that LED lights, which can use 75 percent less energy and last 35 to 50 percent longer than incandescent bulbs, are expected to account for 52 percent of lighting used commercially by 2021…. READ FULL ARTICLE