Exploring the History and Future of Tunnel Lighting

In the early 1990s, there were very few tunnels in China, and tunnel lighting facilities were impossible to talk about. Most tunnels on highways had no lighting or only hung a few street lamps, and the lighting quality was very low. At this time, tunnel lighting only met simple lighting needs.
 
In contemporary times, with the continuous innovation of technology, the development of tunnel lighting has made significant progress. Even in the era of simple lighting, tunnel lighting sources have undergone a development process from incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps, high-pressure mercury lamps, low-pressure sodium lamps, and high-pressure sodium lamps. The light source of tunnel lighting is constantly breaking through in terms of light efficiency, luminous flux, lifespan, light color, and color rendering, creating a better tunnel lighting environment.
 
The era of intelligent tunnel lighting
 
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the development of LED lighting technology has become increasingly strong, and LED lighting has gradually occupied most of the market for tunnel lighting. LED light sources have the characteristics of high luminous efficiency, high color rendering coefficient, long lifespan, high efficiency and energy saving, and ultra-low power consumption. LED lights also have a perfect dimming function, which can change the level of tunnel lighting at any time according to factors such as day, night, and traffic volume. By integrating network technologies such as WiFi and ZigBee, LED lamps have ushered in the era of intelligent lighting for tunnel lighting.
 
In 2007, the domestic LED road and tunnel lighting market began to take shape. In the first five years, due to many manufacturers neglecting the heat dissipation problem of LED lighting, the failure rate of LED road, tunnel and other lighting projects reached over 90%, misleading the public opinion that LED lighting technology was "not mature enough and needs to wait and see the development trend". But at the same time, Shanghai Sansi has developed 148 LED road and tunnel lighting projects with its own unique heat dissipation and lighting layout technologies, and all 250000 high-power LED lamps provided are running stably. Among them, the first LED tunnel lighting project in China, the Jiangxi Jingying Expressway Tunnel LED Lighting Project, was rated as an energy-saving and emission reduction demonstration project by the Ministry of Transport; The project that also uses Shanghai Sansi LED lighting fixtures - Fujian Nanhui Expressway Tunnel - has been rated as a national demonstration project for LED lighting in highway tunnels by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Transport.

The intelligent control system for tunnel lighting can not only adopt a reasonable distribution of tunnel lighting illuminance according to the lighting needs of different road sections, but also support multiple intelligent dimming methods. For example, as tunnel lighting lamps, the brightness of the lamps near the entrance and exit should be closer to the normal outdoor brightness, gradually decreasing from both ends to the middle to reduce the "black hole and white hole effects" and improve driving safety; At the same time, it can automatically adjust the brightness to the appropriate position according to the time period, season, weather and other conditions. The lighting system is equipped with different scene modes to achieve intelligent management and ensure traffic safety. In this regard, the Shaanxi Zha Xiao Tunnel Intelligent Lighting Project undertaken by Shanghai Sansi has been rated as a national demonstration project.