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by graeme 2878 days ago
They don’t necessarily have the same spectrum. Not an expert, but my conclusion from the little I looked into this is that lighting is hard. And decision makers don’t seem to consider externalities.
1 comments

The Sodium Lamps normally used in Street Lighting have a very very narrow colorband (their color index is basically 0, if you look at something under sodium light, it's colorless other than the sodium yellow).

LEDs can be more easily adjusted and can have a wider color band plus you can use multiple modules and change color as needed (blue light in early evening when rush traffic is on and then going into narrowband sodium yellow for the night). It's a question of power delivery and PCB complexity that limits what you can do (controlling a high powered 50W LED isn't trivial)