Why can't street lamps use the reflection of mirrors to save electricity?

Street lamps cannot use the reflection of mirrors to save electricity for the following reasons:

First of all, street lamps are designed to provide enough lighting to ensure the safe passage of pedestrians and vehicles at night. Therefore, street lamps need to irradiate light evenly on the road surface to provide sufficient brightness. If you use a mirror to reflect light, it may lead to the dispersion and unevenness of light, thus affecting the lighting effect and increasing the safety risks of pedestrians and vehicles.

Secondly, the design of street lamps needs to consider the refraction and scattering of light. The reflection of a mirror can only change the direction of light, but not the refraction and scattering of light. In the design of street lamps, it is necessary to control the refraction and scattering of light through appropriate lampshades and bulbs to achieve the best lighting effect. If you use a mirror to reflect light, the refraction and scattering of light may be out of control, thus affecting the lighting effect.

In addition, the reflection effect of the mirror will also be affected by environmental factors. For example, mirrors may be affected by pollutants such as dust and rain, resulting in a decrease in reflection effect. Street lamps need to work normally in all kinds of weather conditions, and materials with good weather resistance are needed to ensure the stability of lighting effect.

Finally, the use of specular reflection to save electricity also requires additional equipment and maintenance costs. For example, it is necessary to install and maintain mirror brackets and adjusting devices to ensure the reflection angle and direction of light. These extra equipment and maintenance costs may offset the effect of power saving, which is not cost-effective.

To sum up, although the idea of saving electricity by reflecting the mirror seems feasible, in fact, street lamps are not suitable for saving electricity by reflecting the mirror due to the limitations of lighting effect, refraction and scattering control, environmental factors, additional equipment and maintenance costs.