Category: LED's
Outdoor LED Display – See it in Action!
UPDATED!! New fixtures added!
One of the fastest growing LED markets is in the Outdoor area. We’ve discussed in earlier posts how the indoor LED products are starting to come around, but for the most part, numbers don’t add up. Well in outdoor situations the numbers are a no-brainer! The hardest part about understanding LED is actually seeing it live and in person. We can tell you how a 20w LED fixture will replace a 100 watt High pressure Sodium fixture, but wouldn’t it be nice to actually see it person??? We thought so. So we built a board of LED fixtures to do just that.
Listed from Top Left being #1, to bottom right being #12. Here’s what we have:
1) RAB Lighting’s – 91 Watt Area Light. This fixture is perfect for parking lot lighting and walkway lighting throughout a facility’s property.
2) RAB Lighting’s – 13 Watt Flood/Spot Light. This fixture is perfect for lighting up a flag pole or any outdoor sign.
3) Lithonia Lighting’s – 35 Watt Wall Pack. This general purpose wall pack has an excellent beam pattern and is able to replace up to 175w Metal Halide Wall Pack fixtures.
4) Juno Lighting’s – 50 Watt Decorative Wall Pack – Polaris wall pack designed for higher end architectural look. Ultra efficient LED Fixture with a nice look to match.
5) RAB Lighting’s – 52 Watt Wall Pack – Designed to replace up to a 250w HPS / Metal Halide Wall Pack
6) RAB Lighting’s – 78 Watt Flood Light – Designed to Replace 250w to 320w Metal Halide Flood Lights. Perfect for lighting up the side of building.
7) Lithonia Lighting’s – OLW14 – 26w LED Wall Pack – Ideal above man doors on your building!
8) Lithonia Lighting’s – OLAW – 35w LED Wall/Area Light. Perfect Dusk to Dawn Fixture Replacement
9) Lithonia Lightins’s – OLW – 35w LED Wall Pack – For larger HID Replacement applications
10) RAB Lighting’s – 13w Wall Pack – Designed to replace 50w-70w HID Wall pack, above man doors.
11) RAB Lighting’s – 20w Wall Pack – Designed to replace 70w-100w HID Wall Pack
12) RAB Lighting’s – 26w Wall Pack – Designed to replace 150w HID Wall Pack
One of great features of our display is the nLight Touchpad Control. Thanks to our friends from SensorSwitch, we are able to individually control each light on the board to easily compare like fixtures. The wiring is all done over Cat5 cable, making it easy and cheap to install. This switch will individually control 16 different channels. And it looks cool to boot!
- Here’s what the inner workings look like from the back.
We’re excited to show our display to anyone who would like to see the latest and greatest in LED Fixtures on display. Stop by if you’re in town.
Questions? Comments?
Brian Huff
Adventure Lighting
515.288.0444
The New LED’s Are Here! The New LED’s Are Here! :)
This post is going to be short and sweet – THE NEW LIGHTS ARE IN! THE NEW LIGHTS ARE IN!
Okay, so I get excited about silly things – that’s what my wife has been telling me for many years lol.
But of course any of us in the light industry will get as excited as a kid on Christmas when new things come out, especially when we get our hands on them. And nothing right now is more exciting than LED technology.
I’ve posted earlier stuff on LED Refrigeration products – but today we received something just as cool: new Par30 and Par38 LED’s.
Yeah, like I said, it probably doesn’t exactly have the high-tech buzz of “Ipad.” But let me tell you, these amazing lights from Philips are awe-inspiring, just the same. In fact, there isn’t a company in the world that has spent more money on research and development in LED lighting than the good folks at Philips Lighting.
As good as these lights are, they’re going to get even better. The Par Lamps we received today aren’t dimmable – but the next generation will be. And while there are a lot of dimmable products out there today, I trust that Philips would have bought it by now, if they thought it was viable. They haven’t, and my money is with them – figuratively and literally.
These lights are beefy and provide excellent light output. So if you’d like to see them in action, stop on out and we’ll show ’em off to you – or give us a call and we’ll bring these amazing lights out to you and put them through their paces, so you can see them in action for yourself.
Meantime, I’m going to play with them – isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with cool toys at Christmas? 🙂
Jack Huff, along with his son Brian and wife Sue, owns and manages Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, go to www.adventurelighting.com
LED Linear Light Replacement – Hype Vs. Fact
I always want to pass along great information, even if I didn’t think of it.
For what I”m about to share with you, I’ll gladly pass credit on to Jim Brodrick, Lighting Program Manager for the U.S. Department Of Energy. Jim probably knows more about LED technology than any other person in the world. So when he says something on the subject, we in the light business treat him like the old E. F. Hutton commercials – when he talks, we listen.
One of the things Jim has been talking about recently is LED linear light replacement, and in particular, research done through the U.S. Government’s Caliper program, which analyzes the latest and greatest lights to hit the market, to see if they live up to their marketing hype. What he’s uncovered through the testing, is something that all of us in the industry, should know.
One Caliper report that Jim shared from last year, showed that LED linear replacement lamps may not be ready to replace T12 and T8 fluorescents.
“LED technology is not yet ready to displace linear fluorescent lamps as replacement light sources in recessed troffers for general interior lighting.”
I’m no word smith but I get the drift – we probably need to pull back a bit before we anoint LED as the greatest thing since sliced bread, at least in its current form, as applied to replacing office fluorescents.
Some of the problems included:
1. CALiPER found that the light output from LED replacement lamps only amounted to half, at most of fluorescent it was supposed to replace. Their lower than expected light output, performance and efficiency meant that testers had to add extra lights, in order to maintain standard fluorescent output. Which kinda screws up the whole idea of using them.
2. Another problem the Caliper testing uncovered, says Jim, is that troffers fitted with LED replacement lamps had “narrower light distribution, which could compromise illumination uniformity and vertical illumination in existing installations.”
3. The news gets worse – further testing in three of the four LED’s required bypassing the fluorescent ballast. If you’re retrofitting, that means more labor, higher cost and more of a pain in the ballast. Efficiency was also diminished, wattage became uncertain, lighting colors became too cool to match other lights – you can see where Jim is going with this.
More testing last year pretty much verified the earlier research. Light output in the LED replacement lamps performed below the T8’s and T12’s they were replacing, at almost every benchmark – output, efficiency, color, additional labor you name it.
And then there’s the additional cost. We all know that LED replacement lamps are expensive – they average upwards of $100, even $150, compared to the miserly $3 T8 standard fluorescent. And, as the report noted, nobody knows how these LED’s hold up, long-term, because there ISN’T any long-term – they haven’t been out long enough. Whatever the lights are promising in terms of lifetime usage hours – I’ve seen some at over 50,000 hours – that’s nothing but an educated guess by the manufactures.
Of course the other issue revealed by the testing is that the fluorescents themselves have their own sets of problems. Low temperatures negatively affect their performance. There’s the mercury issue, although Philips has done a fantastic job of reducing it, by over 30% compared to competitors bulbs, in most cases. The report is highly critical of manufacturer’s over-hyped claims on their products – as if this is anything new to us who distribute them. T8 technology still is one hell of a light!
As for LED’s – if they live up to the hype, great, we’ll be on the front lines, singing their praises to our contractor clients. But for now we’ll hang onto our incredibly efficient stringently tested high performing T8’s – unless and until the truly “next best thing” comes along.
Jack Huff, along with his son Brian and wife Sue, owns and manages Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, go to www.adventurelighting.com
LED Freezer Lights – Hot Topic, Cool Look
LED lighting has been a hot topic lately, particularly when it comes to their application as freezer lighting for grocery and convenience stores.
For every day lighting use, the superior LED technology hasn’t quite pushed aside the CFL or even the creaky incandescent. (Stay tuned – it’s coming in the next few months.) For now, consider its use in temperature controlled food displays, the LED’s first shot over the CFL’s bow.
In fact, LED has already begun pushing aside typical fluorescents in grocery store freezer lighting and with good reason – the advantages are just too numerous for store owners to ignore.
The average reach-in cooler at a store is lit with a 58 watt fluorescent light bulb. Replacing that bulb with a LED strip specially designed for that application, uses only 30 watts of energy. The difference, shown below, is striking:
As you can see, not only is there significant energy savings to be found in terms of the energy used by LED’s vs. fluorescents, but an extra benefit comes from the LED’s expelling less heat, therefore the coolers don’t have to work so hard.
Here are before and after pictures of a typical commercial cooler – with standard fluorescents, and using new LED technology.
But if you’re not a store owner, you may be asking the obvious – “What’s in it for me?” Unfortunately, there may not be much. Certainly by reducing the cost of doing business for store owners via lower energy costs, it can help reduce costs for the average consumer – if owners choose to pass along those savings to their customers.
Okay, not likely. What IS of benefit to consumers is being able to count on meats and other foods lasting longer while in freezers and coolers. This is because there is significantly less heat, and NO UV light ruining food while it’s in the freezers or meat cases. Ultimately, then, LED’s are a win-win for both owners and the customers who visit their stores.
LED lighting is on the horizon and coming quickly. We think that in the next 3 years every grocery store and convenience store will be equiped with this cutting edge technology. So the next time you’re strolling through your local grocery store, take a look and see if you notice any changes taking place in the way food is displayed in the freezer case. It could be the brand new LED, an incredible advance in lighting technology that’s going to change how we light everything.
Jack Huff, along with his son Brian and wife Sue, owns and manages Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, go to www.adventurelighting.com
Countering The Rap That LED’s Aren’t So Hot
LED’s have been taking a bum rap recently and we want to set the record straight.
Unlike CFL’s or incandescents, LED, or Light Emitting Diode, create light by running a current through a small computer chip which then emits light. There’s no gas, no mercury, no moving parts – making it one of the most energy efficient and durable lights in the world.
That incredible energy efficiency, however, has LED to some problems. (excuse the pun) In Des Moines and other cold weather cities, incandescent traffic lights are being replaced with high energy efficient LED’s, which are 90% more energy efficient and can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for cash-strapped cities. The downside is the very advantage that LED’s have – they produce far less heat than their predecessors, which allows snow and ice to build up, particularly during this record breaking winter. That has created visibility issues for drivers and headaches for the city road crews who have to clear the snow and ice by hand.
Truth be told, on the coldest, snowiest, windiest days, no traffic light – incandescent, LED or burning caveman torch – can keep up with the snow and ice. Otherwise there are solutions. Plastic covers can be placed over the lights, or they can be coated with a special moisture repellent substance. Airports usually add heating elements to their energy efficient LED’s and still see dramatic savings.
But many businesses also use the cooler running characteristic of LED’s and CFL’s to their advantage.
Adventure Lighting is currently retrofitting the cooler lights – literally the lights in the coolers, where beverages are kept cold – at all Short Stop Convenience Store locations, as well as other businesses where refrigerated products require display lighting. These new energy efficient LED’s produce 60% energy savings by themselves, plus their lower operating temperature means refrigeration units don’t have to work as hard. That energy saving one-two punch is great news for business owners looking to pinch every penny in this economy.
This type of savings also holds true for businesses where there are lots of lights in general – replacing wasteful incandescents with more energy efficient, cooler running CFL’s means lower lighting costs year-round plus lower cooling costs in the summer. There’s also a safety factor for residential customers who switch to CFL’s – they generate less heat which means they won’t burn your kids’ (or your) hands or create the high heat of incandescents that can, and do, ignite nearby cloth and other combustibles.
And while we probably wouldn’t mind a little extra heat from our lights during this coldest of winters, think about it this way – you can put your hands around an old 100 watt incandescent bulb to stay warm, or you can replace it with an energy efficient CFL and use the money you’ll be saving to pay for turning up the furnace a bit. Or to buy extra fire wood for your fireplace. Or an extra blanket. 🙂
Jack Huff, along with his son Brian and wife Sue, owns and manages Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, go to www.adventurelighting.com
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