# Parking Lot LED Retro



## five.five-six (Apr 9, 2013)

IBTLED




(In Before The Light Emitting Decorations) comments


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## Bootss (Dec 30, 2011)

All the lot LED retros I've seen look like there's less light.


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## GEORGE D (Apr 2, 2009)

Really? That blows, I thought for sure they'd be brighter.


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## RFguy (Sep 11, 2013)

I think we still have a few years to go before we see the proper balance of energy cost savings (light output per watt) and up front cost.

I've been underwhelmed when I've compared the lumens of a MH against LED.

This article has an interesting graph showing the improvements in efficiency over the last several years.

http://cree.com/News-and-Events/Cree-News/Press-Releases/2014/March/300LPW-LED-barrier


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## Vintage Sounds (Oct 23, 2009)

GEORGE D said:


> Really? That blows, I thought for sure they'd be brighter.


The ones I've seen have been brighter. Most of the time when you replace old metal halide lights the lamps have been in service for a while and are not as bright as when they were brand new, especially if they're probe start metal halide.

There is also the induction option but I've never seen one personally.


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## five.five-six (Apr 9, 2013)




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## Southeast Power (Jan 18, 2009)

GEORGE D said:


> Anyone have any experience, perhaps resources, for this application? I have a customer (restaurant) with what I believe is 400 watt MH shoeboxes, and needs more lighting. I told him we could possibly go LED, using brighter fixtures, and maybe adding a few in the darker areas using trimounts/quad-mounts. My supplier basically just sent me a bunch of links to different companies sites, and thats just unnecessary homework for this guy. Was hoping someone had some good info on this...


I've used some 150 watt LED floods that are just as good as MH. That's about the end of what can be done in a practical way as far as I know.


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## GEORGE D (Apr 2, 2009)

jrannis said:


> I've used some 150 watt LED floods that are just as good as MH. That's about the end of what can be done in a practical way as far as I know.


I've done the same thing with 144 watt LED floods, I had to get creative to add them to existing fiberglass poles, using large muffler clamps and things. It worked out, which that was going to be my next recommendation to customer .


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## Electric_Light (Apr 6, 2010)

five.five-six said:


>


This must be from an induction vendor. I agree and disagree. Look at OSRAM Sylvania Icetron material and you will find that they don't all have the same lumen maintenance. 

It comes down to how hard the lamp is driven. 32W T8 lamps have such a good lumen maintenance, because they're ran very lightly. Lightly driven induction would be the same, but the ones that driven hard lose lumen quite severely. (watts per internal square inches) 

You guys would not expect to hear from me, but LEDs can actually work good for outdoor lighting. A mock up is highly recommended. Get one fixture to the intended height and power it off of an extension cord and evaluate side by side with existing fixtures for glare at night as you drive around in the parking lot in a car.


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## five.five-six (Apr 9, 2013)

Electric_Light said:


> This must be from an induction vendor. I agree and disagree. Look at OSRAM Sylvania Icetron material and you will find that they don't all have the same lumen maintenance. .


I grew live corral for years under halides. Generally you change those halide lamps within 5,000 hours. The reason being that the corral adapt to the diminished light output and if you wait much longer than that you run the very real possibility of killing a lot of your corral with what amounts to sunburn when you change lamps. 

You are right though, various lamps roll off at various rates. I used to spend the big bucks for aqualine buschke lamps and they lasted a bit longer. I have been out of the hobby for a while, but it seems the lighting has been overtaken by LED. Hallids still have their fallowing because the single point source of light recreates a more realistic "shimmer" from surface agitation and better UV output from MH, but the cost savings from LED is hard to overcome. Not replacing lamps every year, less heat exportation costs and lower electric costs are convincing arguments for LED.


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## Electric_Light (Apr 6, 2010)

five.five-six said:


> I grew live corral for years under halides. Generally you change those halide lamps within 5,000 hours. The reason being that the corral adapt to the diminished light output and if you wait much longer than that you run the very real possibility of killing a lot of your corral with what amounts to sunburn when you change lamps.


Keep in mind that MH lamps generally run on a coil and core ballast and many of them are not CWA type. Electronically ballasted ceramic metal halide last considerably longer with some having life rating of around 30,000 hours.Some CMH electronic ballasts stay on cruise control in a way very similar to N80 LE Decoration degradation compensation 

Electronic HID ballasts, LED drivers and induction have a power supply very much like a computer power supply. They're not as resilient as coil and core especially in hostile environment. You'll find quite a few hobbyist grower/aquarium HID ballasts, but not for general lighting, because they're too unreliable. 



> You are right though, various lamps roll off at various rates. I used to spend the big bucks for aqualine buschke lamps and they lasted a bit longer.


This is for some of the Sylvania induction systems: They're only showing the wattages with the better maintenance. The other wattages do not fair as well. You'll see that it's not as good as the graph you shared and I tend to believe Sylvania, Philips, GE, etc over "newshinygimmickyproduct dot com" page which are generally just conveyor of China sourced lamps. 













> I have been out of the hobby for a while, but it seems the lighting has been overtaken by LED. Hallids still have their fallowing because the single point source of light recreates a more realistic "shimmer" from surface agitation and better UV output from MH, but the cost savings from LED is hard to overcome. Not replacing lamps every year, less heat exportation costs and lower electric costs are convincing arguments for LED.


But you left out T5HO (PL-L 55W or 54W T5HO) which generally have better lumen maintenance than LEDs and the optics can achieve >90%. The biggest challenge in common HIDs is the fixture optical efficiency. LEDs can be made to look good when you're simply comparing a ~60% efficient fixture vs LED with no contestants, but once the cutting edge fluorescent are included, LEDs struggle to stay competitively priced if they were to provide the same performance and durability.


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## Boltelectric (Apr 5, 2013)

The method of calculating luminous output from Lamps assumes zero light reflection. In reality depending on the surface color different amounts of light may be reflected resulting in different brightness. If yellow colored light illuminates a green colored object for example all the light will be absorbed and the object will appear black in color. If the green object is placed on a black surface – it will not be visible at all!

In practice a green object – grass for example consists of several pigments – chlorophyll, carotenoids and xanthophylls etc and reflects a small amount of yellow light and appears grayish in color. This is one of the reasons why a very high luminous output is needed when LPS lamps are used for street light applications as these lamps produce only one color of the light spectrum. LED street lights on the other hand have a fuller spectrum. The color differences between objects are therefore highlighted, contributing to contrast and resulting in a perception of better visual acuity greater feeling of safety with far fewer Lumens. Then there is the concept of scotopic lumens explained elsewhere on this website which results in better performance of high CRI lights due to the response of the rod cells of the eye. The net result is that far fewer lumens are needed to illuminate an area.

The S/ P ratio is critical in the determination of pupil lumens. The S/ P ratio for HPS lamps is 0.62 while that for LED lamps is 1.9. Using the formula﻿


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## ElectricalDesignerIA (Mar 17, 2015)

Lithonia had a retrofit kit for their KAD series showboxes that are everywhere. I think it's a fairly new product. There is some money to be made here. 

http://www.lithonia.com/commercial/kadrd-led.html#.VR79m_nF-kE



edit: I didn't really read the whole thread and not sure if I am offering anything.


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