UFO Style LED High Bay - UL Listed - DLC Qualified for rebates...

UFO Style LED High Bay - UL Listed - DLC Qualified for rebates from your utility company

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/155026701913

All the Major Reasons to Switch to LED Plant Lighting

The demand for lighting for indoor grow operations, LED technology has came in and made some major advancements that make it a near “no brainer” to use the technology over other grow light technologies.

As an indoor grower you need to make not only the best decision for your bottom line, but also for your plants quality and success rates. Both of these areas of concern for any grower can be address and even resolved with the technology we are going to be talking about in this post (LED). From using less wattage for the same amount of light outdoor to targeted wavelengths that allow for most optimal growing conditions for any plants indoors.

Now let’s start off with one of the biggest reasons LED plant light technology is so appealing to growers and why most will make the conversion away from other grow lights like HPS which consume too much energy, output too much heat, and a list of other cons.

Less energy used, yet same light is produced.

LED is infamously known for its ability to less energy all while outputting the same (if not more) amount of light. This is what we call efficiency and it’s making people from every industry consider LED seriously.

Imagine if you converted from HPS to LED, you could realize up to 50 to 75% reduction in energy usage in your plant lighting system alone. This would allow you to expand quicker, realize a greater net profit, and at the end of the day; bring more cash for you or your business. Sounds like a win-win with this benefit itself, but there are many more benefits like you are about to find out…

LED offers a longer lifespan.

How often do you find yourself switching our burnt out and / or no longer working lights? What if you could make the lifespan of your lighting system last 2-3 times longer?

Well, by upgrading to LED away from any other common grow light you can and will realize this increase in lifespan. Not only does this allow you to stop buying replacement lights so often, but it also reduces the amount of time you need to spend maintaining the lighting system which gives you more free time to do other important tasks.

Optimal growing conditions with targeted wavelengths.

LED grow lights offer more and overall better options for targeted wavelengths that match your needs for your growing environment. For any grower, this is highly important as different stages of a plant’s grow cycle call for different wavelengths to provide the most optimal crop. Full spectrum LED grow lights allow you to target very specific wavelengths which other technologies simply don’t and can’t offer. As any grower knows (or should know), this is simply something you cannot ignore if you want to be able to grow the best crop possible. Ignoring so may result in lower quality grows along with missing out on the other benefits LEDs offer (like listed in this post!).

Less heat is produced (near none).

Heat can be a huge issue for a grow operation, really at any scale. Take this for example: an incandescent grow light might produce 75 BTU’s per hour while the equivalent LED plant fixture might be producing only 2.5 BTU an hour. Since heat is often a very common issue for indoor growers, this can be one very highly effective way to reduce heat. In turn, you will also be able to reduce the amount of cooling you put into your operation, which will only reduce your overhead expenses even further.

Closing thoughts

Nearly every point we’ve made on this list has had a win-win situation by making the conversion over to LED plant lighting. The answer is near obvious on which is the superior technology for indoor growing environments.

The one con of LED is the initial cost investment. While they do cost more initially, they are slowly becoming cheaper and cheaper as technology gets more and more popular and advanced. On top of that, the energy saving benefits and quality benefits will produce a positive ROI, which will actually save you more money to go with LED overtime than it would have to choose other technologies

like HPS

. As a grower, you’ve got to always do what’s best for the bottom line all while maintaining the quality in your crop. Thus, LED is the perfect solution for your lighting issues in all aspects.

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/155026609343

Why are Stadiums Converting to an LED Lighting System?

The sports industry on both a national big league and local small high school team level are slowly starting to see the benefits that a lighting system full of LEd technology will bring some major benefit to their fields and place of game. Not only are they doing it for the energy savings, but also the benefits that include a better viewable game; which in turn allows the “fan” to have an overall much better experience at their game of choice.

Not only are stadiums and sport fields saving money by a reduction in energy consumption, but they are also realizing better quality of light benefits, along with a few others.

Let’s now discuss the benefits we talked about more in-depth, along with some of those other benefits that will seriously help you to making the decision on whether or not an upgrade to high mast LEDs is right for your field or not.

Reduces monthly overhead.

If you could reduce your stadiums overhead by up to 75% (associated with your lights), wouldn’t you at the very least look into it? What if LED could do that, and easily? Well, maybe not technically easy in regards to installation, but we are referring to “easy” meaning you can see these cost savings without much work, other than choosing LED in your stadium.

Older technologies which we commonly find in sports arenas include metal halide and high-pressure sodium. Since these are the most commonly found, we often talk about them when we talk about converting to LED at an arena. These are by far the most inefficient luminaires on the market, and by converting to LED high masts in your field, you will surely realize a (up to) 75% less energy usage in regards to your lights. For this reason alone is one of the main factors stadium managers look at and are attracted to when they discover this opportunity.

Lifespans are much longer.

Since high mast lights (the most common fixture at sport events) is so high in the air, it can get pricey to switch out just one burnt out light; let alone 20. Thus, by realizing a greater lifespan and less maintenance required lights by 2-3 or even 4 times longer; you can also realize a reduction in maintenance costs associated with lighting maintenance.

Not only will a longer lifespan reduce the amount of time you need to pay someone to switch out the burnt out bulbs, but it will also reduce the amount of time you need to buy replacement bulbs; which will too cost you most money overtime then it would of been to just invest in an LED sports lighting system to begin with.

Improve your fans experience through better quality illumination.

As a sports host, you must give the best experience to your guests as possible. And although lighting isn’t the only thing you can fix to make the experience that much better for visitors and fans, it surely can help you not only avoid complaints but also make visibility better.

Think, would you rather go to an underlit game where you can’t see as clearly? Or, would you rather for to a game that is bright and everything is visible as if it were day? We think the answer is obvious to that one.

On top of that, technologies such as metal halide (MH) and high-pressure sodium (HPS) are susceptible to flickering and / or buzzing throughout their lifespan. This as you may or may not know, can cause annoyance and even irritability. Flickering and buzzing lights have no place in any application, and especially not where you have a large amount of people gathering to enjoy a game; not experience lights that make the experience near unbearable for some. Thankfully by converting to LED technology you will never face this issue as LEDs are built in a different way which doesn’t allow them to ever flicker or buzz.

Final words

The benefits of creating not only a better experience for visitors but also the massive energy savings that come along with it make this decision a whole lot easier. And although an LED system may cost 50% more initially, it will pay itself back in longer lifespans, less maintenance costs and more importantly, lower energy usage.

Considering the conversion should always include all of the above listed content along with the goals of your organization. Because without fans that always come back for more, your field will be pretty boring.

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/154488131593

The Best Classroom Lighting System Starts with LED

Whether you are a grade school or college campus, the lighting in your buildings (and out) can make a serious effect on your students along with staff.

The effects of a low quality and bad lighting system (technologies like fluorescent, HPS, metal halide), can vary from high energy usage to lower concentration (which will reduce overall grade scores school-wide). These issues, as you can probably already imagine; have no place for a learning environment. This is exactly why an LED lighting system in schools in an absolute must if we want to achieve better efficiency in both energy usage as well as our students ability to learn.

Here are some of the main benefits that LED school lights will bring to your buildings by converting away from those other, lesser quality technologies:

• Reduce your energy consumption by 30% (or more)
• Receive rebates for lower a initial investment
• Indirectly improve concentration and attention
• Save more by retrofittings
• Lower maintenance costs through longer lifespans

Listing things above make the technology of LED seem like near the only lighting technology that you should install into your educational facilities. Although it may be one of those “too good to be true” type facts, it is all true. You can reduce costs related to your lighting system, all while improving your students learning environment.

One thing before we start going each thing a little more in-depth, realizing that while LED’s initial investment is a bit higher than other lighting system; you need to remember the keyword investment. Investing in LED, while it will cost a bit more initially, they will surely pay you back and then some. And will all these rebates and ever decreasing costs in the technology, LEDs are slowly producing even more and more higher ROIs.

Finally, let’s start off with the first one on the list, how LEDs will reduce energy consumption associated with your classroom and school lights...

Reduce your energy consumption by 30% (or more). The most common technology found within educational buildings will be fluorescent tubes. By converting to LED from fluorescent you will be able to realize a 30% reduction in energy consumption. For other lights that use metal halide or HPS technology (often found in gyms and outdoors in parking lots), you may realize up to a 75% reduction, which is some serious savings in energy usage.

This in and of itself is the major reason why businesses and schools are converting over to this technology. By using less energy by 30 to 75 percent, you will be able to realize a return on your investment within a few years, depending on how long each light fixture is on throughout the days.

Receive rebates for lower a initial investment. Receiving rebates on your investment will allow you to get money “off” on your lighting system. The only way to do this is by buying EnergyStar and / or DesignLights Consortium fixtures that have been qualified. This will bring opportunities available to you through your utility company called rebates, which will greatly reduce the costs related to initial investments of your lighting system upgrade.

Indirectly improve concentration and attention. If you’ve ever been around a flickering or buzzing light for even a few minutes, you know it can be extremely annoying.

By having flickering or buzzing lights in your building, your students will be dealing with this issue every single day that they are in school. Imagine what this is doing to your students and their grades?

Fluorescent, metal halide, HPS, and other similar technologies; they are all susceptible to flickering and buzzing. With LED, you will never experience this annoyance. In fact, not even near the end of an LEDs life span will they flicker or buzz. Don’t allow your students grades suffer from a bad lighting system!

Save more by retrofittings. Think about it, does it make more sense to replace an entirely fine light fixture? No it doesn’t, this is why retrofitting is highly popular. You can replace the light source within a perfectly fine light fixture, instead of paying to replace the entire fixture.

This is beneficial in two ways; a retrofit kit is cheaper than an entirely new fixture for starters. Secondly, it is cheaper to retrofit an existing fixture than it is to pay someone to fully replace one.

Thus, if you don’t need to fully replace a fixture; retrofitting will be a cheaper option overall.

Lower maintenance costs through longer lifespans. If you could pay your maintenance team 2-3 times less often to switch out burnt out bulbs, how much money would you save?

Well, you would reduce your maintenance costs associated with your lighting maintenance by 2-3 times, which for schools with a lot of lights (50+), this can prove to bring some major savings.

Since LEDs (on average) last 2-3 times longer, you can easily reduce maintenance costs by 2-3 times through their longer lifespans.

Conclusion

There are just a few of the main reasons that a LED lighting system in an educational environment makes perfect sense. From lower costs to operate and maintain to overall better lighting for learning.

Just remember that the initial investment cost will be a bit more, but the ROI is there and will easily pay itself back, and then some, within a few years.

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/154050911863

The Up Sides of Updating Your Educational Lights to LED

A school is the future in every way. People in school right now will be our future doctors, lawyers, and really every under job title you could possibly think of.

This is why it is crucial for every aspect of the learning environment to be near perfect, for the best possible results.

By converting to LED away from technologies such as fluorescent in our schools, we opt-in for higher grades, better concentration, and ever lower overhead. The types of benefits that we are going to list are beneficial in every aspect of an educational lighting system. If your facility is currently struggling with high overheads, low grades, or both; a conversion to LED technology may be of some great help to all of these issues that can come from our lighting system.

The main benefits we talk about when converting to LED, especially in schools and colleges, include the following:

• LED indirectly improves concentration / focus
• Reduce your energy usage by more than 30%
• Get rebates to reduce costs
• Retrofit vs fully replace
• Longer life spans = lower maintenance costs

The benefits as listed above, even without going over them (which we will do in a minute), prove to very intriguing for any manager of school operations to look into. The benefits seem too good to be true, but they are in fact; true.

Let’s now get into this list of benefits that an upgrade to your educational lighting system to LED could bring to your campus.

LED indirectly improves concentration / focus. Since fluorescent technology is susceptible to flickering and / or buzzing, that means you open up the opportunity for this annoyance to be in your classrooms.

If you’ve ever been under such conditions where the lights are flickering, buzzing, or even both; you know it can seriously take your attention away from tasks at hand.

This is exactly why we think it is unacceptable for fluorescent to be in schools, period. With LED, they will never flicker or buzz, not even near the end of their lifespan. This allows you to reduce the biggest factor of distraction when it comes to a lighting fixture within an educational environment.

Reduce your energy usage by more than 30% (to 75%). Since the most common technology used in schools these days is fluorescent, you will most likely be converting from that technology to LED. By doing so, you can reduce your lighting operation costs (energy usage) by up to 30%. This, although isn’t as much as 75%, can still prove to pay itself back and show an ROI for your investment in LED technology.

Where does “up to 75% reduction in energy usage” come from? From your parking lot and gymnasium. These lights typically use technologies such as metal halide or HPS, and are even MORE inefficient that fluorescent. By converting these types of fixtures over to LED, you can realize up to 75% reduction in energy usage associated with these lights directly.

Get rebates to reduce costs. Only qualified lights that have been tested and passed by Energy Star of DesignLights Consortium are (typically) eligible for rebates. For the most part, the DLC tests and qualifies commercial and industrial lights, where Energy Star focuses on practically everything else.

By getting lights that are qualified by either organization, you open yourself up to some pretty hefty rebates through your utility company. This will allow you to reduce your investment costs, which who wouldn’t like?

Retrofit vs fully replace. Think about this, does it make more sense to replace an entirely good fixture, or just replace the light source within that fixture? Its obvious, yet some people still look into a full replacement even when it is not needed whatsoever.

The only true reason you may want to fully replace your existing fixtures is if they are outdated or falling apart, otherwise retrofitting is the easier and cheaper way to go. By retrofitting vs fully replacing, you can save 50% in costs. This makes it an easy to choice to retrofit your fixtures over fully replacing them.

Longer life spans = lower maintenance costs. LED lights last longer, it’s a fact. Actually, a lot longer. They can last 2-3 times (or more) longer than other technologies.

This not only allows you to reduce costs associated with buying new lights more often, but also reduces the amount of time you must pay for someone to switch out those lights every time they burn out. Imagine a 2-3 time reduction in the amount of money it costs to switch out burnt out lights? This can be a lot, especially for large (or even small) schools with lots of lights.

Wrapping it up

There you have it, all of the major reasons why LED school lighting vs fluorescent school lighting is much smarter to choose LED. To recap, it will reduce overhead, maintenance costs; all while improving your school’s focus and (hopefully) grade improvements.

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/153480663618

What is 'Good' LED Hospital Lighting?

The way hospitals and healthcare facilities are, by nature, is very fragile. It’s a simple concept, and it can’t be ignored; it will always be a fragile environment in a hospital like environment in which patients need tending to.

The importance of the lighting system is often times overlooked as something that could produce not only unsafe environments if handled improperly; but also as a way to improve the bottom line. Both of these things can be addressed and even resolved with a quality hospital lighting system, key thing to remember there is quality.

In effort to help you identify what exactly a qualified LED lighting system is for healthcare facilities, we’ve outlined those identifiers below that you should always be on the lookout for when making a purchase of lighting fixtures for your facility…

Here is what defines a quality LED lighting system for healthcare facilities:

• Exact color temperatures based on a patient needs. With LED, you have a much broader and more exact choice of what color temperature you want to be installed. This gives you the option to meet certain scenarios and situations with the most optimal light for that room and / or area.
• LED technology will never flicker. A flickering light can cause some serious issues, especially in such fragile environments where you’ve got to watch your every move when it comes to your buildings operations. When you have flickering lights, they can cause eye stress, loss of attention, and overall discomfort. These can prove to be dangerous for not only patients directly, but also for doctors and staff. Since LED technology is built in a way that they will never flicker, they are the (for this reason alone) a winner when it comes to a good lighting system for your facilities.
• LED technology will never buzz. This point goes hand in hand with the point above. Buzzing causes people to be annoyed, lack of attention; all of which is no good for these types of environments. Opt-out for buzzing and flickering lights by switching away from technologies like fluorescent and HPS, and convert to LED for no more buzzing lights.
• They don’t contain toxic gases. Seriously, who in their right mind would put a toxic gas into their building in the first place; let alone a hospital? With fluorescent lights, you put your patients and staff at risk because they contain mercury. This is no place for mercury to get started, and it should not be anywhere near a fragile environment such as a hospital.
• Testing and approved by 3rd parties. Within the commercial lighting industry, we have one main organization that tests and either qualifies or doesn’t qualify fixtures based on their quality and efficiency. The DLC (or DesignLights Consortium) qualifies most commercial lights; and you should only be buying these fixtures that are qualified. Otherwise, you won’t truly know what you are in for when you buy and receive your new lights. On top of that, DLC qualified lights (either standard or premium) are typically eligible for rebates. This allows you to reduce your initial cost of investment, and produce a higher ROI

Things that all facilities should consider:

• Buy DLC qualified to get rebates. Like we just talked about, by buying DLC qualified you are eligible for more rebates; more often. This is a huge way to reduce your initial investment all while increasing long (and short) term ROIs.
• Never be cheap. Going cheap and trying to “save a buck” won’t be sustainable in the long run. By going with quality, you will run into a situation where you actually save a LOT more than if you were to cheap out every time it is time to switch out the luminaires in your building. It’s just not worth it.
• Lumens per watt is EVERYTHING. Lumens per watt is the pure definition of what efficiency is when it comes to any light; not just commercial lights. When you search for the higher lumen per watt luminaire, you will find yourself with the most (or close to most) efficient light fixture that you can find. This in turn, allows you to use less watts to produce the same amount of light as a competitive fixture would produce.
• Become educated, it will save you. Being aware of technology and industry terms, knowing what it what when it comes to types of fixtures, and knowing what to look for per se is highly important. Without being aware of what you should be looking for depending on the situation, you may just end up with the wrong fixture, for the wrong application.

Final Words

That about sums it up, we hope this post has brought some awareness to the issue’s that low quality and outdated lighting technology can cause in your buildings.

The simple answer to avoid it all is simple: choose LED. It’s the obvious and easy choice because it will save you money and increase safety for your patients and staff. How can you ask anymore from a lighting system?

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/153128621678

Another successful upgrade to LED High Bays

Another successful upgrade to LED High Bays

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/152742052433