LED Coammercial Lighting – Everything You Need to Know
Commercial lighting can have an impact on many different aspects of a business, from safety to sales. It can also help businesses stand out from the competition.
While many commercial buildings use incandescent, fluorescent or high pressure sodium lighting, there are more energy efficient options available today. These options include LEDs.
LEDs
Using LEDs in your commercial lighting is a great way to improve the overall appearance of your facility while also making it more energy efficient. These bulbs last longer than traditional incandescent or fluorescent lamps, require fewer replacements, and use far less energy.
Another benefit of LEDs is that they are environmentally friendly. LEDs don’t contain any mercury or toxic materials, which reduces the amount of waste and disposal fees your business will have to pay.
They can also come in a variety of colors, including red, green and blue. This means that you can customize your lighting to fit your specific needs and make it feel more personal.
While these lights are more expensive than traditional incandescent and fluorescent fixtures, the savings that they provide more than makes up for their initial cost. In addition, they are extremely energy efficient and can save you up to 80% on your utility bill.
There are several types of LED fixtures to choose from, including recessed, surface mount, and integrated. All of these fixtures are available with a variety of light output options and are rated for a lifespan of 20,000 hours or more.
You can get a fixture with a high CRI (color rendering index) to render colors accurately and increase the brightness of the room. A CRI of 90 is considered to be excellent.
These LEDs also do not heat up like traditional lighting sources, which means they will not damage the ceiling or walls of the space they are installed in. This makes them an ideal choice for illuminating a work area where temperature control is important.
LEDs can also be switched on and off quickly, which is useful for businesses that need their lights to come on immediately after a power outage. This feature is not available with other lighting sources, and can be a huge benefit for a busy business.
Incandescent
Incandescent lights, also called incandescent lamps or light bulbs, are electric lights that contain a wire filament that is heated until it glows. These are the most common type of lamp used in homes and businesses.
They are relatively inexpensive, have good color rendering, and are dimmable. They are also omnidirectional, meaning they produce light in all directions. They have a short lifespan, however, and require frequent replacements.
LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are an alternative to incandescents that have a longer lifespan and are more energy efficient. These bulbs are generally priced higher than incandescents, but they are often more affordable to maintain.
These bulbs are also available in a variety of colors, including white. They have an excellent color rendering index and a warm, natural look.
The newest versions of incandescents are designed to be more energy-efficient and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They can last up to 50,000 hours and cost up to 50 times less to replace than traditional incandescents.
This is a significant improvement over the previous generation of incandescents that typically lasted only about 1,200 hours. This means you can save up to 50 percent on energy costs, which can help you earn more money.
In addition, these bulbs are more environmentally friendly and offer a more natural look than LEDs. They are also a safer option for commercial lighting because they do not emit blue light.
In April of this year, the Department of Energy finalized two rules that will require manufacturers to sell energy-efficient lightbulbs by 2023. These standards will phase out the sale of most standard incandescent lightbulbs and save consumers money on electricity bills. They will also decrease greenhouse gas emissions, saving our planet from more damage.
Fluorescent
Fluorescent lighting is a type of light bulb that relies on a chemical reaction inside of a glass tube to produce light. This reaction involves a mix of gases and mercury vapor and produces an invisible UV light that illuminates the phosphor powder coating the inside of the glass tube, producing white “fluorescent” light.
Fluorescent lights are typically used in commercial lighting applications where there is a need for a long life span and high efficacy. They are also known for being energy efficient and less toxic compared to incandescent lamps.
A fluorescent light consists of two to four tubes that are installed within a fixture. These fixtures are commonly installed in recessed troffer, surface mount, and vapor tight applications.
The wattage and color temperature of these lamps vary widely, but they are all capable of providing the same amount of light (measured in lumens). They can be dimmed with controls, and some LED bulbs can even be dimmable to 10 percent of their full brightness.
While they may seem like an attractive option, fluorescents have some limitations. First, they flicker at the end of their lives and can damage sensitive equipment. Second, they contain mercury, which can be poisonous if inhaled or ingested. Finally, they aren’t as rugged as LEDs and may need replacement more frequently.
Lastly, they require additional accessories to focus the luminous output of the bulb, which can add to the cost and waste a significant amount of luminous energy. These issues are addressed by the introduction of LEDs that are designed to be directional and do not require accessories to direct luminous output.
A great way to save on maintenance costs is by replacing your existing fluorescent tubes with new, high quality LED tubes. They provide the benefits of a brighter, longer lasting lamp and will also reduce your energy consumption and lower your utility bill by up to 75%.
HID
HID lights, also known as high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, produce more visible light per unit of energy than fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. They are commonly used in outdoor lighting, studio and stage lighting, medical lighting, lights for transportation and commercial lighting.
They come in different types: mercury-vapor, low pressure sodium (LPS), high pressure sodium (HPS), metal halide and ceramic discharge metal halide (CMH or CDM). There are many uses for HIDs, but they can be costly to operate.
The oldest type of HID lighting is mercury-vapor lamps, which create an electric arc through vaporized mercury and produce a bluish green light. However, they are being phased out in favor of metal-halide lights. These use metal halides (sodium, indium and thallium) to increase efficiency and improve the light’s color-rendering index (CRI).
While HIDs have been around for centuries, they are not as efficient as LEDs, because they waste a large portion of their energy in the form of heat. Moreover, they emit a lot of radiation in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums.
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Another drawback is the long warm-up time. Once turned on, the light takes time to reach full intensity, as the metallic salts in the bulb evaporate. This can take several seconds to 10 minutes.
Once this happens, the light may begin to fade and change in color. Typically, the beam will shift to blue or violet.
This is due to a phenomenon called “fading” that is caused by the lamp degrading. The fading is often slight at first, but becomes noticeable as the bulb ages and requires extra voltage to maintain its arc.
In addition, HIDs contain toxic material inside them. This is especially true of mercury-vapor lamps, which must be disposed of according to strict regulations.
Gas Discharge
When electricity flows through a gas, it ionizes it and creates light. These gas-discharge lamps have been around for more than a century and are often preferred by commercial space owners who want to reduce their energy costs.
The ionized gas is hermetically sealed inside a special tube, which is surrounded and protected by a bulb. A ballast is also contained within the tube, which controls the lamp’s electrical current and ensures the lamp operates correctly.
Unlike incandescent lamps, gas discharges have negative resistance, meaning that the resistance in the plasma decreases as the flow of current increases. This requires auxiliary electronic equipment, such as ballasts, to control the current and prevent current runaway (arc flash).
In contrast to incandescent lamps, gas discharges generally require a significant amount of time for startup, and for developing their full light output. That is particularly the case for metal halide lamps, which have to reach elevated operating pressures to develop their full luminous flux.
A large number of different gas discharge lamps are suitable for lighting purposes, e.g. those based on noble gases, such as neon or argon. However, some of them can be quite prone to flicker. This can be a problem for advertising installations, where the gas tubes are often bent to form letters and symbols.
Another advantage of gas discharge lamps is that they can be operated with very low current densities, which allows for much lower voltage requirements for triggering and maintaining ionization. As a result, they can be dimmed to a limited extent without any loss of brightness. The luminous efficacy, the watt-hours per joule of light output, varies from lamp to lamp, and also depends on the used gas, but is usually rather high.
