Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Doug Hammel]

Our church house/sanctuary lights are nine regular 100w light bulbs in a three foot tall housing that hangs from the ceiling, there are 16 of these in our setup. We have been thinking of changing these out to LED lamps to reduce costs. Being an audio guy what is the best way to go about figuring out which LEDs to get. I would like to "borrow" your expertise.
Thank you

[(Brian) Frost]

are you looking to replace the hanging fixtures or replace the bulbs with led equivalent?

Our church house/sanctuary lights are nine regular 100w light bulbs in a three foot tall housing that hangs from the ceiling, there are 16 of these in our setup. We have been thinking of changing these out to LED lamps to reduce costs. Being an audio guy what is the best way to go about figuring out which LEDs to get. I would like to "borrow" your expertise.
Thank you

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

Our church house/sanctuary lights are nine regular 100w light bulbs in a three foot tall housing that hangs from the ceiling, there are 16 of these in our setup. We have been thinking of changing these out to LED lamps to reduce costs. Being an audio guy what is the best way to go about figuring out which LEDs to get. I would like to "borrow" your expertise.
Thank you

Assuming these are standard socket bulbs, Philips has a couple A-lamp bulbs that may work. The big challenge with LEDs other than price is cooling. There aren't too many that are happy in an enclosed fixture.

Make sure that you get dimmable LEDs - not all are. You may find that your current dimmers don't work well with LEDs, so it will be wise to get a couple samples before committing to a large number of bulbs.

Re-reading your post, you mention trying to save costs. How many hours are these lights on?  What do you pay for electricity?  At the moment, LED bulbs are expensive enough that it might take you 20 years to make up the purchase cost in electricity savings if they're only on 10 or 20 hours a week.

[Jason Raboin]

My wife owns an art gallery, and when not on tour I help her out.  I recently took a class on gallery lighting, and learned that the new Home Depot house brand Eco Smart are the best looking option currently out there.  3000k is the sweet spot for temperature.  Most of the LED bulbs to date have been too blue, and look odd.  If you wait for a sale, the transition to LED can be a little less painful.

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

My wife owns an art gallery, and when not on tour I help her out.  I recently took a class on gallery lighting, and learned that the new Home Depot house brand Eco Smart are the best looking option currently out there.  3000k is the sweet spot for temperature.  Most of the LED bulbs to date have been too blue, and look odd.  If you wait for a sale, the transition to LED can be a little less painful.

This is very subjective. 3000K is pretty white. 2700K is closer to the A lamps the OP is currently using (my personal preference is 3000k, but it will look different than what is installed). I would also suggest caution about non-brand name bulbs. They may look good today, but support may not be as good as other options.

I work at what amounts to an art gallery, and we are just finishing up a year long LED project for our 800 some odd PAR30 and MR16 bulbs. We chose Philips EnduraLED.

I'm

[Doug Hammel]

They are the standard screw-in socket type. The "enclosures" are open on the top and bottom, I will try and get a pic for you guys. They are usually on about 20 to 25 hours a week. I did catch the dimmable requirement as we do have these on dimmers and use that in our services all the time. The main thing I am looking for is electric bill savings but at the same time I want it to look the same as what everyone is used to. What LED lamp rating would be an equivulent match to a 100watt light bulb?

Assuming these are standard socket bulbs, Philips has a couple A-lamp bulbs that may work. The big challenge with LEDs other than price is cooling. There aren't too many that are happy in an enclosed fixture.

Make sure that you get dimmable LEDs - not all are. You may find that your current dimmers don't work well with LEDs, so it will be wise to get a couple samples before committing to a large number of bulbs.

Re-reading your post, you mention trying to save costs. How many hours are these lights on?  What do you pay for electricity?  At the moment, LED bulbs are expensive enough that it might take you 20 years to make up the purchase cost in electricity savings if they're only on 10 or 20 hours a week.

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

If you are trying to save money on electricity, I would wait a couple years. Right now the bulbs are so expensive that it will take you 8 or 10 years to get a return. For reference, a cheap LED bulb is $30. My early morning math indicates you would be spending at least $4500 on bulbs.

LED lighting is changing so fast that in a couple years there will be better choices at significantly less cost. Right now I don't know of a 100w A lamp replacement. It's very likely that there will be a good choice in a yearor two.

[James Feenstra]

If you are trying to save money on electricity, I would wait a couple years. Right now the bulbs are so expensive that it will take you 8 or 10 years to get a return. For reference, a cheap LED bulb is $30. My early morning math indicates you would be spending at least $4500 on bulbs.

LED lighting is changing so fast that in a couple years there will be better choices at significantly less cost. Right now I don't know of a 100w A lamp replacement. It's very likely that there will be a good choice in a yearor two.

9 x 16 x $30/bulb = $4320

LED bulbs are good for ~50 years each, during that time they'd spend the following on 100w bulbs:

14,400w x 20 hours/week = 288 kwh per week, @ $0.15/kwh = $43.20/wk = $2246.40/year = $112,320 in 50 years (led life span)

+

the cost of replacement bulbs over that lifespan, @ $1/bulb you'll probably go through about 3 bulbs/fixture/year...so that's another $432/year x 10 years = $21,600

the electricity cost for LED bulbs would be about 1/10th of that of tungsten bulbs, plus you wouldn't need to pay someone to change them. Over the 10 year period (avg. life of led light bulbs...or at least their claimed life, approx. 50,000 hours vs 300 hours with a conventional bulb), you'd save somewhere in the range of $101,088 in electricity running the lights for 20 hours/week, plus an additional $17,280 on the purchase of bulbs over their life period...

The math makes me wonder why everyone doesn't switch over to LEDs...I'm a huge fan of them! Even dimmable CFLs will give a considerable amount of savings.

[David Elsbury]

LEDs lose output over time. Similar to discharge lamps. Therefore this "50 year life" - what's going to happen in say 20 years, is the light level still going to be sufficient? Dimmable CFL would provide more lumens per watt at a cheaper price, and probably last longer in the confined space (albeit taking time to warm up)

The difficulty is that people expect to get replacement lamps in LED or CFL, and have the same level of output they had with regular lamps. But to get the best results, new fixtures are often required that address some of the issues that make LED/CFL lamps difficult. For example, T5 high output fluro is heaps of light output, would fit into a 3 ft housing no sweat... but would require some engineering to do so. Dimmable ballasts are no problem, instant-on too.

Cheers
David (who used to work in residential lighting for a couple of years)

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

9 x 16 x $30/bulb = $4320

LED bulbs are good for ~50 years each,

No one knows this, and I've never heard any manufacturer claim anything close.  The Philips EnduraLED bulbs I am using are rated at 45000 hours, with the assumption that they are on at least 8 hours a day.  At best, that's 20 years, and even then there's no track record to base that on, other than A LOT of extrapolation from a short period of testing.

during that time they'd spend the following on 100w bulbs:

14,400w x 20 hours/week = 288 kwh per week, @ $0.15/kwh = $43.20/wk = $2246.40/year = $112,320 in 50 years (led life span)

+

the cost of replacement bulbs over that lifespan, @ $1/bulb you'll probably go through about 3 bulbs/fixture/year...so that's another $432/year x 10 years = $21,600

the electricity cost for LED bulbs would be about 1/10th of that of tungsten bulbs, plus you wouldn't need to pay someone to change them. Over the 10 year period (avg. life of led light bulbs...or at least their claimed life, approx. 50,000 hours vs 300 hours with a conventional bulb), you'd save somewhere in the range of $101,088 in electricity running the lights for 20 hours/week, plus an additional $17,280 on the purchase of bulbs over their life period...

The math makes me wonder why everyone doesn't switch over to LEDs...I'm a huge fan of them! Even dimmable CFLs will give a considerable amount of savings.

I'm not disputing that LEDs will eventually be the dominant lighting choice for fixtures of this type.  My concern is that buying today, IMO, is too early.  During my year long lightbulb project at my company, Philips had 3 generations (3 product cycles in 1 year!) of products.  The project delay, while frustrating, allowed us to get far greater savings in the long run, because we ended up with more efficient bulbs that are better for our application.

At the moment, I don't know of a 100w A-lamp replacement LED bulb.  Philips has a 60 watt replacement, but that's not going to give the same light output that the OP is used to.  It's very likely that in another year there will be a good replacement.

So, the OP can either spend $4350 today on the wrong bulbs, or wait a year, pay a few hundred dollars in extra electricity, and likely spend $3000 on the right bulbs when they come out, and be not only money ahead, but will have a better result.

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

LEDs lose output over time. Similar to discharge lamps. Therefore this "50 year life" - what's going to happen in say 20 years, is the light level still going to be sufficient? Dimmable CFL would provide more lumens per watt at a cheaper price, and probably last longer in the confined space (albeit taking time to warm up)

The difficulty is that people expect to get replacement lamps in LED or CFL, and have the same level of output they had with regular lamps. But to get the best results, new fixtures are often required that address some of the issues that make LED/CFL lamps difficult. For example, T5 high output fluro is heaps of light output, would fit into a 3 ft housing no sweat... but would require some engineering to do so. Dimmable ballasts are no problem, instant-on too.

Cheers
David (who used to work in residential lighting for a couple of years)

I've had generally very poor experience with CFL bulbs.  In addition to mercury content (http://www.thecoolblogs.com/2010/11/safe-use-and-disposal-guide-light-bulbs.html), I've not found them to last any longer than a conventional bulb.

I agree that new fixtures is often the best solution.

[James Feenstra]

No one knows this, and I've never heard any manufacturer claim anything close.  The Philips EnduraLED bulbs I am using are rated at 45000 hours, with the assumption that they are on at least 8 hours a day.  At best, that's 20 years, and even then there's no track record to base that on, other than A LOT of extrapolation from a short period of testing.

45-50,000 hours (which is what most manufactures publish) @ 20-25 hours per week (ops useage) = 34.61 to 48.08 years...but as the technology hasn't been around that long I agree there's no way to be certain

At the moment, I don't know of a 100w A-lamp replacement LED bulb.  Philips has a 60 watt replacement, but that's not going to give the same light output that the OP is used to.  It's very likely that in another year there will be a good replacement.

the highest i've seen was equivalent to an 80w bulb, although not from a 'named' company

So, the OP can either spend $4350 today on the wrong bulbs, or wait a year, pay a few hundred dollars in extra electricity, and likely spend $3000 on the right bulbs when they come out, and be not only money ahead, but will have a better result.

it's about $2000 in extra electricity based on 20-25/hrs a week useage for that many 100w bulbs...anyways, there may also be energy tax incentives in the area (I don't know for sure...we have them up here) where you get huge tax credits for lowering your energy useage

[ProSoundWeb Community]