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[Mike Sokol]

More people aren't doing LEDs because a lot of integrators don't understand them or how to plan for their needs in terms of control and data.  Some do - not all, but at LDI last year, I was amazed at how many people didn't understand LEDs or how to use them effectively.

Does anyone know of any good white papers on comparing installation and operational costs for LED vs Tungsten? Also on a slightly different tangent, I have some nice Lab.Gruppen amps that have some smart automatic "power down" they claim will save a bunch of money per year in reduced electrical costs from power amps left on. Maybe I'll pull the paperwork and see what their math showed.   

[Jamin Lynch]

Yeah, the fry factor is important too. When I was in glam-rock band in the 70s (don't judge) my lighting guy put a 1,000 watt PAR about 3 ft above my head just to light up my chrome jump suit (please don't judge). I can remember feeling like my hair was going to catch on fire. Yes, that would have only added to the light show, I suppose.

It's been a while since I've done the calculations, but a quick thought tells me 100KW of lighting costs about $10 per hour to run (at 10 cents per KWH) and I'm guessing the HVAC power would cost about the same to get that heat out of the room. Plus your HVAC tonnage now has to be sized large to handle the full 100KW lighting heat, plus the people load, plus the wall heat transmission, etc...  That's a lot of electrical power to pay for per hour especially considering that most of these venues will be lit up for at least a dozen or more hours per week.

I wish more people would grasp that concept. I do a lot of church installs where it's hard to convince the church folks that an LED fixture that costs hundreds of dollars will be so much better than a par can that's less than $100 bucks.

[Chris Clark]

It pretty much boils down to the up-front costs. I've talked to my manager (the budget guy) a number of times about converting to LED, but no matter which way I sell it (any combination of energy savings from lower lighting costs and less heat output, relamping costs, gel costs, lower labor involved in changing the show or maintenance) he wants to be on board but the budgets will not allow it. Even starting slow with say 5-10 fixtures a year hasn't been possible lately, and this is when we need it more than ever because of increasing costs with lower budgets...

[Mike Sokol]

It pretty much boils down to the up-front costs.

I do think the price of LED must be coming down a lot. Now I know that the Chauvet lights I was using were just DJ grade, but the guy who loaned them to me had paid just $1,000 for 8 LED lights, a lighting controller with DMX output, and a pair of tripods with cross T's. So that had to be around $100 per light, which is crazy cheap. Certainly lights for IMAG and serious stage work will be more expensive in order to achieve full color rendition. But I'm thinking there's going to be a tipping point soon (just like with flat screen televisions) where the new technology becomes cheaper than the old technology. At that point it will become a "no-brainer" which is probably what some of these budget guys need. 

[Cailen Waddell]

I have an excel spreadsheet that you put in the fixtures in the conventional package and the fixtures in an led package, qty's, wattage, etc, the expected hourly usage a year, and the cost of electricity per kW/hr and then it shows you a 10 year cost recovery.  Usually the break even is around the middle of year 6 or 7.

The up front is hard for small organizations, no doubt about it. I'm very lucky I work for a municipality with a sustainability manager and an eye for long term costs and investments.  This budget year we are starting a program to replace every street light in town with an led fixture.  Apparently several fixtures were denies for a couple years.  Finding a fixture whose heat sinks wouldn't clog with bird shit was a challenge.  Very exciting stuff though....   

[Mike Sokol]

I have an excel spreadsheet that you put in the fixtures in the conventional package and the fixtures in an led package, qty's, wattage, etc, the expected hourly usage a year, and the cost of electricity per kW/hr and then it shows you a 10 year cost recovery.  Usually the break even is around the middle of year 6 or 7.

Is that break-even time of 6 or 7 years for a new installation, or for a refit? I would think that a new installation would have a much shorter break-even time, saving a lot of money up front just for smaller wires and circuit breakers, not to mention the smaller HVAC. Of course, this time is highly price sensitive, so while the cost of LED fixtures is steadily going down, the cost of standard tungsten fixtures is tied to inflation. This would be a real interesting thing to study since I used to do ROI analysis all the time at one of my first jobs.

[Cailen Waddell]

Is that break-even time of 6 or 7 years for a new installation, or for a refit? I would think that a new installation would have a much shorter break-even time, saving a lot of money up front just for smaller wires and circuit breakers, not to mention the smaller HVAC. Of course, this time is highly price sensitive, so while the cost of LED fixtures is steadily going down, the cost of standard tungsten fixtures is tied to inflation. This would be a real interesting thing to study since I used to do ROI analysis all the time at one of my first jobs.

this is just fixture acquisition costs. Showing that the increased investment in LEDs pays off over time. Applies to retrofits or new installs.  Of course witch new construction the costs are recovered before the power is even turned on to the building.

Edit: fixture acquisition and electrical
Consumption of said fixtures.

[Steve Alves]

I just did a little theater gig with a bunch of Chauvet SlimPAR-64 floodlights, and I was amazed at how simple the power hookup turned out. Each of the light fixtures had a Euro power input with an Edison out, so you could daisy chain power from light-to-light. Same for the 3-pin DMX control, which had XLR jacks with a pass-through for daisy-chaining the control. I was doing a guesstimate that I could easily hook all 8 fixtures together via a single power cord, when my high-school assistant checked out the online specs from the Chauvet site and announced that they were rated to daisy-chain 40 of these fixtures together on 120-volts, and up to 60 of them on 240-volts. Say what??? Did he say 240-volts? Yup, these LED light fixtures have auto-switching power supplies and will automatically run on anything from 90 to 250 volts, or you can plug in a 12-volt DC line from a battery if you're on a real remote gig. Since each fixture has red, blue and green LEDs, there's built-in dimmer control and color mixing from a simple desktop controller. Cool...

This is just SO much easier than the old days of 500 and 1,000 watt PARs with huge power cables and racks of buzzing dimmers. Plus I didn't have to worry about burning the ceiling tiles or setting off any sprinklers from the heat of tungsten lighting (been there, done that).

While these are just basic DJ lights, and I know that the pro LED lighting will cost much more initialy, I'm wondering why more facilities aren't just putting in LED lighting for their performance theaters and stages. Seems like a no-brainer for new facilities, yet I'm still seeing a lot of tungsten lighting in relatively new churches and conference rooms. Is this due to fear of LEDs? Higher initial price? Inability to calculate the ROI based on less power usage and lower HVAC load? Poor video color rendition? What?   

This is a game changer, but I'm not seeing much of this LED technology at my gigs.   

If you like those you would love the pro version. Metal housing and adds amber also.  Here is the link http://www.chauvetlighting.com/slim-par-pro-rgba.html

[Chris Clark]

I do think the price of LED must be coming down a lot. Now I know that the Chauvet lights I was using were just DJ grade, but the guy who loaned them to me had paid just $1,000 for 8 LED lights, a lighting controller with DMX output, and a pair of tripods with cross T's. So that had to be around $100 per light, which is crazy cheap. Certainly lights for IMAG and serious stage work will be more expensive in order to achieve full color rendition. But I'm thinking there's going to be a tipping point soon (just like with flat screen televisions) where the new technology becomes cheaper than the old technology. At that point it will become a "no-brainer" which is probably what some of these budget guys need. 

The "problem" is that we already have more Pars, Fresnels, and Leikos than you could shake a stick at. For my company, at least, it turns into "if it ain't broke, why spend the extra money for conversion"...

Cailen I had one that did that exact thing worked up about a year ago, it also took into account the average cost of gels and relamps associated with the old fixtures and the savings that would come from not having to relamp and not having to purchase/change gel for different shows. Still wasn't enough for them to bite. I haven't given up on it, but I'd imagine I'm not the only one running into this problem of start-up/conversion budgets.

OT question Mike - I do remember when LEDs were first coming out there was an obvious problem with individual beam colors showing into fog or haze making an undesirable effect when compared to conventionals, did you notice whether this was resolved or not?

[Jerome Malsack]

There is also the learning curve for programming the controllers.   Ability to pick out the colors. 

With the colors you can use a tool I have found at Lutron 
The DMX Color configuration tool. 

http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Service-Support/Pages/Technical/SoftwareDownloads/SoftwareDownloads.aspx

When setup you will be able to see on the computer screen the colors on the right and the left will have the DMX values to mix the RGB to give the color on the right.   Very cool tool

With the incandescent being stopped from manufacture this year we will start seeing more of the LED.  I feel like I need more LED light than what has been in place for incandescent.   

The programming on the controller for the event will be Key along with picking the color. 

Also some theater lighting people feel that the Leko or PAR has an advantage with white light still based on the temp.  When LED gets the temp to 4500 and above to provide closer to daylight you may see more use in place of the white light. 

Another note worth mentioning is that Large Video walls of LED have caused some RF noise that has been a problem with wireless mic's.  There has been a few papers and articles written and published from the major Wireless mic providers for shows like the Gramy awards and such.  New products may start addressing this in the new designs.

[ProSoundWeb Community]