ProSoundWeb Community

Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => AC Power and Grounding => Topic started by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 01:15:49 PM

Title: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 01:15:49 PM
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.   
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Ned Ward on December 28, 2013, 02:00:40 PM
The local venue near us changed to LED lighting. Same colors, but now performers aren't frying onstage. We are much happier playing there now.

Have to imagine the A/C cost difference for some clubs could also add up...
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jamin Lynch on December 28, 2013, 02:11:26 PM
Most of the LED fixtures that have "desirable white light", 3200 Kelvin or so, are still pretty expensive.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve M Smith on December 28, 2013, 02:21:25 PM
Off topic:  I have the PCB from one of those lights (51 leds each of R, G and B) in my photographic enlarger. Varying green and blue ratio works great with variable contrast paper.

Back on topic:  I originally wondered why you would have a euro power input but Edison output, thinking that a female and male euro connector would make more sense as they could be daisy chained with the type of cable which links PCs to their monitors but I suppose your Edison connector is closer in size to the euro than our 13A plug (which is how I envisaged a UK version appearing).  The euro - Edison method also means that all cables are the same regardless of position.


Steve.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 02:21:55 PM
The local venue near us changed to LED lighting. Same colors, but now performers aren't frying onstage.

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.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve M Smith on December 28, 2013, 02:26:10 PM
Poor video color rendition?

Something I have noticed at events with a video screen at the side of the stage is that the video image looks very good when the stage is lit with LEDs - even when the stage isn't particularly bright compared with what I would expect from tungsten.

It probably has something to do with the red, green and blue LEDs matching the RGB sensors in the video cameras.

This is just a guess and I have no facts to base this on.  Just an observation.


Steve.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 02:28:11 PM
I originally wondered why you would have a euro power input but Edison output, thinking that a female and male euro connector would make more sense as they could be daisy chained with the type of cable which links PCs to their monitors but I suppose your Edison connector is closer in size to the euro than our 13A plug (which is how I envisaged a UK version appearing).  The euro - Edison method also means that all cables are the same regardless of position.

I think that most Americans are scared when they see a Euro output connector. We used to have them on the original IBM PC's to power the computer monitor screen, but that's the last I've seen them in USA circulation. I've done a lot of sound work for MHA Audio here in the states, and most of their gear used to be British with 230-volt power and all sorts of Euro-to Euro extension cords and British plugboards. And yeah, the British owner complained about our Edison power stuff all the time too. 
Title: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Cailen Waddell on December 28, 2013, 02:33:46 PM
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 am just finishing up a new venue (200 pax) that will be all LED, house lights, aisle lights, everything. 20 led s4 ellipsoidals, 20 etc desire pars, 1 doz each of Chauvet qspot 560 and qwash 560z. Venue will do movies, theater, and music acts. Yes, fixtures that simulate incandescent are more expensive but the cost savings in electrical and HVAC still out weighs it.  We ran the math, and the reduced HVAC infrastructure and electrical reduced project costs (after fixture purchase) by 100k. Also, electrical savings on fixtures alone, not HVAC, based on 2000 hour usage a year will result in about another 150k savings.

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.

Edit: I'll add that my integrators and consultants were very helpful and knew what to do, but that doesn't mean all do....
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve M Smith on December 28, 2013, 02:39:14 PM
On the subject of LED lights in general, I think they are going to be the dominant lighting in most domestic and commercial premises soon.

Our local authority is currently replacing our sodium street lighting with LEDs.  This gives white light instead of orange and is going to significantly reduce the orange glow light pollution we get over larger towns.

The company I work for makes flexible circuits with LEDs on.  We have made circuits for this company who make architectural and display LED lighting products:  http://designledproducts.com/


Steve.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 03:14:48 PM
Something I have noticed at events with a video screen at the side of the stage is that the video image looks very good when the stage is lit with LEDs - even when the stage isn't particularly bright compared with what I would expect from tungsten.

I noticed the exact same effect for digital cameras taking still shots of this LED lit play. Even though it looked reasonably bright to the naked eye, once it was captured by the digital camera it looked VERY bright. I do think that you're possibly correct. Since the Red, Green, Blue colors of the LEDs are narrow band and match the capture frequencies of the digital camera, it really lit up. I think our own eyes do more averaging of wider bands of light color frequencies, so we're physically looking for and integrating "average power" while a digital camera (still or video) is looking at "peak power" in very narrow capture bands. But that's something more to study...
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 03:18:55 PM
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.   
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jamin Lynch on December 28, 2013, 04:36:16 PM
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.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Chris Clark on December 28, 2013, 05:19:18 PM
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...
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 05:50:45 PM
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.  ;D
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Cailen Waddell on December 28, 2013, 06:07:10 PM
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....   
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 28, 2013, 07:22:27 PM
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.
Title: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Cailen Waddell on December 28, 2013, 07:26:35 PM
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.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve Alves on December 28, 2013, 07:50:24 PM
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 (http://www.chauvetlighting.com/slim-par-pro-rgba.html)
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Chris Clark on December 29, 2013, 06:44:12 AM
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.  ;D
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?
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jerome Malsack on December 29, 2013, 07:04:49 AM
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.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Chris Clark on December 29, 2013, 08:48:05 AM
With the incandescent being stopped from manufacture this year we will start seeing more of the LED. 

IIRC this current stage of the phaseout only applies to standard A-style tungsten up to 100W (or 150?), but I could be wrong. I think it is based on lumens per watt or something along those lines. Either way I'm fairly certain it doesn't apply to halogen of any type yet or specialized lamps such as those pertaining to the theater and other industries yet so I don't think there's any "mandated" push in that aspect.

I don't think in the theater/show industry conversion right now even has as much to do with power or heat issues as it does the convenience of color mixing being the primary benefit to LDs, with the heat and power being a secondary benefit. Priorities vary throughout I'm sure, but I think the majority that are converting are looking at the mixing benefit first.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 29, 2013, 09:45:17 AM
I don't think in the theater/show industry conversion right now even has as much to do with power or heat issues as it does the convenience of color mixing being the primary benefit to LDs, with the heat and power being a secondary benefit. Priorities vary throughout I'm sure, but I think the majority that are converting are looking at the mixing benefit first.

I think you're probably correct. Not have to re-gel for different colors is great, plus a smaller number of lighting instruments could be used in the first place. However, I've been in a few television news studios where they embraced LED lighting very early. They told me the heat load reduction was huge, and they could spec lower HVAC air velocity. That's a big deal in television news studios since HVAC air noise is a real problem with all those lapel mics.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Cailen Waddell on December 29, 2013, 09:57:57 AM
The conversion argument is hard if not impossible to make unless it is a NEW facility or fixture purchase only because while there is cost savings many companies simply don't have the capital to invest even if they will realize a return later. 

However for some situations, the power isn't a factor as much as other benefits,  A local shop bought source 4 LEDs when they realized the ctb in a stock 575 s4 they used for tv wasn't as bright as the S4 led.  They also realized they could print their own gobos on transparency for corporate logos.  They bought 20.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mac Kerr on December 29, 2013, 10:50:46 AM
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.

Henry Cohen has addressed this several times in these forums, and IIRC his conclusion is that modern LED walls do not have the high RF noise that earlier ones did. They still are a big metal wall in front of your antennas though. The noise problem with them now is the cooling fans creating acoustic noise on stage.

Mac
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Lyle Williams on December 29, 2013, 03:26:34 PM
I don't know about onstage, but in the outside world the lack of maintenance is a major financial driver for LED lighting.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Stephen Swaffer on December 29, 2013, 03:33:52 PM
We just did an install in our church and used tungsten instead of LED.  I think we will wish we had done differently-but it really came down to cash on hand and familiarity.  We rented some LED's about 8 months ago that were disappointing-probably cheap and the technology is moving crazy fast right now.  I also wonder if the fact that CFL's were "the answer" a few years ago and now people are waking up to the headache of mercury disposal isn't making people cautious to jumpon new technology.

Just did an outdoor lighting upgrade and had a ROI of around 12% just on fixtures installed cost vs energy saving.  When you factored in maintenance cost the numbers were really good.  Also, there may be utility rebates for LEDs if you look for them.

One caution I have been given is that LEDs have a fairly large start up inrush-so I have been told it is wise to size switchs/contactors to an equivalent tungsten load-typically 5-7 times the LED load.  Not sure how this affects LED PARs-also if LED PARs are "off" via DMX control there will still be standby load. Maybe not huge-but might be considerable compared to load if it is present 168 hours a week vs 10 to 12 for the load?  Just a thought to consider and maybe plan for.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve M Smith on December 29, 2013, 03:39:08 PM
One caution I have been given is that LEDs have a fairly large start up inrush

LEDs will be current limited, either with a simple series resistance or a more complex current limiter.  I can see no reason why an LED unit will have a start up inrush current.  Cold tungsten lights will though.


Steve.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Lyle Williams on December 29, 2013, 03:48:14 PM
The AC/DC power converters often have high inrush currents.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 29, 2013, 04:37:05 PM
The AC/DC power converters often have high inrush currents.

If I can talk Chauvet out of a few LED fixtures I'll do an inrush peak current test just for grins. Of course, turning on a few at a time shouldn't be an issue. But I suppose that turning on 40 to 60 at a time on a single circuit (per Chauvet's recommendation) could draw some current spikes. However, considering these LED lights power up on OFF mode, perhaps there's not any serious peak currents.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve M Smith on December 29, 2013, 04:44:40 PM
Good point.  I wasn't thinking about the initial switching on of the lights units, just the LED switching whilst in use.


Steve.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Kevin Hoober on December 29, 2013, 05:48:11 PM
I just did a little theater gig with a bunch of Chauvet SlimPAR-64 floodlights,

...Each of the light fixtures had a Euro power input with an Edison out, so you could daisy chain power from light-to-light.

...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?

I'm a bit intrigued with a fixture rated to 240 that has a 5-15 Edison for power loop thru--are these listed?

I enjoy the simplicity of Edison loop thru, but might an IEC loop thru be a better solution, in this application?

I guess the same issues occur with any wide-ranging power supply with a 'generic' (IEC, Powercon, etc.) detachable cord, and loop thru power.


Thoughts?

Kevin H.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 29, 2013, 06:44:08 PM
I'm a bit intrigued with a fixture rated to 240 that has a 5-15 Edison for power loop thru--are these listed?

Here's a picture of the Chauvet SuperRGBA light which says it works on 120 or 230 volts. Has a  Euro input and an Edison output. My only worry is that if you use a 230/240 volt plug to power the first light in the string, all the rest of them will have 240-volts on a standard 120-volt Edison outlet.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Steve M Smith on December 30, 2013, 11:31:52 AM
Here is the back of something similar from their UK website.  I was expecting to see a pair of IEC connectors but they are using Neutriks instead.  This appears to be the standard on all of the range on the UK site.

(http://www.chauvetlighting.co.uk/products/images/colordash_par_tri_18_vw_P_2L.jpg)

Both three way and five way DMX on this one too.


Steve.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on December 30, 2013, 11:35:56 AM
Here is the back of something similar from their UK website.  I was expecting to see a pair of IEC connectors but they are using Neutriks instead.  This appears to be the standard on all of the range on the UK site.

Both three way and five way DMX on this one too.

Steve.

The Neutrik PowerCons are really superior to any sort of Euro or Edison connector. Shame they're not available in the states.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 02, 2014, 01:01:11 PM
Does anyone here (or just lurking) have a connection (US distributor or manufacturing level) with any of the LED theater lighting suppliers? I've been getting some requests to include LED stage lighting justification in my HOW-To Workshops for 2014, but it's best if I can work with a manufacturer or distributor directly to make sure everything is vetted properly. I just need an introduction rather than clawing my way up starting at the dealer level.

Please PM me with any info or contacts you can provide....

Thanks, Mike Sokol
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: James Feenstra on January 06, 2014, 09:01:08 AM
Does anyone here (or just lurking) have a connection (US distributor or manufacturing level) with any of the LED theater lighting suppliers? I've been getting some requests to include LED stage lighting justification in my HOW-To Workshops for 2014, but it's best if I can work with a manufacturer or distributor directly to make sure everything is vetted properly. I just need an introduction rather than clawing my way up starting at the dealer level.

Please PM me with any info or contacts you can provide....

Thanks, Mike Sokol
I work for chroma-q (at the distribution level anyways, although the r+d department is located within 20' of my desk) :)

What kind of information are you looking for?

I believe there's someone that works with phillips lurking around these boards as well...
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 06, 2014, 01:17:08 PM
I work for chroma-q (at the distribution level anyways, although the r+d department is located within 20' of my desk) :)

What kind of information are you looking for?

I believe there's someone that works with phillips lurking around these boards as well...

Since I teach sound production workshops at churches and schools around the country, I've been getting questions about LED lighting. And while I'm learning a lot about the technology (power requirements, dimming, connecting, etc...) the big question is "How much will it cost, and how much will it save?". So I'm looking for any sort of spreadsheet or charts that will outline or calculate the ROI payback times for various LED upfit/installs. For instance, a brand new room should have a pretty quick ROI payback since LEDs will require a smaller HVAC unit, less power circuits, and distributed rather than centralized dimmers, not to mention the gel/color flexibility and reduced lamp maintenance. But older buildings with an operational tungsten lighting system will have a much longer ROI payback time for LED upgrades, especially when you consider that the existing lighting, wiring, and HVAC systems have already been paid for. However, you still need to consider reduced KWH costs and gel/lamp savings.

Finally, it would be great to get some LED lighting gear to demonstrate in my seminars. For instance, I plan to hook up an old-school spinning house meter with a bunch of different light technologies and dimmers plugged into it. Then my seminar attendees will be able to watch the power meter spin slower or faster using tungsten, CFL and LED bulbs of equivalent foot candles. I've found that dry charts and graphs are a hard sell to administration types who don't know or care about technology. But showing them a spinning power meter should get the point across pretty easily.

Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 06, 2014, 01:39:13 PM
Here's one on eBay that would work, but it's $250 (Yikes)  :'(

But note that it's a 5-amp/120-volt KWH meter. I saw an old farmhouse once with a 30-amp/240-volt meter and thought that was really small. But the one in the picture was from the 1920s, so perhaps that was all the power you needed for a few lights back then. Or maybe this was installed on a light pole to meter power. All I know is I would have a hard time convincing my wife that this lamp was worth $250, and she would never let me put it in the living room. Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I think it's quite a beautiful lamp. Don't judge me...  ;)
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Bill McKelvey on January 06, 2014, 03:51:34 PM
Here's one on eBay that would work, but it's $250 (Yikes)  :'(

But note that it's a 5-amp/120-volt KWH meter. I saw an old farmhouse once with a 30-amp/240-volt meter and thought that was really small. But the one in the picture was from the 1920s, so perhaps that was all the power you needed for a few lights back then. Or maybe this was installed on a light pole to meter power. All I know is I would have a hard time convincing my wife that this lamp was worth $250, and she would never let me put it in the living room. Still, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I think it's quite a beautiful lamp. Don't judge me...  ;)

Sweet! I too would be shot if I brought this home.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jonathan Johnson on January 06, 2014, 04:13:59 PM
...the big question is "How much will it cost, and how much will it save?". So I'm looking for any sort of spreadsheet or charts that will outline or calculate the ROI payback times for various LED upfit/installs. For instance, a brand new room should have a pretty quick ROI payback since LEDs will require a smaller HVAC unit, less power circuits, and distributed rather than centralized dimmers, not to mention the gel/color flexibility and reduced lamp maintenance...

Overall, I think there is a cost benefit to LEDs, and it certainly takes a 'big picture' view to fully understand it. But as for energy savings, I think there may be certain conditions where an equivalent luminosity sourced from LEDs may actually be less energy efficient than for incandescent. This is big-picture view that completely ignores the financial aspect, so bear with me.

Here are the conditions: residential installation, it's during heating season, and the home is equipped with a typical gas furnace that runs at 80% efficiency. (Newer furnaces are over 90%, but this house is 20 years old.)

Consider this: all of the energy used by lighting eventually decays into infrared energy which heats the room. A 60W incandescent provides about 205 BTU/hr of heating. A 9W LED (luminous equavalent to 60W incandescent) provides about 31 BTU/hr. That is 205 BTU/hr or 31 BTU/hr that the furnace does not need to provide -- that is, if you turn the lights off, the furnace must provide that energy to maintain the air temperature. Total energy used by the home remains the same, regardless of which lamp is used and whether it is on or off.

Now consider that the power plant generates electricity by burning natural gas at some higher efficiency, say 90%. (I don't know the efficiency of power plants, but I'm making a guess that larger power plants are able to operate more efficiently.) Considering line losses, the efficiency drops to 85% by the time it gets to the home.

This means that the heat provided by the lamps (incandescent or LED) in the home is more efficient -- uses less fuel for the same BTU/hr -- than the furnace. Since that's more efficient than the furnace, the more electric heat you can use, the less your overall energy footprint. Therefore, the incandescent bulb is more energy efficient than the LED, under the specified conditions.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Tim McCulloch on January 06, 2014, 04:23:19 PM
And then I question why most LED bulbs for home use are labeled for use in open fixtures only, due to heat from the ballast/psu.

One very new building we work in has 100% LED, including what look like 150w. floodlights in "can" fixtures recessed in the ceiling.  Although the can is open on the bottom it is enclosed on the top.  The building staff have replaced a bunch of LED lamps that are only a few months old and the vendor is blaming heat. 
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Stephen Swaffer on January 06, 2014, 04:55:29 PM
Pesky little details-wire/screw colors, speaker polarity, fixture type lamps are designed for why should we have to pay attention to all these little things?

You can light a descent sized room with 4, 10 watt Led can lights-given that you should be able to run about 60 of them on that 5Amp/125 V service maybe we have come full circle and will see service sizes dropping?  I do have some can light inserts that are strobing noticeably in one of my installs going to have to fix that-but might be an issue you run in to.  (Around here-rural Iowa-it is not uncommon to run into services with the metered and unmetered conductors run in the same 1" conduit and the conductors are the old rubber insulated so not much copper to run a house on!)

IF the expected life claims hold up, there should be significant cost and safety benefits for lights located in inconvenient locations.  I am surprised at the number of traffic lamps/truck lights etc that are missing "pixels" given that lamp life claims and the recent rise of the technology leading you to believe we shouldn't be seeing much of that for another 3-5 years. 
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 06, 2014, 06:09:31 PM
Here's a 120-volt / 5-amp Westinghouse meter that could work for my LED/Tungsten demonstration. The price is right at $20 plus $11 shipping. Wonder if it will spin up.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=370975108333&fromMakeTrack=true&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:top:en
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Stephen Swaffer on January 06, 2014, 06:45:07 PM
The Iowa State Fair had a demo that let you "feel" the difference last year-a generator run by a stationary bicycle that could be switched to various lighting technologies -tungsten was a lot of work to light :)
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jonathan Johnson on January 06, 2014, 11:11:13 PM
Have you contacted your local electric utility? They may be interested in helping by providing a meter for free.

Some utilities will loan out Kill-A-Watt devices, but for what you're doing they may not be appropriate.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 07, 2014, 01:57:51 AM
Have you contacted your local electric utility? They may be interested in helping by providing a meter for free.

Some utilities will loan out Kill-A-Watt devices, but for what you're doing they may not be appropriate.

I do have a couple of buddies at the POCO. Since they've been replacing a lot of old meters with modern RF readable ones, there's probably a warehouse with thousands of old ones laying around. I'll give them a shout tomorrow.

And I already have a Kill-A-Watt and every other type of voltmeter and ammeter that provide very accurate numerical readouts. But demonstrations are more about visual examples rather than accurate data. I want something that everyone will agree means money is being spent. Even my wife gets worried if she sees the little wheel spinning on our house electric meter. That's why I think it will be a great example of the power required by tungsten, CFL and LED lighting.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: James Feenstra on January 08, 2014, 12:13:24 PM
Since I teach sound production workshops at churches and schools around the country, I've been getting questions about LED lighting. And while I'm learning a lot about the technology (power requirements, dimming, connecting, etc...) the big question is "How much will it cost, and how much will it save?". So I'm looking for any sort of spreadsheet or charts that will outline or calculate the ROI payback times for various LED upfit/installs. For instance, a brand new room should have a pretty quick ROI payback since LEDs will require a smaller HVAC unit, less power circuits, and distributed rather than centralized dimmers, not to mention the gel/color flexibility and reduced lamp maintenance. But older buildings with an operational tungsten lighting system will have a much longer ROI payback time for LED upgrades, especially when you consider that the existing lighting, wiring, and HVAC systems have already been paid for. However, you still need to consider reduced KWH costs and gel/lamp savings.

Finally, it would be great to get some LED lighting gear to demonstrate in my seminars. For instance, I plan to hook up an old-school spinning house meter with a bunch of different light technologies and dimmers plugged into it. Then my seminar attendees will be able to watch the power meter spin slower or faster using tungsten, CFL and LED bulbs of equivalent foot candles. I've found that dry charts and graphs are a hard sell to administration types who don't know or care about technology. But showing them a spinning power meter should get the point across pretty easily.
generally speaking the cost savings with LEDs does not come from energy savings in terms of a venue installation. There are some energy savings, but the big money savings comes from consumables and maintenance.

With an example like theatrical house lights, the cost to replace a $2 light bulb is fairly significant if it requires scaffolding, minimum labor calls, or other extensive procedures. With LEDs requiring significantly less replacements and maintenance, the savings in this area is significant over energy savings.

Switching a conventional wash fixture (say a 575w S4 par) out for an automated LED wash fixture (ie. a mac 301 at 350w) will produce a significant long term cost savings in labor and consumables, as you've eliminated the costs of gel, lamps and labor to refocus it for every show. Long term, this will produce a higher return than the minimal energy savings (225w/hr of use, at $0.15/kwh the savings is slightly above $0.03) could hope to achieve. This is assuming that both fixtures are used for the same amount of time at full output.

This thread (http://www.controlbooth.com/threads/interesting-power-consumption-article.34088/) on Control booth has some good points regarding the actual electrical savings for LED products, including a link to a very well written article.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 08, 2014, 12:36:29 PM
Consider this: all of the energy used by lighting eventually decays into infrared energy which heats the room. A 60W incandescent provides about 205 BTU/hr of heating. A 9W LED (luminous equivalent to 60W incandescent) provides about 31 BTU/hr. That is 205 BTU/hr or 31 BTU/hr that the furnace does not need to provide -- that is, if you turn the lights off, the furnace must provide that energy to maintain the air temperature. Total energy used by the home remains the same, regardless of which lamp is used and whether it is on or off.

Actually, I'm going to install some 100-watt incandescent bulbs as heaters for my parents house. They have a new bathroom/addition that was built without any real insulation under the crawl space. So with the sub-zero temps in Maryland, they froze some pipes yesterday. We're  insulating the walls of the crawl space, the installing a pair of 100-watt incandescent bulbs near the pipe which are powered by a thermostat switch that turns on below 35 F degrees and off above 40 F degrees. The ThermoCube is available at Tractor Supply for $13 and is rated for 1,500 watt water heaters for farms. I had to convince my 84 year old father that these shouldn't be CFL bulbs (he loves those things), but in this case we need the actual 100-watt heating action of the tungsten bulbs. I'll monitor the crawl space temp during the next cold snap, but I'm pretty sure the extra wall insulation and 200 watts of tungsten bulb heating should do the trick.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jonathan Johnson on January 08, 2014, 08:01:26 PM
The ThermoCube is available at Tractor Supply for $13 and is rated for 1,500 watt water heaters for farms

To keep the math simple, we'll assume that the rate is $0.13/kWh. That means the ThermoCube needs to "save" 100 kWh (or 100,000 watt-hours) to pay off. With a 200W heating load (the two 100W light bulbs) it will need to be off for 500 hours that the lights would otherwise be on in order to reach the break even point. After that, it starts saving you money. That's about 21 days of off-time for a break even, if I did the math right.

Where I live, the rate is about half that (cheap, fish-killing hydro power), so I'm looking at about a month and a half of off-time to break even. Maybe I should get one for the heat lamp (250W) in my pumphouse. Since the temperatures here are moderate (only goes below freezing SOME nights), the actual break-even should be pretty quick.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Mike Sokol on January 08, 2014, 08:43:20 PM
To keep the math simple, we'll assume that the rate is $0.13/kWh. That means the ThermoCube needs to "save" 100 kWh (or 100,000 watt-hours) to pay off. With a 200W heating load (the two 100W light bulbs) it will need to be off for 500 hours that the lights would otherwise be on in order to reach the break even point. After that, it starts saving you money. That's about 21 days of off-time for a break even, if I did the math right.

Where I live, the rate is about half that (cheap, fish-killing hydro power), so I'm looking at about a month and a half of off-time to break even. Maybe I should get one for the heat lamp (250W) in my pumphouse. Since the temperatures here are moderate (only goes below freezing SOME nights), the actual break-even should be pretty quick.

Even with a 50% duty-cycle savings it would certainly pay for itself in one winter season. My dad's picking up one this week for the install. And maybe a 250-watt heat lamp is the proper heat source since the thermostat plug will cycle it off when there's enough heat. Something like http://www.tractorsupply.com/en/store/westinghouse-lighting-250w-r40-heat-lamp-incandescent-light-bulb-red should do the trick.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Cailen Waddell on January 08, 2014, 09:38:04 PM

generally speaking the cost savings with LEDs does not come from energy savings in terms of a venue installation. There are some energy savings, but the big money savings comes from consumables and maintenance.

With an example like theatrical house lights, the cost to replace a $2 light bulb is fairly significant if it requires scaffolding, minimum labor calls, or other extensive procedures. With LEDs requiring significantly less replacements and maintenance, the savings in this area is significant over energy savings.

Switching a conventional wash fixture (say a 575w S4 par) out for an automated LED wash fixture (ie. a mac 301 at 350w) will produce a significant long term cost savings in labor and consumables, as you've eliminated the costs of gel, lamps and labor to refocus it for every show. Long term, this will produce a higher return than the minimal energy savings (225w/hr of use, at $0.15/kwh the savings is slightly above $0.03) could hope to achieve. This is assuming that both fixtures are used for the same amount of time at full output.

This thread (http://www.controlbooth.com/threads/interesting-power-consumption-article.34088/) on Control booth has some good points regarding the actual electrical savings for LED products, including a link to a very well written article.

I think it is unrealistic for most people to do a one to one trade off consideration.  I also think labor and consumables are highly variable depending on venue. Everyone uses the electricity and it's a compelling argument. 

Beaides, no TD is going to give up the lamp and consumables budget, instead they will spend it on the extra dmx cable, or egg crate Oliver they find they need.  Another small opto, etc

I think it is more likely to say, an ETC d40 vivid is going to replace 3 s4 pars at 575w each in red, blue, and white.  The d40 is around 130w IF all the LEDs are at full, rarely the case if it is a back light unit, but let's assume it anyway.  Now the pars consume 1725 watts total, and in a busy space might average 2000 hours each a year.  The d40 now is around 10% of the original power.  Our power is $.10 per kW hour, so the pars cost $345 a year to run, the d40 around $26 a year.  A $319 savings a year.  The 3 pars cost about $350 new.  The d40 about $1500. The different is $1150. $1150/$319 (the power savings) a year, and we are cost recovered in 3.6 years.  Add in an extra $50 a year on lamps for the pars and it gets better.

I think the labor argument is incredibly dependant on circumstances.  In our 450 seat proscenium house, if a lamp goes out, the crew changes it and it costs is nothing additional but the lamp costs.

It bears repeating what I said earlier in the thread. In a NEW venue, the savings on dimming, HVAC sizing, and electrical infrastructure will more than cover the cost of led fixtures.  24 20a relays on a lyntec panel versus 96 2.4kw etc dimmers, plus 24 houselight dimmers.  A 400 or 600a service for the dimmers, a 150a service for the relays. 24 x 3 x 75' of 12 gauge thhn, vs 120 x 3x 75', less conduit, less labor, etc. On our 200 seat theater that we just got a CO on, we figure (working with the contractors and construction estimators, the construction alone came in $100k cheaper than if we had done dimmers and conventional electrical, not including HVAC sizing. That's a lot of LED fixtures.  A whole lot.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Jonathan Johnson on January 08, 2014, 11:36:14 PM
It bears repeating what I said earlier in the thread. In a NEW venue, the savings on dimming, HVAC sizing, and electrical infrastructure will more than cover the cost of led fixtures.

That makes me wonder about the true cost of retrofit. If LED represents a significant reduction in HVAC load, is there a possibility of the A/C being oversized after the retrofit, resulting in more dramatic temperature swings resulting in occupant discomfort, and decreased life of the mechanical equipment due to short-cycling? Will it be necessary to retrofit the HVAC as well when retrofitting the lighting?

I'm no expert in HVAC, but I've heard of people having problems when the air conditioning is oversized.
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: Cailen Waddell on January 08, 2014, 11:44:16 PM
I'm no HVAC expert either, but I am going to say it's not a problem most of the time. 

At one of our venues, the ahu that feeds the theater is supplied from a central plant making hot and cold water and has variable speed supply and return fans, variable outside air dampers and variable valves on the heating and cooling coils. This allows the air handler to essentially size itself to the load, putting out air and a variable temperature and velocity.  As long as the unit isn't too small for the load, then it's fine?  That's my opinion. We normally only have 2 degree swings as we cycle on and off, and going from empty to a full occupant load in extreme weather with doors open may result in a 4 degree swing before retuning to set point.   

If it is a small venue with a residential
Type unit, it might be different. 
Title: Re: LED Lighting Power
Post by: James Feenstra on January 09, 2014, 10:08:00 AM
Besides, no TD is going to give up the lamp and consumables budget, instead they will spend it on the extra dmx cable, or egg crate Oliver they find they need.  Another small opto, etc
it may not be the TD's choice in that if a retrofit to all LED lamps is done.

Quote
I think it is more likely to say, an ETC d40 vivid is going to replace 3 s4 pars at 575w each in red, blue, and white.  The d40 is around 130w IF all the LEDs are at full, rarely the case if it is a back light unit, but let's assume it anyway.  Now the pars consume 1725 watts total, and in a busy space might average 2000 hours each a year.  The d40 now is around 10% of the original power.  Our power is $.10 per kW hour, so the pars cost $345 a year to run, the d40 around $26 a year.  A $319 savings a year.  The 3 pars cost about $350 new.  The d40 about $1500. The different is $1150. $1150/$319 (the power savings) a year, and we are cost recovered in 3.6 years.  Add in an extra $50 a year on lamps for the pars and it gets better.
Agreed. 1 LED for 3 conventionals is typically a safe bet when dealing with on stage lighting, although the main cost savings for LED retrofits is going to be in something like house lights where a 1 to 3 replacement would result in severely reduced light levels over an audience and may not comply with local fire codes/etc. Since these lights are generally replaced on a 1:1 basis the energy savings will be much smaller.

Quote
I think the labor argument is incredibly dependent on circumstances.  In our 450 seat proscenium house, if a lamp goes out, the crew changes it and it costs is nothing additional but the lamp costs.
It's very venue dependent, again my argument mainly applies to house lights, as they're not always the most accessible things to get to.