From sports stadiums to driveways, floodlights provide the bright conditions necessary for nocturnal leisure or industrial activities, and can increase security for businesses and households alike.
However, with some lights powered for up to 10 hours a day, electricity and maintenance costs can really add up, as well as the inevitable environmental impact of high energy consumption and light pollution.
The most commonly used floodlight is halogen-based. They're cheap to purchase, easy to find replacement bulbs for, and provide a high luminosity output per watt. Stadium lights are more likely to be the metal halide variety, which create an extremely bright bluish light. This is fantastic for illuminating large areas, but the bulbs don't last and the light pollution is quite severe. For both halogen and metal halide bulbs, a short life span leads to regular replacements and thus high maintenance costs.
In an increasingly environmentally conscious society, there's been a growing trend toward eco-friendly LED lights. These have been developed into floodlights of a comparable brightness to the regular kind while using considerably less energy. For most consumers, the overall cost is paramount, and only by weighing up the power output, initial price, and operating costs of the different options can people make well-informed decisions.
A basic 10W LED floodlight gives off 700 lumens, slightly less bright than a 100W halogen bulb. At 30W, LEDs can reach 2,400 lumens, comparable to a 350W halogen, while a 50W LED floodlight is almost as bright as the 500W halogen alternative, creating 4,000 lumens, which is more than enough for domestic security. In comparison to metal halide, a 100W LED lamp can confidently replace the 400W counterpart. Overall, a lower wattage means lower power consumption -- a good thing for driving down costs and environmental impact.
The initial cost of an LED floodlight is its only downfall. For around $75, you can buy a 30W LED lamp, but you can get hold of a 350W halogen lamp for about $12. The 100W LED lamp will set you back up to $400, while the 400W metal halide lamp can be purchased for anywhere from $75 to $230. This seems to be a considerable disadvantage, but a quick look at the running costs reveals the true benefits of LEDs.
Every source of comparison in running costs suggests great savings associated with LED floodlights. So while a 500W halogen bulb can be found for under $15, when it's used for eight hours a day, it would not only need to be replaced every couple of months, but would cost $270 a year in electricity. The 50W LED may well cost $125 or so, but will last for up to 50,000 hours (nearly two years at eight hours per day) and cost about $27 a year to run. That would be an average of $93 per year, about a third of the halogen running cost alone.
Clearly an investment, an LED floodlight is a wise choice for economic and environmental lighting. The directional lighting reduces pollution, the instant on-off action increases efficiency, and the extremely long life span and 90 percent reduction in energy consumption will reduce overall costs. The Central New York Raceway Park was the first place to introduce LED floodlights in 2012, and it seems the UK is keen to get involved with Premier League football clubs already inquiring about making the change.
Interesting that you mentioned the bluish tint, eeisgood. I've heard a few people say they won't use LEDs in the bathroom becausea strange color tint on all reflections in the mirror.
Thanks, the light from the bulbs cast on the table was dimmer than the matching incandescent and bluer than it seemed it should be because the package indicated a warmer light. I guess the bulbs are going to be hit and miss for a while.
Thanks for the input, eeisgood. Sounds like it's a wise move to keep LED receipts, especially since the purported advantage is long life. I'm curious...when you say that LEDs were "not as bright or nice as incandescent bulbs," was it because of the color of the light? I know that some people don't like the bright white apperance of some LEDs.
Quite an optimistic article with little substantial consistent and complete information, it has a lot of disconnected tidbits. Like one of the other comments I read, some more complete information would be nice.
In any event I just keep track of what I find in the store, some failures, abject failures, and successes. One recent failure was a set of six bulbs just installed in a dining room fixture, after about 1/2 hour operation one bulb went really dim, the rest have been OK for a couple months. They are not as bright or nice as the incandescent bulbs they claim to match. One nice success was some under counter lighting we got, very bright, and only a little warm temperature wise, we really like them.
Life expectancy is the truly vital part of the LED discussion. Unless they last long enough to pay for the reduced maintenance costs there is really not that much motivation to choose an LED device. So quality is the very vital parameter.
The discussion about the actual life of the LED lamp versus the rated life of a single emitter is a good one. I have been designing LED lamps for many years, and the potential is there to reach very long life lamps. However it takes very careful design and high-quality components to reach that potential. In an effort to shed some light on the subject, DOE has been doing testing of various consumer LED lamps for the past several years. See http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/caliper.html Their summary report #15 concentrates on flood lights. Brand names are not mentioned, but they do include pictures of the products, which might let you distinguish the brands.
Consumer Reports has also tested a range of LED bulbs. They do mention brand names, and clearly some brands are much better than others.
Ms. Banham, how about a follow-on article that provides supporting documentation for life expectancies? The comments so far have been more than a little sceptical about the data.
The information you gave about power and cost was very interesting.
Perhaps the datasheet for a single emitter does say 50K hours, and that may even be accurate (if the LED is adequately heat sinked and isn't overdriven to maximize light output for least cost). But it just doesn't translate to the MTBF for the bulb, which may contain many emitters (along with other components including PCB and connectors). The MTBF of the LED light bulb itself is much, Much, MUCH lower.
To be precise, an emitter is a single LED. An LED bulb is an assembly that will contain one or more emitters.
I've seen more than one LED bulb advertised citing the emitter MTBF to imply that the bulb MTBF is the same (in the 20K to 50K hours MTBF range). This is, to be polite, not true. Excusable for marketing types, but not appropriate for an Engineering blog.
The calculated lifetime of an LED emitter is, truly 50,000 hours. The observed lifetime of the circuitry that drives the LED is about the same as the life expectance of a couple of incandescent bulbs. I have found the net cost of LEDs is roghly three times the cost of incandescants, plus the color is much different. Dinner just isn't as appetizing when displayed under a recently purchased LED and you can't take them back if you don't like the color. I did read a suggestion that to restore incandescent colors to LED environments, try buying tinted glasses (must have been a government spokesman).
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