Category: Lighting
Outdoor LED Display – See it in Action!
UPDATED!! New fixtures added!
One of the fastest growing LED markets is in the Outdoor area. We’ve discussed in earlier posts how the indoor LED products are starting to come around, but for the most part, numbers don’t add up. Well in outdoor situations the numbers are a no-brainer! The hardest part about understanding LED is actually seeing it live and in person. We can tell you how a 20w LED fixture will replace a 100 watt High pressure Sodium fixture, but wouldn’t it be nice to actually see it person??? We thought so. So we built a board of LED fixtures to do just that.
Listed from Top Left being #1, to bottom right being #12. Here’s what we have:
1) RAB Lighting’s – 91 Watt Area Light. This fixture is perfect for parking lot lighting and walkway lighting throughout a facility’s property.
2) RAB Lighting’s – 13 Watt Flood/Spot Light. This fixture is perfect for lighting up a flag pole or any outdoor sign.
3) Lithonia Lighting’s – 35 Watt Wall Pack. This general purpose wall pack has an excellent beam pattern and is able to replace up to 175w Metal Halide Wall Pack fixtures.
4) Juno Lighting’s – 50 Watt Decorative Wall Pack – Polaris wall pack designed for higher end architectural look. Ultra efficient LED Fixture with a nice look to match.
5) RAB Lighting’s – 52 Watt Wall Pack – Designed to replace up to a 250w HPS / Metal Halide Wall Pack
6) RAB Lighting’s – 78 Watt Flood Light – Designed to Replace 250w to 320w Metal Halide Flood Lights. Perfect for lighting up the side of building.
7) Lithonia Lighting’s – OLW14 – 26w LED Wall Pack – Ideal above man doors on your building!
8) Lithonia Lighting’s – OLAW – 35w LED Wall/Area Light. Perfect Dusk to Dawn Fixture Replacement
9) Lithonia Lightins’s – OLW – 35w LED Wall Pack – For larger HID Replacement applications
10) RAB Lighting’s – 13w Wall Pack – Designed to replace 50w-70w HID Wall pack, above man doors.
11) RAB Lighting’s – 20w Wall Pack – Designed to replace 70w-100w HID Wall Pack
12) RAB Lighting’s – 26w Wall Pack – Designed to replace 150w HID Wall Pack
One of great features of our display is the nLight Touchpad Control. Thanks to our friends from SensorSwitch, we are able to individually control each light on the board to easily compare like fixtures. The wiring is all done over Cat5 cable, making it easy and cheap to install. This switch will individually control 16 different channels. And it looks cool to boot!
- Here’s what the inner workings look like from the back.
We’re excited to show our display to anyone who would like to see the latest and greatest in LED Fixtures on display. Stop by if you’re in town.
Questions? Comments?
Brian Huff
Adventure Lighting
515.288.0444
CFL’s Light Up The Des Moines Register
Tuesday’s edition of the Des Moines Register had a great article on the advantages of using CFL’s, or compact fluorescents, over standard incandescents. We’ve talked about CFL’s big advantages in a previous blog, but we thought it was worth mentioning the Register article, which got most things right but a few things need clarified.
The Register piece said that CFL’s use a “small” amount of mercury. While that may technically be true, the article failed to mention that mercury is harmful to people and the environment in even small quantities. So among CFL manufacturers, there are better choices, which is why we sell Philips brand CFL’s at Adventure Lighting. Their compact flourescents have at least 50% less mercury than other CFL’s without any loss of quality.
To give you a better sense of it, compare a Sylvania 800 series 4-foot T-8 lamp, which has 3.5 milligrams of mercury, to the same lamp from Philips which contains only 1.7 milligrams. We think that’s a big advantage, in terms of environmental impact.
Another point from the Register story that we take slight issue with is when it talked about how fan vibration lessens the life of CFL’s. While that’s completely true for old school incandescents – which use heated filaments that tend to break when shaken – compact flourescents create light by running an electrical current through a gas and so are much more durable and can take the shaking.
To get your two free CFL’s just subscribe to our Here’s A Bright Idea! blog, via email. We’ll send you a confirmation email and how to pick up your two free lights. No purchase is necessary, it’s just our way of saying thanks. In the coming weeks and months we’ll have other great offers for anyone who subscribes to our blog, so stay tuned.
Jack Huff, along with his son Brian and wife Sue, owns and manages Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, go to www.adventurelighting.com
Get Your Rebates Now – But Will They Last?
One of the biggest selling points of our Adventure Lighting lights, especially for business owners, is that over time, the lights pay for themselves and then some – through their light efficiency and cost savings.
Therer’s also another very compelling reason to switch your company’s lights from incandescents to CFL’s – in most cases, the retrofit is paid for, lights and labor, with the Mid-American Energy Rebate program.
But now comes the scary part – will the rebates last? We’ve heard about approaching deadlines for TARP funds, and news headlines talking about funding running out for other savings programs. We also hear from company owners and consumers who question whether the Mid-American rebate program will be around long-term.
Not to worry, says Mark Reinders, communications manager for Mid-American Energy.
He told us that, while he would “never say never,” the rebate program, which started in Iowa 10 years ago, has “no sunset clause” and will be around a long time. Reinders emphasized that the Mid-American’s energy efficiency programs have had “a huge impact on lowering greehouse gases and producing costs savings for customers.” An additional benefit, says Reinders, is that “Mid-American Energy doesn’t have to keep building new plants.” So it’s a win-win-win, for consumers, the company and the environment.
The program has become so popular that it’s been expanded by Mid-American Energy to include Illinois, South Dakota and most recently, Nebraska – but Iowa was the first and, we think, the best! In fact, Mark told us that one of the reasons the program has been so measureably successful in Iowa is because of our steady population numbers – while energy consumption has increased (all those computers and big screen TV’s and Ipods, I suppose) our state population has remained constant, therefore the overall impact of the program has been greater.
In a future post, I’ll talk more about the rebate program process, how it works and how much money it can save your business – the numbers are truly amazing!
For now anyway, we can all rest easy – those fantastic Mid-American Energy rebates aren’t going anywhere. 🙂
Jack Huff, along with his son Brian and wife Sue, owns and manages Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information, go to www.adventurelighting.com.
T8 vs. T12 Lamps
One of the most common questions we receive at Adventure Lighting is, should I upgrade from T12 to T8 lamps?
Here’s the rundown on why this is a no-brainer. T12 Lamps are being phased out of production. I’ve heard that 2012 will be the last year they’re made. Now, I’m sure the lamps will still be available, but there are reasons why they’re going away.
A standard 4 lamp fixture, similar to what most every office in America uses, has a standard 40 watt T12 lamp on a standard magnetic ballast (which won’t be produced after June of 2010) and uses 172 watts of energy. The same fixture retrofitted with T8 lamps and a new electronic ballast uses 112 watts of energy – that’s a 35% reduction in energy usage! To retrofit an existing fixture with the new ballasts is a simple process that requires very basic wiring knowledge. Remove (2) T12 ballasts, replace with (1) T8 ballast, and replace old lamps with new ones in the same sockets.
Not only are you going to see a 35% reduction in energy consumption, you’ll also see a dramatic difference in light output. The Standard T12 lamp produces 2,650 initial lumens per lamp. The standard T8 produces 2,800 initial lumens per lamp, 6% brighter. But the standard T12 lamp produces 2,300 design lumens and the T8 produces 2,660 design lumens.
DEFINITIONS:
Initial lumens – the average lumen output of the lamp after 100 hours of operation under controlled lab conditions.
Design Lumens are the average lumen output of the lamp after 40% of its rated life.
You can see that the T12 lamp loses 14% of its light output over the first 40% of its life, whereas the T8 only loses 5% of its light output. Combine that over 4 lamps and you have a loss of 1,400 lumens per fixture as compared to 560 lumens lost on a T8 fixture. I’ll get into why the T8 lamp is a better lamp as far as color later – but the 35% energy savings and a better lumen maintenance are 2 of the reasons why switching is better.
Let’s say your office runs those fixtures 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. At an average energy cost of $0.07 per KWh you’re looking at a savings of $13.10 per year. If you have 50 fixtures in your building, that’s a savings of $655.00 per year. And by the way, MidAmerican Energy gives you a rebate of $18 per fixture to do this. $54 dollars if you have an audit done. (We’ll get into this at a later post.)
I think I’ve made a compelling argument as to why upgrading from T12 to T8 technology is a no-brainer. Call us and let me come out to look at your situation to give you a free assessment of what can be done to upgrade you today!
Brian Huff, along with Jack and Sue, own and manage Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. To find out more, visit www.adventurelighting.com.
A Light That Pays You To Use It?
Since 1806, when Humphrey Davy created an electric arc between two charcoal rods connected to a battery (Thomas Edison wouldn’t patent the light bulb for another 70 years) inventors have been building brighter, longer-lasting, more energy efficient bulbs.
Today’s CFL’s (Compact Flourescent Lights) generate 20% more light yet burn 70% cooler than standard incandescents (the kind we all grew up with) and last up to 10 times longer. When you do the math (or if you’re like me, have your wife do it for you) you find out very quickly that CFL’s literally save you money, even compared to their slightly higher cost.
For example, on average, a CFL will save you $22 in a year of normal useage, compared to an incandescent. And that’s just one bulb – the average home has 30 light fixtures. Again, do the math – or better yet go to our web site, www.adventurelighting.com and use our energy savings calculator.
The other great benefit of CFL’s is their lower impact on the environment. If every homeowner in the United States replaced just one of their old-school incandescent bulbs with a CFL, it would be the energy emmisions equivalent of taking one million cars off our highways. Plus at Adventure Lighting we sell Philips brand CFL’s, which also have 30% less mercury – easier on the environment.
So whether you’re a business owner or home owner, think about retrofitting your lights – it pays in so many ways!
Brian Huff, along with Sue and Jack, own and operate Adventure Lighting in Des Moines, Iowa. For more information visit www.adventurelighting.com.
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