LED High Bay Lights: The Ultimate Money Savers

Most people don’t realize it, but they are constantly surrounded by high bay lighting. Everywhere you go; grocery stores, warehouses, the gym, indoor basketball courts, ice skating rings, arenas, industrial style offices, and much more.

Why is this important? A majority of the high bay lights that you encounter currently use one of two types of illumination for their light source: HID (most common form is Metal Halide) or Fluorescent. Both of these light sources operate by utilizing hazardous gases containing mercury contained within a glass bulb and rely on ballasts to power the lights that consume up to 20% of the bulb wattage additional (A 400-watt HID bulb actually consumes up to 480 watts with the ballast).

In the case of HID lighting, most of the electricity that is required to illuminate the bulb is expelled as waste (heat). This is why you can fry an egg on a 400W metal halide bulb (Don’t Try This at Home). These HID lights also have a maximum lifespan of 10,000 hours which is greatly reduced if they are exposed to cold conditions or are cycled on and off regularly.

Alternatively, you may see fluorescent tubes in high bay lighting. While more efficient than HID lighting they still come with their own flaws. You’re not going to fry an egg on a fluorescent tube but you can certainly still get a nice little burn on your hand from them. Most are rated to last between 10,000-20,000 hours but you will be lucky if you come close to those lifespans as fluorescent technology is extremely sensitive to it surrounding environment.

You may ask, “Why do I care about the heat and life of a light?” Well, that’s because there are hidden savings associate with converting high bay lights to LED that make them the Ultimate Money Saver!

A good way to tell the efficacy of a light source is by the amount of heat (waste) it radiates. If you can fry an egg on one (HID) light or even get a small burn on your hand from a single light then imagine what the heat radiating from the building’s worth of lights is doing to the HVAC system.

Welcome LED Energy Efficient High Bay Lighting! Highly efficient; using 65-80% less electricity than HID lighting and 45-65% less electricity than Fluorescent technology and not requiring a ballast (no hidden wattage). Due to LED lighting being so much more efficient and not relying on gas to illuminate, they expel significantly less waste (heat), last longer than 50,000 hours in cold or warm conditions, no matter how many times you cycle them with no warm-up or warm-down time (instant on / instant off) and contain no mercury or hazardous materials.

So, by converting your high bay lights to LED money saving lights, you will not only be saving a large amount of money on your electric bill from the wattage reduction but also from the significantly reduced HVAC load while extending the life of your A/C (if it doesn’t run as hard, it lasts longer) and will be maintenance free for your LED High Bay lights for years to come!