Replacing Lights in parking lot

Hi Everybody. Just joined and I have a question for you all. I am looking at replacing the lights in our parking lot. We currently have several HID lights. I recieved a quote that has the following info on it.
Trunion Mount LED flood 13W-888 Lumens
Trunion Mount HPS flood 465W-36591 Lumens
Shoebox Mount LED flood 210W-14336 Lumens
Shoebox Mount HPS flood 418W-36409 Lumens
So he is basically comparing HSP with LED. After looking on the web I can figure out the power savings. However I am haveing trouble figuring out if the LED will be enough light for the area. Currently there is too little which is why we are upgrading. I've tried searching for an answer but haven't found anything. Is there anyway to tell if the 13W-888 LED's will be more or less or the same as the HSP.
Thanks for any help.
Scott

Ask him if these are 'bulb lumens' or 'on-ground lumens,' or something to that effect. Parking lot lights can sometimes waste large amounts of light that never does you any good. The LED units installed at my college did a good job of directing most every expensive photon to the ground, so "lower output" units could replace HPS units.

Also think about color rendering. At a given lighting level, orange HPS lights can look gloomy and dark compared to equally-bright mercury-vapor, LED, or any other 'white-looking' light. If your parking area is for customers, they may prefer white-looking light.

Thanks for the reply. I'll ask about the lumens. I'd like to get the LED lights based on the energy savings. What I'm missing is something that says the LED lights will provide adequate light. He put in this in his quote (the LED fixtures quoted will not equal the light output of the existing fixtures). I'm not a light guy so I don't really know how to justify it. I've found all kinds of information on foot cadles and lux, but I'll be honest and say that I'm not sure i understand it all correctly. I just don't want to pay thousands of dollars for the LED and then find out that 888 lumens is darker than we had before. I would think there would have to be someway to compare the two.

You should post the spec's of those HID lights that you're replacing.

^ exactly. If the goal is to get more light, we need to know the starting point. Also, how do you feel about the HPS lamp's yellow color?

brickbat said:

^ exactly. If the goal is to get more light, we need to know the starting point. Also, how do you feel about the HPS lamp's yellow color?

Click to expand...

Sickly.

But they're generally sufficient for safety lighting since the idea is not to perform visually-intensive tasks such as automotive paint matching but rather be able to see and be aware of your surroundings.

But that assumes the parking lot is just an employee parking lot or something without any particular tie to revenue. A car dealership would want metal halide or something that offers better color rendering; retail customer parking would be best illuminated with metal halide as well.

OK. Thanks for all the input guys. Really appreciated.
This is an employee parking lot for a manufacutring facility. We do run 24 hours so people are walking to and from cars during the night, but no work is being done out there.
We currently have 400W metal halide out there. They are trunion and not ther shoebox style. One of the options on the quote is to change the fixtures to shoewbox if that is better. Is there a way to determine what watt LED I would need to improve over the 400W MH.

Srega said:

OK. Thanks for all the input guys. Really appreciated.
This is an employee parking lot for a manufacutring facility. We do run 24 hours so people are walking to and from cars during the night, but no work is being done out there.
We currently have 400W metal halide out there. They are trunion and not ther shoebox style. One of the options on the quote is to change the fixtures to shoewbox if that is better. Is there a way to determine what watt LED I would need to improve over the 400W MH.

Click to expand...

400W metal-halide runs about 30000 lumens each. How big is your lot, and how many lights have you got now? (And why are you looking to upgrade?)

The advantages LED lighting can have (depends on if they made them right) are: Slightly less energy use, better color rendering is possible, and - the big savings - fewer bulb replacements. I bet you need a bucket truck and a trained crew to swap those bulbs. Deciding which route to go sounds like it will involve you and boss-man comparing the costs of more-expensive LED units vs. more frequent bulb replacements of MH bulbs.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]this is a quote from [/FONT]venturelighting[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
"Metal halide lamps can be designed to produce almost any color temperature desired, from 2700K to 20,000K".
I am not sure how you'll be able to get a significant change in lighting without replacing the existing lights with a higher wattage MH or HPS or I guess a LED alternative. Your original post kinda sums that point up unless some lighting manufacturer makes a LED that will compete with HID at 400 Watts(30,000+ lumen). Further, on this forum many posters "Make" their own lights and systems usually for their own personal or home use. since your in a commercial situation any light you buy or make will have to be UL listed!! I assume the quote you got is from a lighting designer or an electrical contractor? Ask if you could UP the wattage of the fixtures assuming it won't overload the circuit?
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i honestly don't see how LED will benefit you over your current setup. 400w MH is tough to beat unless you up wattage to 1000w and/or replace fixture designs.... which may be your best bet. what kind of fixtures do you have now, and how many? whats the sq/f of area to be lit??? perhaps just adding 2-4 more fixtures, being the proper design, would improve lot lighting significantly? its tough for me to imagine that 400w MH aren't cutting the bill for you now... i wouldn't swap to HPS if i could avoid it, personally, and a LED upgrade that would cover your needs that 400w MH isn't now is going to be COSTLY!!!! LED is nice but i don't see it being viable for industrial use quite yet, those electrical systems are far more prone to electrical surges and spikes which are NOT friendly to LED systems. given that YES LED systems have come a long way but just one good surge could wipe out your entire lots lighting.... i wouldn't want to take that risk, better off staying with a time trusted design that has proven itself over Many years and upgrading that to fulfill your needs. MH is durable, long lasting, color friendly, proven and user friendly. LED systems are nice in theory but if you don't have anyone there thats familiar with their designs and requirements, i'd seriously stick with MH. then almost anyone with some electrical exp and troubleshoot and repair..... as opposed to having something fail, having to either replace whole unit or pay someone to troubleshoot and find the fault and repair, OR having someone who doesn't know try and make matters worse. just my opinion. and:welcome:

Another thing to know is how high up are these lights mounted? Then you can go figure out how many candles per foot you want on the ground to determine which light will work.

+1 to above. The 'miracle' of LED is relative to incandescent, generally in homes and flashlights where it's still the norm. Large scale applications switched to more efficient alternatives, years ago. The difference is, most don't care about bad colors in a parking lot.

It looks like what you have now is already as efficient as LED. So if you want more light in either case, you'll need more fixtures.

A few local gas stations have switched to LED high bay fixtures, and the relative improvements over HPS and daylight halide are obvious. I'd put the fixtures (eyeball) in the 10-15k lumen range.

Color is drastically improved with the LED fixtures. Even being cool white the color rendering is better than daylight halide. Biggest advantage with the LED fixtures though is directionality where as HPS / halide tends to spray light everywhere unless you have one of the new, high tech fixtures. For raw flood though HPS wins.

How do I add a picture. When I click on the image box it wount let me paste anything in there

You have to host and upload your pictures to a hosting site, then copy and paste them here

This happened to me too, so dont feel alone

Cheers

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Thanks. OK. Here's the parking light. The LP are the light poles. I'll attach a pic in a sec.

The 2 lights on thebottom of the page are what i would call stationary lights. They are in a square housing. The 3 poles along the road have these on them
http://www.specialty-lights.com/falcon-250-400-mh.html

The far left one has one pointing back toward the lot. The middle pole has 2 on it, one each point at both lots. And the far right one had 1 on it pointing at the little lot. The dimesion of the small lot is 167 across. I know it's hard to read.

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http://www.intencitylighting.com/led-street-and-parking-lot-lighting.html
Personally I far prefer amber; less glare, easier to see if there's someone lurking in the shadows, less total energy used.
http://www.intencitylighting.com/specs/SL1600-Amber-Street-Light.pdf