100,000+ Lumen

I'm very new to LED's and have an application that will require over 100,000 lumen. In fact it could be as much as 400,000 lumen. It will be a spot/flood setup.

Where would I begin to look for building lights (biggest I've seen commercially is 50k) in the 100k range?

Does anyone here have experience doing this? Any ideas for commercial options?

Light must be industrial and be water/dirt proof.

Thanks for any info you may have.

A pair of metal halide bulbs would get you near the 100K lumen mark, and they're only a few dollars a piece. An eqivalent LED setup would be many thousands of dollars..

StarHalo said:

An eqivalent LED setup would be many thousands of dollars..

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This one's only $8K!:

http://www.lighthouseww.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=305

1000W hortilux HPS bulbs will give you over 145,000 lumens, I personally have walked into a room with 45x1000W bulbs running. It gave me a slight tan only after 10 mins in that room.

http://www.eyehortilux.com/superhps.html

^^^ Guru, Gotcha beat. 2.3 million lumens!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZAMEQ0/?tag=cpf0b6-20

Really though to get this bright would take some serious power. Just barely going above the 100,000 lumen mark would be a 1000 watt metal halide. That's about the upper limit you'll be able to use without going to a dedicated 220v line. You can usually find these around the $250 range for a system. It's definitely going to be more affordable than any sort of led system which can reach into the several thousand dollar range and you'll still have to do lots of wiring and custom build a regulator.

Thanks for the info. The next "kink" is that I want to use solar charging and batteries to run the setup.

Price isn't too much of a concern.

I'm willing to pay for a good consultant.

You'd need a firm that has done lighthouse-scale LED arrays if you're still wanting to go the LED route; the link ElectronGuru posted sounds like a good start.

A residential house solar setup would probably be about right for powering it, those are $15-grand-ish; you'll need outside space for the solar paneling and inside space for the batteries/hardware.

Interesting. I searched again...looks like those Red/Blue grow lights aren't that expensive. Not sure about effectiveness though, no idea at all. And not sure how much are the white LEDs.

http://www.aliexpress.com/product-g...anel-576x-1W-high-power-LEDs-wholesalers.html

When i was in the aquarium hobby, LEDs were not even in vogue. LOL! They use quite powerful lights as well.

1150W LED for aquariums. Can OEM. Bridgelux/Epistar emitters. Cree would be more expensive.
http://www.aliexpress.com/product-g...ht-fishl-ampcoral-reef-light-wholesalers.html

But definitely no spot..... I guess a professional consultant is needed.

2100 said:

Interesting. I searched again...looks like those Red/Blue grow lights aren't that expensive. Not sure about effectiveness though, no idea at all. And not sure how much are the white LEDs.

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Would be great for a rave, but not for area lighting. Effectiveness-wise, if you're using them for what they're usually used for, DaimlerAMG can tell you more about that..

solvingtech said:

Thanks for the info. The next "kink" is that I want to use solar charging and batteries to run the setup.

Price isn't too much of a concern.

I'm willing to pay for a good consultant.

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Running a 1000w system is going to take a lot of power. You'll need at least 1500-2000 watts of solar panel power and massive batteries. How long do you plan on running the lights? Multiply that many hours by the 1000 watts the lights use gets you about the number of watt-hours being used. Now double that to determine what size battery you need.

You'll need a big solar panel or set of solar panels, a charge controller, inverter, and some really large batteries like 4x12v 250 ah sizes. Total cost for this would be around $15,000 not including installation, and it sounds like you're gonna need to hire someone for this if you're only mulling this idea around so plan on about $20k to get a fully functional 1000w solar light.

qwertyydude. are you a consultant?

I ordered one of the 1kw lights from above. It will be here in 30 days. Should be fun to play with!

Actually ordered enough modules to build a 2kw light

Whats the application for the solar lighting LED project?
How many hours a day does it need to run?

solvingtech said:

Thanks for the info. The next "kink" is that I want to use solar charging and batteries to run the setup.

Price isn't too much of a concern.

I'm willing to pay for a good consultant.

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But HID (metal halide) isn't actually less efficient than LED (yet they get no press in the "green" market at all).

Metal halide's supposed to be 65-115 lumens/watt. Sure, there are SOME big LEDs on the market which exceed 100 lumens/W. But that's not yet accounting derating for operation at elevated temps, ballast losses, age, and elevated power levels. You'd probably end up having to grab one of the big DealExtreme LEDs for cost/availability reasons, with 80 lumens/W rated value. All in all, 50 lumens/W is probably gonna be a realistic bottom line.

MH will actually meet your illumination goals at lower power consumption.

qwertyydude said:

^^^ Guru, Gotcha beat. 2.3 million lumens!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003ZAMEQ0/?tag=cpf0b6-20

Really though to get this bright would take some serious power. Just barely going above the 100,000 lumen mark would be a 1000 watt metal halide. That's about the upper limit you'll be able to use without going to a dedicated 220v line. You can usually find these around the $250 range for a system. It's definitely going to be more affordable than any sort of led system which can reach into the several thousand dollar range and you'll still have to do lots of wiring and custom build a regulator.

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HPS is much better the metal halide, yes you are right about metal halide they can produce about 100k lumens but high pressure sodium(HPS) can produce 145k lumens and for only $80-$90 per bulb.

solvingtech said:

qwertyydude. are you a consultant?

I ordered one of the 1kw lights from above. It will be here in 30 days. Should be fun to play with!

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I'm not a consultant, I'm a manufacturing engineer. A consultant of sorts I suppose if you ever need to manufacture or build things. But also being a former naval nuclear engineer too, technology and electronics comes second nature to me.

Also the others have a good point. You need to match the technology to the application. If this is some sort of grow light HPS is the way to go. It's not only more efficient than metal halide, it's also better for the plants. Plants don't absorb green light so any light which produces that color only wastes energy. For general quality lighting HPS though is kinda pointless, that orange look just doesn't work for most people.

But HID (metal halide) isn't actually less efficient than LED (yet they get no press in the "green" market at all).

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Metal halide is certainly less efficient than LED when it comes to a decent visual spectrum. In order to get efficiency levels close to higher end LED fixtures metal halide bulbs produce 'utility' grade spikey spectrums and CRI that is good for parking lots and not much else. So, are we talking about growing plants, lighting a parking lot or being used in a living room?

Metal halide and HPS also don't compete for plant growth given some growth applications require red light and others blue light. Halide is ok efficient at producing blue light and weak at producing red light while HPS is super efficient at producing yellow-orange and very little else. Depends on if you are growing lettuce or tomatoes.

LED will stomp halide when it comes to blue light / vegetative growth, as per what we've learned in reef tanks . For red light it's more controversial given that while HPS is enormously efficient at around 590nm, LED is much more efficient at 625-660nm, and increasing. The common sense factor is that a 1000watt HPS bulb and ballast will cost radically less than the equivalent in premium flux LEDs of any brand.

100k lumens is certainly possible with DIY and will be most cost/efficieny effective using Bridgelux. The cost though would be well in excess of five digits by my math.

The good news is that the core components all exist. It is just a matter of engineering the project. I just completed the engineering for a client project.
- 1 KW of lighting power
- solar panel charged (completely off grid)
- Located in VT, so not a lot of sunlight in the winter
- 5 days of battery storage + panels to cover the real world reality of that area
- Interverters, chargers, LED drivers, etc.

Yes, I do consulting for such projects.

Harry

Dumb question, but why do I keep seeing 'iverters' referred to in regards to LED powered solar applications?

So you can power your house too! Many projects are not off grid. Some are simply back feeding the grid during the day, and using the grid for lighting at night, with a little battery backup for the evacuation. Inverters are there for a reason.

Solar panel, charge controller, large battery bank, dusk/dawn switch, led light, wireless remote override...are what I have since no grid is available where my lighting is.