For years, the standard in industrial and warehouse lighting has been the Metal Halide High Bay.

Advancements in ballast development have led to many new lighting solutions for these applications.

Hi-BEAM HB series, a F-bay have helped many to kill kilowatts today. Turning company greener in that sense.

To help you understand further how is this possible, let’s look in details on why are people switching from existing  High-bays out with the Hi-BEAM HB.

Hi-BEAM HB fixtures use less energy

A 400 Watt Metal Halide fixture uses 430 - 470 Watts.

A Replacement to Hi-BEAM can use as low as 195 Watts.

Fewer Watts = Fewer Kilowatts reducing a facilities overall cost of operating the facility.

Energy Costs are going up, never coming down

A key factor on why the exercise was done to change out there lighting is the T5’s ability to not only produce better light (illuminance & CRI), but also to do it while consuming lesser energy.

We use a T5HO fixture that consumes 195 watts compared to the 430 watts that a normal 400W High Bay consumes.

For all the sites that we’ve retrofitted, the new lux readings surpass those of the old lighting.

A T5 bulb maintains 95% of its initial brightness

Have experience that your working environment is getting darker by the day? Metal Halide lamps can lose as much as 40% of their light output.

In comparison, T5 only lose 5% over it’s lifetime.

Not to mention, the percentage of loss only gets worse as the bulb ages, all while still consuming the same 430 watts of electricity. Ouch.

T5 creates better light (CRI)

CRI is the measure of lights ability to reproduce what a color would look like in natural daylight.

The Metal Halide lighting has a CRI index between 65-70.

New T5 HO lighting has a CRI index of 85.

Lower CRI affects the eye’s ability to see contrast, detail, and can also cause eye strain.

T5 fixtures come on instantly, on and off

All conventional high bay lamps need time to warm up and reach full brightness. Not to mention when you have power trip, it’s a pain to wait for it to light up back. Have that experience?

T5HO fixtures are instant on off. And this allows the use of motion sensors to even further your energy savings.

Longer lifetime

T5 electronic control gear (we do not call it ballast anymore), usually have a lifetime of 100,000 hours. The T5 tubes usually range from 24,000-36,000 hours. Conventional high bay lamps will only have about 12,000 hours of lifetime. Not to mention the useable brightness could be less than that lifetime. So to be on a safe and comfortable working environment, you could actually work out that you may change your high bay lamps at least twice before you actually change your T5.

Act now, Go green…Save more with Hi-BEAM

In today’s world electricity costs are only rising, upgrading your lighting system is one of the most straightforward and best business investments you can make into your company.

The return on investment is relatively short, usually within a year or two – before the warranty expires.  With the said benefits on top, you will continue to reap the benefits year after year.  

A picture paints a thousand words

- Administrator.

The LED bandwagon. As more companies design or retrofit their buildings to reduce energy consumption, many may turn to LED  lighting solutions in their efforts to reduce energy costs. But the multi dollars questoin is: Am I doing the right thing? Am I investing into the future?

My research conclusion is this. Give it another couple of years LED will get there. As Britney Spears once sung it, "I'm not a girl, but not yet a woman". But today, while promising, current available LED technology may not be the best solution to fix your company’s energy inefficiencies. To back this up, allow me to make the comparison of LED and T5 lighting technologies and illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of both energy efficient lighting solutions.

Efficiacies of T5 & LED

Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE)  studies discovered and concluded that T5 bulbs produce more light (lumens) compared to the amount of power they consume in Watts in comparison to LED.

The study argued that; “For general illumination applications, the LEDs in this comparison are inferior to T5 lamps in terms of energy efficiency and efficacy.” That is easily proven by 14 Watt T5 fluorescent lamp has the efficacy of 96.7 lm/W. 

Another study performed by The Lighting Research Center found that the more frequently used 21 Watt T5 bulb produced a high efficacy rating of 100 lm/W, while GE is currently manufacturing a 26 Watt T5 bulb that has a rating of 111 lm/W. What we have for LED today is the most of 90 lm/W.  This is proven when you put both side by side, the T5 bulb performed better than its estimated 96 lm/W rating, while the LED performed significantly worse than its 90 lm/W rating.

Heat Dissipation and Overheating 

Have you heard people telling you that a no good heat dissipation system for a LED luminaire will decrease it's life significantly? That guy is telling you the hard truth.

The case study by IEEE also examines the heat dissipation of each lamp and found that the T5 lamp dissipated about 73% of its total lamp power as heat. However, the LED lamp in this study dissipated about 87% - 90% of its input power as heat.  This high heat dissipation percentage can greatly increase additional cooling costs in your building, significantly reduce bulb lumen life, and lead to possible bulb failure.

As Randal Smith from Lighting Design Lab News once put it, “Heat is the great enemy of lighting system performance, and LED systems are no exception."

Have you seen a LED outdoor screen or billboard having AC units to cool it off? The luminaire will need the same. Operating over long hours, and to prevent heat concentration in an LED fixture and avoid LED bulb failure, users must provide additional system cooling, resulting in higher HVAC costs and greater energy use.

Upfront Costs

IEEE’s case study also demonstrates that T5 lighting is a more cost effective lighting solution. The study records the source cost of both T5 lighting and a T8 sized LED bulb using the measurement of $/1000 lm. Study results show that T5 bulbs performed at a source cost of approximately $3 per 1000 lm, whereas the best comparison rival single LED bulb cost more than $70 per 1000 lm. The up-front cost differential between fluorescent fixtures and LED fixtures is also substantial.  In Malaysia, you get an average of myr40 for T5 vs. myr200 for LED. LED retrofitting requires significant upfront investment in contrast to emerging fluorescent technology (i.e. at least 3 to 4 times more expensive). This significantly higher per-unit fixture cost proves that LED retrofitting is an expensive proposition. Yes it may hurt you bad in the pocket.

I've personally come across a company that do not sell you LED up front but they do it based on profit sharing basis. Not heard of them much lately, I do not want to jump into conclusion but, maybe the outlay was underestimated.

CRI Index

LED has a CRI of 75. T5 will have a CRI of 85.

LED and Lifetime

Almost everybody have boasted about the lifetime of LED. 100,000 hours. Mind you, that is 11.5 years if you leave it on for 24x7.

And yes, it started as to have 100k hours, then now you'll see the more common ones with 50k hours. I do not doubt that LED will have a longer lifetime than any other non solid state light. However, what I would like to point out is this.

The actual longevity is not yet proven. This is because:

(i) the actual lifetime of an LED is dependent on its thermal environment

(ii) inadvertent overheating of LEDs typically results in increased lamp lumen depreciation (it's proven that LED will only maintain 70% of the lumens over time). In other words, the useable lumens hours (not the lamp lifetime hours) may be less than what you're expecting. Unless of course you will need to over-spec your initial design to factor in this. But won't that defeat your Building Energy Intensity, if you know what I mean.

Let me put it this way to challenge the lifetime of LED, going back to point no. 3, therefore, by spending equivalent monies on a T5 bulb and the nearest comparable LED bulb, you could buy enough T5 bulbs to last over many times of life hours of the LED. Don't you agree.

Conclusion  

I'm not a girl, but not yet a woman nicely put in what LED is today.

I've no doubt at all LED will be the "thing" for lighting in very near future, but until that time comes, the most significant performance barriers that LED technology will have to overcome include high lumen depreciation, low efficacy, color temperature, and color rendering index values. 

So let's stick to where it's strength is today - as a decorative and support lighting for now.

- Administrator.