Out with the offensive fluorescent lamps.

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steve66

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
Engineer
You can go on and on and on, we can talk about the reasons for incentives and if there should be any incentives.

But that is still a separate issue from customer satisfaction.

This particular customer got all new lighting fixtures updating the looks of their office space and they were able to do so for short money with the added benefit of lower electric bills.

You are trying to swim upstream.

I'm with Bob on this one. Mr. Light can blast LED's all he want's but it won't convince me.

I've seen before and after. I know the "after" is brighter and looks better, and I know it uses less power.

The only thing left, is depreciation of light output. And I can't believe a solid state LED is going to have a greater light output depreciation than Metal Halide, or fluorescent. I don't see any LED's turning black like fluorescent lamps do.

And LED's just keep getting better and better, while MH and fluorescent is a very mature technology.
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
That is not our end of it, we are nothing but hired labor.

None of it is Government money but nice try. :lol:

Dollars for the subsidy aren't coming off the company's profit line. That means someone (ie, everyone else) is footing the bill. It's welfare, just of the corporate variety.
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
Dollars for the subsidy aren't coming off the company's profit line. That means someone (ie, everyone else) is footing the bill. It's welfare, just of the corporate variety.

It's welfare just as much as buying things on sale at a store.

In both cases a company has decided to make less money.

In the power companies case it is cheaper for them to reduce demand than to increase the capacity of the infrastructure.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
Back when there was more incentives to convert T12 technology to T8 technology

I hate those phrasing. It's like calling batteries AA technology and AAA technology. Lamps are more efficient on HF from electronic ballasts than 60Hz. That and somewhat higher watts out vs watts in efficiency of the ballast. Those are the bulk of the change.

There's 35% less area inside a 1" T8 than a 1.5" T12, so T8 uses less raw materials. You get nearly the same efficiency from F40T12 RE80 3500 lumen lamps and an electronic ballast as you do with RE80 T8. Energy service companies were banking on the fact that they're not drop-in replacements. Same when T5s came around... and again when LEDs came around. The energy service sales industry stick to rewire based design for obvious reasons.

I think LED sales people think 24" 15W T8 and 25 and 28W 48" HPT8 are evil :lol: which are the commercial lighting versions of screw-in energy reduction bulbs.

In Europe, they went for drop-in T8s that work on T12 ballasts.


I'm with Bob on this one. Mr. Light can blast LED's all he want's but it won't convince me. I've seen before and after. I know the "after" is brighter and looks better, and I know it uses less power.

Before and after test is always important, but it's a catchy sales tactic when the immediate result is used to conclude the outcome and fix the long term conclusion from it it. The claims used for savings require years to achieve, but project is evaluated by the LOL LED sales vendor after the LEDs have even seen their first 100 hours.

The Light Emitting Decoration tragedy
C4QuXPk.gif

Look at the green line and green dotted line. So if an existing 700W MH "before" was replaced with a new 400W MH "after" (with ballast), someone with an LED salesman hat will express it as same lumen output as before and 45% electricity saving. If the existing lamps were simply replaced, LED sales people will say "our retrofit increased the efficiency by 100% and increased worker comfort by doubling lumens" because, they assume they don't depreciate.

Fixtures like Lithonia nLight N80 uses more and more power as the LEDs become less and less effective.

How many hours did the original lamps have before the "before" reading was taken?
How many hours did the new lamps have before the "after" reading was taken?

The only thing left, is depreciation of light output. And I can't believe a solid state LED is going to have a greater light output depreciation than Metal Halide, or fluorescent. I don't see any LED's turning black like fluorescent lamps do.

You're simply associating visible changes with performance. Fluorescent lamps have existed and been used long enough that it is proven by real data that RE80 lamps hold over 90% of original lumens at 50,000 hours. The loss is higher during the initial few thousand hours, but tapers down to nearly flat.

LEDs are tested for 6,000 hours in the lab and the line is extended to predict when the output drops to 70%. The actual can be waaaaay higher or could be lower. A tiny error in the extrapolation can significantly affect the outcome. This is why LEDs are an unproven technology when it comes to long term performance. It's like a very high risk investment that offers pathetic gain potentials. LED industry calls the future mood testing game as L70 life. If you think I am biased, just look up LED L70 life. To mitigate the decay, some fixtures use a lot more LEDs and a large heat sink and drive them lightly so they can get a favorable estimated life on L90 (10% loss scale).

Dollars for the subsidy aren't coming off the company's profit line. That means someone (ie, everyone else) is footing the bill. It's welfare, just of the corporate variety.
And the energy service sales company probably put more effort in lobbying their local energy conservation and the governing board for incentives to allow BS welfare and someone like me was not present to counter their argument in favor.
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
You're simply associating visible changes with performance.
.

I have never installed lighting fixtures for light meters, not once.

I generally install lighting fixtures for people and those people enjoy working under LED fixtures I have been installing.

It's humans that pay the bills, not charts, not graphs, not light meters.

To sum up.

  1. Reduced power consumption
  2. Customers report they like it
  3. Customers report it is brighter

The one real issue we ran into was using LEDs to light up the insides of deli / meat cases. The supplier could not find an LED color that did not make the meat look unappetizing. This customer has a particular brand and a color T8 they like in their meat cases and decided to stay with it.

On the other hand the LEDs in the beverage cases make the product 'pop' much more than the T8s did.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
I have never installed lighting fixtures for light meters, not once.

I generally install lighting fixtures for people and those people enjoy working under LED fixtures I have been installing.

It's humans that pay the bills, not charts, not graphs, not light meters.

Ahhh confession time? ;)

To sum up.

  1. Reduced power consumption
  2. Customers report they like it
  3. Customers report it is brighter

Which is fine and I have nothing to add to it if they paid for it out of pocket or they got a rebate from the manufacturer. If the power company was paying $100 rebate for someone to smash-in the screen to their power guzzling 46" plasma TV (uses something like 600-700W :blink: ) before handing it over for recycling, it would be more agreeable than using surcharges to pay a significant percentage of their 52" LED backlight LCD TV that they wouldn't have bought without the rebate.

Certain things are much less agreeable such as cosmetic surgery paid for by Medicare or lighting upgrade that received substantially more government or utility funded grants solely because of "LED technology". The surgeon and energy service retrofit both deserve to get scrutinized.

The one real issue we ran into was using LEDs to light up the insides of deli / meat cases. The supplier could not find an LED color that did not make the meat look unappetizing. This customer has a particular brand and a color T8 they like in their meat cases and decided to stay with it.

On the other hand the LEDs in the beverage cases make the product 'pop' much more than the T8s did.

These are tasteful applications that I am ok with. Light Emitting Decorations have improved decorative lighting. For the meat display case, Cree's hybrid lamp like their CR6 2700K downlight may work. It's like a regular LED bulb spiked with red LEDs for the blood red rendition. Apparently Cree holds patents for lighting products that use red LEDs to complement solid state fluorescent lamps (aka pcLED) so you probably can't find this type from every brand.
 

Fulthrotl

~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
governing board for incentives to allow BS welfare and someone like me was not present to counter their argument in favor.

and so.... you are over here trying to convince us of.... what?

that we should hate LED's on moral grounds? at the risk of tipping
you over the edge, i have at last count 61 LED architectural grade
can lights in my home... all on dimmers. i can turn on every single
one of them, and dim them fully, and i pull less than 100 watts,
according to the clamp on hanging out on the panel when i tested.

i happen to like them, as you may have guessed. without any graphs,
relational databases, or other means of quantifying or qualifying my like,
let's just leave it as a given.

this may come as a shock, but the boat sailed on this a while ago.
all the navigation lights on the boat are LED's. maybe the boat
captain will consider changing back to another light source, when
these LED's burn out, but that may take a while.

i just specified and took delivery of four street lights with double headed
LED lights.... going ever further over to the dark side, i am.

get over it. we are going to do exactly whatever the hell we want with
or electrical policies, within the constraints of national policy.

the simple truth is, or is rapidly moving in the direction that the people's
republic of california has determined that a building built without LED
lighting cannont pass Title 24:2013.

and calif. is usually a beta test site for the rest of y'all.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
and so.... you are over here trying to convince us of.... what?

that we should hate LED's on moral grounds? at the risk of tipping
you over the edge
I don't care that you're spending your money as you please to buy whatever expensive toys you want.

i have at last count 61 LED architectural grade
can lights in my home... all on dimmers. i can turn on every single
one of them, and dim them fully, and i pull less than 100 watts,
according to the clamp on hanging out on the panel when i tested.

i happen to like them, as you may have guessed. without any graphs,
relational databases, or other means of quantifying or qualifying my like,
let's just leave it as a given.

You need a proper power analyzer that can measure chopped power created by dimmer. So the 100W is just a number that is probably not correct. You can't do V*A = watts on dimmed loads. No disagreement on everything else. The point of reference for can lights isn't HPT8. I've already come to accept that CFLs are pretty much a no match for LEDs in delivered lumens per watt in can lights and realistic life doesn't have to revolve around tens of thousands of hours at full output in residential use.

i just specified and took delivery of four street lights with double headed
LED lights.... going ever further over to the dark side, i am.
Yep. Nothing new that LEDs do good when traditional systems struggle with optics efficiency.


the simple truth is, or is rapidly moving in the direction that the people's
republic of california has determined that a building built without LED
lighting cannont pass Title 24:2013.

Everything you touched in order to key in the above message probably contains chemicals known to your state to cause cancer. Anyone can petition something they find disagreeable in codes. If I find direct or subtle LED mandate not justified by quantifiable justifications I may have to do that.
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
Ahhh confession time? ;)


Confession time? :?

That suggests I disputed your graphs, charts or light meters. I challenge you to quote me doing that. :)

My position has been that the customers, (the humans) that have to work under the LEDs I have installed are reporting they find them brighter and easier to work under.

Pretty straight forward I think.



Which is fine and I have nothing to add to it if they paid for it out of pocket or they got a rebate from the manufacturer. If the power company was paying $100 rebate for someone to smash-in the screen to their power guzzling 46" plasma TV (uses something like 600-700W :blink: ) before handing it over for recycling, it would be more agreeable than using surcharges to pay a significant percentage of their 52" LED backlight LCD TV that they wouldn't have bought without the rebate.

So you are saying is that a for profit business, as a power company is, cannot decide to spend money on reduced energy consumption when the power company believes it will save them money in the long run resulting in higher profits.

That seems pretty un-American :p


These are tasteful applications that I am ok with.

A sigh of relief is heard across the country. :D


Light Emitting Decorations have improved decorative lighting. For the meat display case, Cree's hybrid lamp like their CR6 2700K downlight may work. It's like a regular LED bulb spiked with red LEDs for the blood red rendition. Apparently Cree holds patents for lighting products that use red LEDs to complement solid state fluorescent lamps (aka pcLED) so you probably can't find this type from every brand.

Interesting but again, I am just a machine, hired labor, paid from the neck down as it were. :dunce:

I do not choose what products are being installed.

If next week they hire me to pull out all the LEDs and replace them with 1,500 watt mogul base incandescent lamps I am OK with that as well. I am nothing more than a lighting mercenary.
 
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steve66

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
Engineer
Fixtures like Lithonia nLight N80 uses more and more power as the LEDs become less and less effective.

Yes, I'm familiar with the N80, but your spin on the technology is completely backwards. They actually use less power the first few years, resulting in even more savings.
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
It's welfare just as much as buying things on sale at a store.

In both cases a company has decided to make less money.

In the power companies case it is cheaper for them to reduce demand than to increase the capacity of the infrastructure.

Everyone who believes a semi-monopoly with a guaranteed rate of return is leaving money on the table, please raise your hand. :happysad:
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
Everyone who believes a semi-monopoly with a guaranteed rate of return is leaving money on the table, please raise your hand. :happysad:

OK I put it wrong, they chose to pay for LEDs now to save them money in the future increasing the capacity of the infrastructure.



Let's hear your explanation. :)
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
OK I put it wrong, they chose to pay for LEDs now to save them money in the future increasing the capacity of the infrastructure.



Let's hear your explanation. :)

IIRC, the utilities are not allowed to include non-productive capital investment as part of their rate structure. From the time the first shovel hits the ground until juice is flowing out, those costs are on the utility, though there may be some offsets. If they can delay shovel day, that's a higher rate of return to the shareholders and a higher stock price. It's using ratepayers money to keep up stock prices. Nice work if you can get it.
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
Statistically averaging of failures of fluorescent lamps in commerical lighting.

Statistically averaging of failures of fluorescent lamps in commerical lighting.

I am addressing this in context of large scale commercial lighting implementation. Not just a storage room with one or two fixtures. Fluorescent lamps are used in a large quantity and the failure model is very well established.With a large number in use, the failure rate is very very very predictable and well spread out. Of course, ballasts can fail and that will wipe out the entire fixture, but this does not make a difference if you're using fluorescent or LED. the only difference is the name.

Yes, I'm familiar with the N80, but your spin on the technology is completely backwards. They actually use less power the first few years, resulting in even more savings.
The baby thinks you're driving in reverse if he's in a rear facing seat ;) You are confused, because you were told with a spin of sales or you read something with a spin of sales.

There are legacy street light systems that use a constant current 6.6A circuit. As filaments thin out, the voltage goes up and wattage goes up. On a constant voltage circuit, as filaments thin out, current drops and wattage goes down. You're confusing variation compensation with degradation compensation. A constant wattage driver can hold the lamp at the same wattage, but you will still lose lumens, because the evaporated filament slowly tints the glass. If the filament power was raised to perfectly counter the increasing darkness of glass, you will have a constant output and this would be called a DEGRADATION compensation.

The lamp power regulation is entirely up to the driver. Incandescent, standard magnetic ballasts,some electronic ballasts and some LED lights (especially earlier re-wire retrofits) are affected by normal line voltage variation. The extent of variation depends on the ballast. CWA type MH ballasts have a much better lamp wattage regulation. Most modern electronic HID/LED/fluorescent ballast-driver-power supplies are immune from wattage variance within the range of ordinary voltage variation (+/- 10%). Standard magnetic HID ballasts see the most impact of voltage variation. Some designers have included minus 10% voltage operation in design if the system was seriously overspec'ed and the primary concern was not being caught dead under delivering under any circumstance and waaaay over lit most of the time.

Metal halide, mercury vapor and and LED (as they're applied now) have the same pitfall and that is the extremely high level of lumen depreciation during their designed useful life. The lights need to live up to the required performance range for years. Not just for one week in an LED product booth at the Light Fair. So, if the maintained light level requirement is 1 at half way into useful life, you need to up size the initial output accordingly so you maintain 1. For HPT8, remaining output factor is 0.94 mid way and 0.92-0.93 at end of life (70% of rated life when you lose around 10% of lamps burn out).

Take a look a this: http://www.grainger.com/ec/pdf/Philips-ICN4P32N-Spec-Sheet.pdf
Most T8 ballasts bump up the lumens on remaining lamps if one of the lamps fail. So, when a 4 lamp fixture loses one lamp, the ballast boosts the power by 12.4% on the remaining 3. you lose some lumens, but you lose some wattage too. So, if you have 10 fixtures with 40 lamps, you can expect to see 4 lamps out. So, with six fixtures running 4 lamps and 4 fixtures running three lamps and each lamp still giving 92%:
If the end of life cut off is 90%, you only need to oversize about 5%.

Initially you had 10 fixtures x 4 fixtures x 100% of starting lumens = 40 units
At end of life, I estimate...

6fixtures x 4 lamps x 0.92 = 22.08
4 x 3 x 0.92 x 1.124 boost(BF bumps up from 0.89 to 1.00 on remaining lamps) =12.41
Those add up to 34.49 units
So, the estimated lumen remaining is 86%.

The system uses 1110W initially (111W x 10)

At end of life...
111W x 6 fixtures = 666W
93W x 4 fixtures = 372W (fixtures that are running at lower wattage because one lamp is out)
1038W

93.5% of original kW demand. 6.5% temporary demand offset, until relamped.
86/93.5 = 0.92... which is the same as lamp's lumen maintenance.

0.90 required lumen maintenance at end of life /0.86 remaining = 1.046. 4.6% overspec needed. I'd say that this is a small enough level that it's not worth the expense of a custom programmable micro controller compensation system.

Light loss due to dust needs to be addressed regardless of lamp technology, so it is excluded from this discussion...

Using LEDs, 90% required divided by 70% remaining at end of life (50,000 hours) vs (56,000 hr for 80,000 hour Philips 2XL lamps used to 70% rated life),
you need to spec out 28.6% higher initial lumens.

This is where nLight comes in. You use a programmed controller that is calibrated to the ASSUMED degradation characteristic of LED decay and start the system dimmed down to 78%. As the actual LEDs develop tolerance to electricity and need more and more dosage to produce the same effect, the computer raises the dosage until the maximum allowed is reached. The maximum dosage is continued and the fixtures are considered end of life when the final output no longer meets the requirements. If the real life degradation pattern and predicted calibration profile deviate significantly, constant lumen maintenance may not work as planned. Unless all the fixtures are linked by a data bus, it's going to be a lot of work to fix them.

iwire, what are you doing today? Reflashing the firmware in every light fixture at the store. :p




It produces kWh saving compared to LED fixtures without degradation compensation, but I do not believe it will yield a kW demand saving for the utility infrastructure, because the increase in demand is predictable and it is simply offset a few years.

I think we both have an idea of how it works, but you see my view as backwards, because slick sales played mind games put it in backwards in your mind. Metal halides and LEDs suffer the same shortcoming of high lamp lumen depreciation percentage during the useful lifespan.
 
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steve66

Senior Member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
Engineer
The baby thinks you're driving in reverse if he's in a rear facing seat ;) You are confused, because you were told with a spin of sales or you read something with a spin of sales.

Sorry, but you have it backwards. I think its pretty obvious that a fixture with a flat lumen output vs. time is better than a fixture where the light output decreases with time, but let me spell it out:

Any lighting design worth its salt would have to consider the lumen depreciation. I'm sure you agree with that since lumen depreciation seems to be one of the main things you have against LEDS.

With fluorescent or LED fixtures, that means we have to overlight a room and use more power than necessary from the start. We do this so the owner isn't complaining a year or two after the project is complete.

But not with the N80. The lumen output stays very flat. So no more wasted power for the first few years.

Now who is trying to put a sales spin on it?
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
Sorry, but you have it backwards. I think its pretty obvious that a fixture with a flat lumen output vs. time is better than a fixture where the light output decreases with time, but let me spell it out:
Absolutely.

Any lighting design worth its salt would have to consider the lumen depreciation. I'm sure you agree with that since lumen depreciation seems to be one of the main things you have against LEDS.

With fluorescent or LED fixtures, that means we have to overlight a room and use more power than necessary from the start. We do this so the owner isn't complaining a year or two after the project is complete.

With high decay lamps like metal halide, volume leader LEDs and 4' 110W T12 VHO cool white fluorescent; and moderate degradation lamps such as F96T12/HO CW 110W and F40/CW degradation is a major issue. It is possible to dim any of these lamps in the range of interest for degradation compensation, so they can all start at lower level and ramp up as degradation builds up. Such an implementation is the N80.

But not with the N80. The lumen output stays very flat. So no more wasted power for the first few years.

Implementing something that increases the power input to maintain output as LEDs build tolerance to electricity solves "the owner isn't complaining a year or two after the project is complete." issue but the lack of permanent kW demand reduction means second thoughts should be given as demand delay rather than demand reduction.

Another way is using RE80 lamps (F32T8/8xx) that degrade so little that you can avoid over sizing and skip the costly compensation system. These have been around for a long time, but the volume leader was the 700 series lamps (F32T8/7xx), because they were cheaper. 700 series lamps were banned in July 2014 due to their slightly lower efficiency even though the lumen loss percentage is still fractions of LEDs.

Each and every LED chips cost money as does heat sink material. The degradation is steeper when the chips are pushed harder (mA drive current) Reasonably affordable LED fixtures have extreme levels of lumen loss, rated at 30% until rated life. The unaffordable fixtures use more LEDs and don't push them hard to get a good life rating with only 10% loss. One example of such uses Philips Lumileds Luxeon Rebel that can handle 3W but only pushed to 0.5 to 1W or so.
 
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Electric-Light

Senior Member
I say the masssave program has to get reevaluated and have a photometric performance criteria added to cease T5HO to LED type non-sense.

I'd guess the incentive was $200-300 per fixture depending on how the "before" wattage was eastablished.

I do not have any idea at all. Not my part of it. I would bet it would not be happening at all except for incentives from the local power companies.

86B
LED Interior High Bay/Low Bay (100W - 199W) >150 watt reduction.
$200

LED Interior High Bay/Low Bay - minimum 100W. Retrofit kits are eligible for this incentive. Eligible fixtures are required to be listed by the Design Lights Consortium and must meet DLC Technical Requirements #22, #23, #24 or if a retrofit kit #34, #35. Only one incentive per fixture or retrofit kit.

86C
LED Interior High Bay (>=200W) >400W reduction
$300

LED Interior High Bay/Low Bay - minimum 200W. Retrofit kits are NOT eligible for this incentive. Eligible fixtures are required to be listed by the Design Lights Consortium and must meet DLC Technical Requirements #22, #23, #24. Only one incentive per fixture.
 
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