Jonmad99
Member
- Location
- Ruther glen, va, usa
Does anyone have any experience with 80w LED corn lamps in old metal halide high bay fixtures? good or bad experiences?
Individual LEDs on the outside of a cylinder, like kernels of corn on a cob. They tend to have a fairly narrow intensity pattern radiating out from the "cob", so the results will depend on the geometry of the luminaire and its reflector.Not me. What's a corn lamp?
Not a real great solution but to each his own, I s'pose.
Sensity probably makes the best one on the market: http://www.sensity.com/product-portfolio/led-post-top-retrofit-600-series
Vivid will do these in 27k: http://www.vividleds.us/pages/led-lamps.html
And Beacon makes a great Acorn retrofit as well: http://www.beaconproducts.com/products/lrk3d or: http://www.beaconproducts.com/products/lrk2v
This is hardly my favorite thing to do though. Too many what-ifs for my liking.
Just curious, would you just stay with the HPS until the LED retro's are perfected or do just not like LED's period?
I don't dislike LEDs. Given, there's a lot of bad product out there. A LOT. Much of it isn't even better than IR Halogen and little of it is better than linear fluorescent. But in outdoor lighting it makes sense.
So I don't like these "corn lamps" because you don't really see anyone reputable making them. Take a company like "Light Efficient Design" which makes these "corn lamps." How do they determine whether or the luminaire can regulate the heat properly? They can't, so they stick a fan inside their lamp. What do fans do? Attract dust. What gets inside outdoor luminaires? Bug parts. The whole thing is asking for disaster. Here we are telling people their new leds will last 10 years by purchasing products from companies no one has heard of and likely won't be around for three years. Everyone in the industry knows this is asking for trouble. Maybe it comes by premature failure, or maybe a hefty lumen maintenance issue.
The other thing is outdoor luminaires have different distribution patterns, reflectors that may or may not work with different LED sources.
I design a lot of these projects. A LOT. And I usually get around these cheaper components by redesigning outdoor layouts with great product by companies that have been around the block a time or two. Make no mistake, I readily pursue these projects daily and specify LED regularly for outdoor but rarely do I use retrofits. Too many "what-ifs" and promises by people I don't know.
What's your opinion on the LED's made by CREE?