How many watts or lumens for parking lot lights?

[patricknola]

Evening gentlemen, I'm giving an estimate to retrofit 5 parking lot lights to led. The poles are twenty feet high so I can't tell exactly what the specs are on the old metal halide lights. Each pole has two opposing fixtures with one bulb each. Its 277 volts. They look like mogul base. I don't want to price led bulbs that aren't as bright as the old ones. How many lumens or watts is the standard for parking lot lights? TIA

 

[tom baker]

There are standards lumen levels (watts means nothing) for parking lot lighting set by the IESNA. Your lighting layout will be determined by pole spacing and height.
I don’t recommend retrofitting HID or HPS luminaries with corn cob screw in led lamps, the distribution of light on the ground will be poor
Contact your electrical distributor and ask them to have a lighting rep do a layout for you. New LED luminares would be best, all new, good for 20+ years.
Also I have seen a lot of failures if corn cob lamps

 

[tom baker]

You can take the lamp watts and lamp type to find lumens, then find a LED source with those lumens. For HPS and HID those are initial lumens and lighting designs are done for end of life depreciated lumens. Easier to give pole height and spacing to lighting rep and let them come up with recommendations

 

[electrofelon]

I would recommend new fixtures. They are
Prolly easy to change. Are they slip fitter mount? Just get LED panels that are adjustable wattage. I did some a few weeks ago and they were adjustable from 150-300 watt. It was two poles with a bullhorn on each, so 4 total. The lowest setting was fine in this case.

 

[tom baker]

I would recommend new fixtures. They are
Prolly easy to change. Are they slip fitter mount? Just get LED panels that are adjustable wattage. I did some a few weeks ago and they were adjustable from 150-300 watt. It was two poles with a bullhorn on each, so 4 total. The lowest setting was fine in this case.

That reminds me, color temperature is also a choice. I don’t care for the 5,000 deg K temps, and prefer around 3,500 deg K.
What did you choose?

 

[Flicker Index]

Those cob lights live a hard life. The LED elements need to be in good thermal contact with the fixture and being hung inside by the socket isn't. These cobs overheat and fail early, fry out with smoke or they internally activate dimming to prevent LED or ballast fry out to lower thermal output causing it to operate at reduced lumens.

On a smaller scale, there's really no successful continuous operation 100W equivalent LED bulb that works to rated performance in a jelly jar fixture. Burnout protected lamps work great for lamps that are only powered sporadically with long off time and short on time as they're able to provide full rated lumens during the short time but operate at reduced output if left on for a long period. So, in continuous operation, a bunch of these bulbs can save quite a bit of energy.. by forced dimming. This is the way bulbs rated for use in totally enclosed often work.

Non fryout protected bulbs tend to fail in a matter of months if left on in enclosed fixtures.

 

[James L]

That reminds me, color temperature is also a choice. I don’t care for the 5,000 deg K temps, and prefer around 3,500 deg K.
What did you choose?

I like 4,000k and I'm so glad many of the lights are coming with color selection

 

[electrofelon]

That reminds me, color temperature is also a choice. I don’t care for the 5,000 deg K temps, and prefer around 3,500 deg K.
What did you choose?

I can't remember, I think 5k

 

[ffshark80]

For parking lot lights, standard metal halide fixtures typically range from 250W to 400W, with lumen output between 20,000 to 35,000 lumens per fixture, depending on wattage. For LED retrofits, aim for similar lumen output to maintain brightness—typically, a 150W to 200W LED can match a 250W to 400W metal halide. Make sure to check the beam spread too for optimal coverage.