Impressed by LED tubes

[jcbabb]

What? You don't want everything to look a morgue in a bad TV cop drama?

HA! I installed some LED highbays, some real nice ones, in a high end facility last month. Guy had to have them and all. We all looked blue!

I go to my 7-11 which is all LED and it looks awful. All the colors inside look washed out to me.

Can you give some cut sheets or model numbers for the high bays that you installed?

 

[TNBaer]

Can you give some cut sheets or model numbers for the high bays that you installed?

Sure, the blueness is an issue with every single LED I've seen and is noticeable to me, especially indoors.

My "go-to" LED highbay is the Gigatera Luna . The company I work for offers several fixtures in this product category but this is the one I recommend.

High Lumens per Watt - In fact, Gigatera's listed LPW is actually lower than what the Department of Energy listed it for. In a sea of LED manufacturers hiding specs, Gigatera undervalues theirs.
Narrow Beam Spread - The 50 degree beam is totally unsuitable at anything less than 23' or so. But once you hit 23' the Luna is a monster.
Even beam pattern - The lighting is pretty even over the lit area which is a really undervalued aspect of lighting.
High CRI - This is that area throws me through a loop. The CRI here is good, but reds are pretty lame.
High Operating Temp - One of the highest operating temps in the industry which is, well, really important.
Powder Coating - They'll powder coat it (awesome!) to whatever custom color you want (awesome!). Powder coating is ten times better than painting, IMHO.
Price - This is a high end fixture at a mid-level price point. The Luna has a lot of muscle at this price point. Put this up against, say, Lithonias, and the Luna is easily 10% -15% cheaper, more energy efficient, and puts light on the floor more efficiently.
Lastly, certification & quality - Gigatera is totally upfront with who's drivers and LEDs they use in each of their products. They won't change it out to lower manufacturing costs because some guy in China says they can make drivers 20% cheaper. For the record, these are Samgsung Chips (awesome) and Mean Well Drivers. Some of these guys change chips and drivers every couple months, Gigatera is committed to a product that works.

The only thing that sucks with the Luna is you can't mount an Occ Sensor to it. You can dim it, and you can use a sensor, but you can't mount one to the body of the luminaire.

Again, I'm a big fan of T8 highbays followed shortly by T5s. But when someone "absolutely must have LED" this is what I use.

 

[Electric-Light]

High CRI - This is that area throws me through a loop. The CRI here is good, but reds are pretty lame

CRI is relative to black body radiator at the same color temp.
daylight at 6500K and sunset at 3000K are both 100 CRI but they don't render the color the same way.

A 2700K lamp with CRI 80 is in reference to a black body radiator like a tungsten lamp.

LEDs have traditionally been 6000-6500K. 2700-3500K LEDs are recent things. Many LED and induction activated CFL vendors use scotopic or mesopic fudging to increase advertised lumen values.

Given the same standard (photopic) lumens, higher CCT LED and phoshpor blends have a higher "scotopic" values, which is not a recognized standard by IESNA.