If you’re not using LED lighting for your parking garage, you’re losing money, visibility, and may be creating an unsafe environment. The alternatives to LED, like high-intensity discharge (HID) lighting, are inefficient and expensive to run on a daily basis.
In an area like a parking garage where lights are running all night long, LED lighting can make a huge difference on your electric bill and can greatly benefit the lighting quality and appearance of your business. Let’s take a look at some of the many functions and benefits of LED lighting compared to the alternatives.
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How They Work
Before we delve into why LEDs are better, let’s outline how they differ in operation.
HID lamps transmit light through a current between electrodes, ionized gas, and a second gas, which is indicated in the name of the light (metal halide, mercury, etc.). These components are housed within quartz glass and are run by a ballast. This ballast creates the initial current and regulates power.
Light-emitting diodes (LED) are semiconductors. When electrons pass through LEDs, they are converted to light. This process doesn’t lose as much heat as an HID, allowing energy to convert more efficiently to light.
Benefits of LED Lighting
The primary reason for any business to convert their parking garage to LED lighting is the long-term savings. LED lighting is a great investment for the future, and produce up to 70% energy savings over a traditional lighting system. LED’s ability to create focused, efficient light in all directions can reduce the number of fixtures or poles required to light an area, allowing for even more direct savings.
Maintenance and Longevity Savings
Imagine being able to quadruple the amount of time between light bulb changes. That would be a no-brainer, right? Many LED lights are rated for over 100,000 hours, so less bulb-changing means fewer associated maintenance costs.
Also keep in mind that an HID lamp comes with many different, expensive parts such as the filament, ballast, and capacitor. By using an LED, you remove these parts from the equation and replace them with a simpler, less likely to malfunction, system. When an LED begins to reach the end of its life, it slowly becomes dimmer. This allows you to schedule routine maintenance ahead of time, rather than emergency maintenance required when a ballast fails unexpectedly.
Efficiency and Appearance
LEDs require no warm-up time, they convert energy to light instead of heat, and they provide more effective lumens per square foot than the alternatives. LEDs provide light uniformity, casting light in every direction. This means there are no dark spots in your garage which can look unprofessional and make customers or employees feel unsafe. By maintaining their color temperature for years, LEDs give long-lasting, high-quality light to any area.
