The Up Sides of Updating Your Educational Lights to LED

A school is the future in every way. People in school right now will be our future doctors, lawyers, and really every under job title you could possibly think of.

This is why it is crucial for every aspect of the learning environment to be near perfect, for the best possible results.

By converting to LED away from technologies such as fluorescent in our schools, we opt-in for higher grades, better concentration, and ever lower overhead. The types of benefits that we are going to list are beneficial in every aspect of an educational lighting system. If your facility is currently struggling with high overheads, low grades, or both; a conversion to LED technology may be of some great help to all of these issues that can come from our lighting system.

The main benefits we talk about when converting to LED, especially in schools and colleges, include the following:

• LED indirectly improves concentration / focus
• Reduce your energy usage by more than 30%
• Get rebates to reduce costs
• Retrofit vs fully replace
• Longer life spans = lower maintenance costs

The benefits as listed above, even without going over them (which we will do in a minute), prove to very intriguing for any manager of school operations to look into. The benefits seem too good to be true, but they are in fact; true.

Let’s now get into this list of benefits that an upgrade to your educational lighting system to LED could bring to your campus.

LED indirectly improves concentration / focus. Since fluorescent technology is susceptible to flickering and / or buzzing, that means you open up the opportunity for this annoyance to be in your classrooms.

If you’ve ever been under such conditions where the lights are flickering, buzzing, or even both; you know it can seriously take your attention away from tasks at hand.

This is exactly why we think it is unacceptable for fluorescent to be in schools, period. With LED, they will never flicker or buzz, not even near the end of their lifespan. This allows you to reduce the biggest factor of distraction when it comes to a lighting fixture within an educational environment.

Reduce your energy usage by more than 30% (to 75%). Since the most common technology used in schools these days is fluorescent, you will most likely be converting from that technology to LED. By doing so, you can reduce your lighting operation costs (energy usage) by up to 30%. This, although isn’t as much as 75%, can still prove to pay itself back and show an ROI for your investment in LED technology.

Where does “up to 75% reduction in energy usage” come from? From your parking lot and gymnasium. These lights typically use technologies such as metal halide or HPS, and are even MORE inefficient that fluorescent. By converting these types of fixtures over to LED, you can realize up to 75% reduction in energy usage associated with these lights directly.

Get rebates to reduce costs. Only qualified lights that have been tested and passed by Energy Star of DesignLights Consortium are (typically) eligible for rebates. For the most part, the DLC tests and qualifies commercial and industrial lights, where Energy Star focuses on practically everything else.

By getting lights that are qualified by either organization, you open yourself up to some pretty hefty rebates through your utility company. This will allow you to reduce your investment costs, which who wouldn’t like?

Retrofit vs fully replace. Think about this, does it make more sense to replace an entirely good fixture, or just replace the light source within that fixture? Its obvious, yet some people still look into a full replacement even when it is not needed whatsoever.

The only true reason you may want to fully replace your existing fixtures is if they are outdated or falling apart, otherwise retrofitting is the easier and cheaper way to go. By retrofitting vs fully replacing, you can save 50% in costs. This makes it an easy to choice to retrofit your fixtures over fully replacing them.

Longer life spans = lower maintenance costs. LED lights last longer, it’s a fact. Actually, a lot longer. They can last 2-3 times (or more) longer than other technologies.

This not only allows you to reduce costs associated with buying new lights more often, but also reduces the amount of time you must pay for someone to switch out those lights every time they burn out. Imagine a 2-3 time reduction in the amount of money it costs to switch out burnt out lights? This can be a lot, especially for large (or even small) schools with lots of lights.

Wrapping it up

There you have it, all of the major reasons why LED school lighting vs fluorescent school lighting is much smarter to choose LED. To recap, it will reduce overhead, maintenance costs; all while improving your school’s focus and (hopefully) grade improvements.

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/153480663618

What is 'Good' LED Hospital Lighting?

The way hospitals and healthcare facilities are, by nature, is very fragile. It’s a simple concept, and it can’t be ignored; it will always be a fragile environment in a hospital like environment in which patients need tending to.

The importance of the lighting system is often times overlooked as something that could produce not only unsafe environments if handled improperly; but also as a way to improve the bottom line. Both of these things can be addressed and even resolved with a quality hospital lighting system, key thing to remember there is quality.

In effort to help you identify what exactly a qualified LED lighting system is for healthcare facilities, we’ve outlined those identifiers below that you should always be on the lookout for when making a purchase of lighting fixtures for your facility…

Here is what defines a quality LED lighting system for healthcare facilities:

• Exact color temperatures based on a patient needs. With LED, you have a much broader and more exact choice of what color temperature you want to be installed. This gives you the option to meet certain scenarios and situations with the most optimal light for that room and / or area.
• LED technology will never flicker. A flickering light can cause some serious issues, especially in such fragile environments where you’ve got to watch your every move when it comes to your buildings operations. When you have flickering lights, they can cause eye stress, loss of attention, and overall discomfort. These can prove to be dangerous for not only patients directly, but also for doctors and staff. Since LED technology is built in a way that they will never flicker, they are the (for this reason alone) a winner when it comes to a good lighting system for your facilities.
• LED technology will never buzz. This point goes hand in hand with the point above. Buzzing causes people to be annoyed, lack of attention; all of which is no good for these types of environments. Opt-out for buzzing and flickering lights by switching away from technologies like fluorescent and HPS, and convert to LED for no more buzzing lights.
• They don’t contain toxic gases. Seriously, who in their right mind would put a toxic gas into their building in the first place; let alone a hospital? With fluorescent lights, you put your patients and staff at risk because they contain mercury. This is no place for mercury to get started, and it should not be anywhere near a fragile environment such as a hospital.
• Testing and approved by 3rd parties. Within the commercial lighting industry, we have one main organization that tests and either qualifies or doesn’t qualify fixtures based on their quality and efficiency. The DLC (or DesignLights Consortium) qualifies most commercial lights; and you should only be buying these fixtures that are qualified. Otherwise, you won’t truly know what you are in for when you buy and receive your new lights. On top of that, DLC qualified lights (either standard or premium) are typically eligible for rebates. This allows you to reduce your initial cost of investment, and produce a higher ROI

Things that all facilities should consider:

• Buy DLC qualified to get rebates. Like we just talked about, by buying DLC qualified you are eligible for more rebates; more often. This is a huge way to reduce your initial investment all while increasing long (and short) term ROIs.
• Never be cheap. Going cheap and trying to “save a buck” won’t be sustainable in the long run. By going with quality, you will run into a situation where you actually save a LOT more than if you were to cheap out every time it is time to switch out the luminaires in your building. It’s just not worth it.
• Lumens per watt is EVERYTHING. Lumens per watt is the pure definition of what efficiency is when it comes to any light; not just commercial lights. When you search for the higher lumen per watt luminaire, you will find yourself with the most (or close to most) efficient light fixture that you can find. This in turn, allows you to use less watts to produce the same amount of light as a competitive fixture would produce.
• Become educated, it will save you. Being aware of technology and industry terms, knowing what it what when it comes to types of fixtures, and knowing what to look for per se is highly important. Without being aware of what you should be looking for depending on the situation, you may just end up with the wrong fixture, for the wrong application.

Final Words

That about sums it up, we hope this post has brought some awareness to the issue’s that low quality and outdated lighting technology can cause in your buildings.

The simple answer to avoid it all is simple: choose LED. It’s the obvious and easy choice because it will save you money and increase safety for your patients and staff. How can you ask anymore from a lighting system?

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/153128621678

Another successful upgrade to LED High Bays

Another successful upgrade to LED High Bays

source http://my-led-lighting-guide.tumblr.com/post/152742052433