LED Outdoor Lighting Vs Metal Halide

 

 

When weighing the pros and cons of LED outdoor lighting fixtures to more traditional lighting, a good place to start is always energy costs. Let’s use, for example, a 150w metal halide wall pack. This fixture would use a total of 186 watts when including the energy used by the lamp and ballast. A 45 watt LED wall pack uses just that, 45 watts. In this comparison the metal halide wall pack is using over 4 times as much energy to deliver the same lumen output as the LED wall pack. If we were to estimate usage at 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, the cost to run a metal halide wall pack would be roughly $195 a year. The LED wall pack in this example would only costs $47 per year to operate. Consuming less energy and saving money on your electric bill can clearly be counted as a pro for switching to LED lighting fixtures.

Another important factor to consider when looking at LED outdoor fixtures compared to metal halide fixtures is maintenance. A common application for outdoor lighting fixtures or security or perimeter lighting. In order to cover the necessary area, the fixtures are commonly placed in higher, hard to reach places. Changing lightbulbs in these hard to reach areas can be time consuming and dangerous. LED fixtures however do not have bulbs that need to be constantly changed. They have a lifespan of 50,000+ hours, so using our previous usage example of 10 hours per day and 7 days a week, an LED fixture would last well over 10 years without having any maintenance performed on it at all. On average, the metal halide lamp would need to be replaced every 5,000-10,000 hours. That is five to ten times over the span of ten years, totaling around $150 in replacement costs. In that same time period, an LED wall pack would not require any maintenance or additional costs to operate, again this can only be seen as a pro to having an LED fixture over a metal halide.

In combination with energy costs and replacement lamps, how much do these savings amount to? In our example over a ten year period of time, the operating costs for a 150W metal halide wall pack would total $2100. The 45W LED wall pack would only total $470.00 in operating costs, for a difference of $1,630 in savings.

If the choice were not obvious before, it has become increasing clear that LEDs are the best choice for nearly all outdoor lighting applications. To calculate what you could be saving by switching to LEDs, you can use our savings calculator here https://eco-story.com/calculate-saving/

You browse our selection of outdoor LED lighting here https://eco-story.com/product-category/outdoor-led-lighting/