LED's for shop lighting?

[laserman70]

Anyone have good suggestions for shop lighting LED's?

thanks

 

[CanuckSigns]

I would like to know as well. I put led pot lights in my basement at home, replaced 50w halogens with 7w led. The light is very bright, I would say brighter than the halogen, however is a much more direct light, almost a spot light, not sure if that would work in a shop setting.

 

[mpn]

I don't have any in my shop, but I have seen fluorescent tube replacements that were filled with led. T8 style tube but with rows of led in it.

 

[Techman]

I installed LED's on the bottom side of the x axis on my CNC. Light is on the work and it is great.
Used 4 ft of three LED light modules and a 12 volt wall wart. Cost about $6 bux.
Now the table is well lit no matter how dim it is in the shop.

 

[TimToad]

The shop I recently bought has three huge outdoor Mercury/Halide fixtures hanging from the 20' ceiling and we all HATE the light they produce. I also hate the electrical consumption they use up. Our electrician said there is an adapter for our fixtures, so all we have to do is swap out the bulbs. Unfortunately, the appropriate bulbs are about $200 each. But, they last practically forever and save an enormous amount of electricity over their lifetime.

We have the long flourescent tubes in our truck bay and will be replacing them with the LEDs when we can afford it.

I found this place online: www.1000bulbs.com

They seem to have everything under the sun.

 

[SightLine]

Somewhat recent thread on this.....

http://www.signs101.com/forums/showthread.php?114137

We converted 40 older two bulb 8 foot fixtures to two bulb T5HO. Could not be happier with the results and much much more cost effective than LED. Looked close at LED and there is just not much yet that is proven to be reliable for high ceiling use, particularly when it can get quite hot up by the ceiling although Big *** Fans (now Big *** Solutions) does now have their Big *** Light which does look to be a promising solution for high bay LED lights. I'm quite sure they will last but they are not going to come cheap.... Their fans are absolute top notch stuff but very very expensive. I found that residential LED bulbs just are not going to be enough light and DIY solutions such as strip lights are just not going to be reliable to easy to work out. In the end to get enough LED light, while doable and possible, the payback would have ended up being 15+ years with the dramatically higher up front costs involved. Also keep in mind, bright LEDs generate a LOT of heat which needs big heat sinks if you want the diodes to last any length of time. The T5HO bulbs I used are rated for 20,000+ hours (more than double the 8' T12 ones we were using) and with the newer programmed start electronic ballasts each fixture is using considerably less energy and generating far less heat. Point an IR thermometer at an older heavy magnetic ballast in use or the heat sink on a higher power LED and see how hot they are, you might be surprised.

 

[rjssigns]

Here is what I know: Talk to your local utility first. Some will have stupid crazy rebates IF you do what they tell you. Quite simple to do as they send an expert to your site and they work up a plan, all free of charge.

IIRC at my old factory job the cost to redo the lighting was in the $40,000 range. Utility said if you do it like this we'll rebate something like 50%. The other half would take about 5 years with electricity savings.

 

[SightLine]

We did the rebate thing for ours - went over it on the link above. Our utility SCE&G has all the info on their website. White it came down to - using the existing fixture (just the long white metal can and the reflectors) and retrofitting them to use 2 T5HO lamps including the lamps) we ended up spending about $35 per fixture, SCE&G then gave us $20 per fixture back for every one we converted. They have since reduced the rebate amounts some but they still have them. So for 40 fixtures I spent about $1400 to retrofit/convert them to T5HO and got a check back from SCE&G for $800 back making my total cost about $600 and about 30 minutes per fixture to convert one (did all the work myself, very easy). Plus I save money on electric, handling and dealing with short 4 foot lamps is much easier, the lamps last more than twice as long as the old 8 foot ones, and each fixture puts out a LOT more light now too (I'd guess easily 25% brighter).