LED Parking Lot Lights: Make the Switch in 2017

Posted On: March 5th 2017

Your business should be important to you. Whether you need generator installation, or transfer switches repaired, it is vital that you keep your company in top working order. That being said, you will also want your business to make a strong first impression to visitors. One of the best ways to do this is with effective lighting. Lighting in your company’s landscape should be designed and installed to create a welcoming and professional look. But what about your parking lot? Should you be paying attention to the lighting there? The team at Ny Electric Company thinks so, and here is why.

What Are the Benefits of Good Parking Lot Lighting?

• Security: You have worked incredibly hard to build your company. It has taken blood, sweat, and tears to get you to the level of success that you have achieved. Strong parking lot lighting is an excellent deterrent to intruders. With a brightly lit parking lot, potential intruders will likely shy away from your building.
• Employee Safety: If your company operates on a lengthy schedule, you want to make sure your employees are safe when they leave the building at night. It is important to have a well lit parking lot to ensure they can see where they are going when they walk to their car, and when they are driving away. Accidents tend to happen more often in dark parking lots than ones that have good lighting.
• Appearance: Good lighting for your company’s parking lot creates a bright and professional look. It may not be something you’d normally think of, but potential customers are more likely to respond to a well lit company than one that hides in the dark.

How Are You Lighting Up?

Many companies traditionally use high-intensity discharge (HID) fixtures for their parking lots. But is this the best way to go? These high-power lighting sources typically produce pretty low-grade light. What are some of the other negative qualities of these traditional fixtures?

1. They are very expensive to maintain
2. HIDs consume a lot of power
3. They tend to be unpleasant to the eye.

With all of these drawbacks, it seems that a better alternative should exist. Well, it does! LED parking lot fixtures are lighting the way for the future.

What is LED?

LED stands for Light-emitting Diode. In short, LED is a two-lead semiconductor light source. The energy used to light LED bulbs is in the form of photons. The process is called electroluminescence. LED bulbs are usually small and are available in various shapes.

How Does LED Lighting Benefit Your Business?

There are many ways that LED lighting in your parking lot will benefit your company. LEDs are are cost effective on many levels including:

Product and Maintenance Cost: HID fixtures typically consume up to 80 percent more power than LED fixtures. LEDs also last much longer, so re-lamping fees are drastically reduced. If using HID lights, you would have to re-lamp your parking lot about every 3 years. That would include over $10,000 worth of equipment and labor to re-lamp an average parking lot of 25 lighting fixtures. LED bulbs do not burn out, so all of those company funds are saved and can be applied elsewhere. Although the initial investment of LED bulbs are higher, the amount of energy and maintenance that they save more than makes up for that cost. Take a look at this chart for some specific examples of how much your company could save by making the switch:

Energy Costs: As you could have probably guessed already, LED parking lot lights can save your company a great deal of money in annual electric costs. When compared to HID parking lot lights at 25 fixtures in a parking lot, the savings would equal around $3,000. Add the maintenance savings to that, and your company could be saving over $6,000 a year.

Are There Other Benefits to LED Parking Lot Lighting?

Yes there are! Aside from all the money you will be saving your company, there are some other fantastic attributes of LEDs. First, the CRI (color-rendering index) of HID fixtures is usually low. CRI refers to how accurately lights reveal the true colors of things. HID fixtures are capable of CRIs from 0 to 65. LEDs, however, are capable of 75 or higher. Therefore, LEDs show colors more accurately and visibly. The light from LED is more focused, uniform, and produces less glare. LED lights also appear brighter than HID, which is a huge plus for parking lots.

Second, the lumen depreciation rate of LED lights is far slower than HID lights. Lumens are basically the measurement of light that a bulb emits per second. HID lights will usually dim or begin to burnout at about half their lifetime. LED lights maintain their brightness for their entire lifespan, which is also longer than HIDs.

How Safe are LEDs?

Are you convinced yet? If not, here is one last major attribute of LED lighting. HID lamps contain gas, metal salts, and tungsten electrodes. What that means is that in order for them to create light, an electric arc passes from one electrode to the other through mercury, metal halide, or sodium. If one of these HID bulbs burst, its contents would have to be sealed and taken to a hazardous waste facility. It would be incredibly dangerous if any of the gas was inhaled. LED fixtures do not contain any harmful gasses whatsoever. In short, LEDs are far safer for human interaction.

LEDs also emit little to no UV radiation. Of course, HID bulbs emit a large amount of UV radiation. They are, however, protected by an outer bulb. But, if that bulb were to break, the inner tube of the HID bulb would emit the UV radiation. If exposed to skin, UV radiation could cause burns as well as eye irritation.

In conclusion, NY Electric Company highly recommends the use of LED lighting for your company’s parking lot. We are more than generator maintenance, we are also a full service electric company that is happy to assist you in making this switch. Call us anytime to discuss your plans!