Photo from Phiips’ ArenaVision brochure
Many arenas have already swapped out their metal halide for less energy-intensive lighting, but many still have that on their “to do” list. If that’s you, here’s something I came across that you might be interested in knowing more about. It’s an easy LED alternative to a metal halide retrofit.
The lighting company Philips has come up with an alternative to a complete LED rerofit: an LED lamp that fits into existing metal halide fixtures. These TrueForce LED high bay, high lumen lamps replace 400W metal halide lamps, delivering instant-on lighting — and substantial energy savings.
Watt a Lot of Savings
Philips TrueForce LED high lumen lamp for high bay lighting is a direct replacement for 400W Metal Halide lamps which will deliver substantial energy savings.
To deliver the energy savings, the wattage difference of the LED bulb compared to the metal halide is a significant 215W — going from a 400W bulb down to a more reasonable 165W. And the coveted feature of “instant on” is a feature any arena manager will tell you makes a huge difference to an arenas’ operations.
The TrueForce LED lamps have a standard EX39 base to replace standard E and O rated 400W metal halide lamps. They work on probe and pulse start ballasts and their expected lifetime is 50,000 hours.
On the TrueForce brochure, Philips sets out the lamps’ energy savings as follows:
Energy savings with Philips TrueForce LED replacement for metal halide fixtures
The energy spend of one of these LED bulbs is 800 kWh/year, which is an arm and a leg less than the 1,832 kWh that a metal halide bulb uses (based on an annual run time of 4,000 hours). Although the Philips example shows the cost savings of over $11K for a facility paying just 11¢/kWh, we know that many arenas are paying north of 20¢/kWh for their electricity — like in Ontario and Alaska.
Because of the significant energy savings, there are probably rebates available from your electric utility if you were to install them. The cost of each bulb runs somewhere around $200 each and are available through commercial lighting specialists like the industrial equipment supplier Fastinal or Commercial Lighting Products who also offer lamp recycling services.
If you’ve still got metal halide lighting hanging around, now is the time to take action with this simple retrofit. If you’d like to take a look at the brochure, you can find it here.
