Lakeville Ice Arena, one of the first to convert to LED
Over the last 10 years Premier Lighting has retrofitted many ice rink facilities from HID (high intensity discharge) lighting to fluorescent lighting with excellent results. The fluorescent solution for ice rinks typically reduced the energy by 50% or more, improved the light levels by 20% plus and saved the customer on-going maintenance costs with longer life product. Up until recently, fluorescent was still the go to solution for ice rinks. That changed when Lakeville Ice Arena requested an LED solution for 1,000 watt metal halide light fixtures. In the past when asked to replace a 1,000 watt metal halide fixture there hadn't been an LED solution that could do it without having to add more fixtures. Recently however P2 (Precision Paragon) developed a new LED high bay fixture that has varying wattage's designed to replace anything from a 100 watt HID up to a 1,000 watt HID.
Premier Lighting analyzed the facility, provided photometric reports of the new fixture as well as a detailed proposal showing the cost and savings of the project. On paper everything looked excellent, 70% reduction in energy, 20% increase in light levels and 5 times longer life of the product. The issue many people get concerned about is the lumen listed on the cut sheet of the LED fixture. A 1,000 watt metal halide typically has 70,000 lumens and the recommended LED fixture for this application has 30,000 lumens listed. This is where the photometric layout is important. Lumens are a measurement of light provided by a source. Especially with metal halide the lumens often get lost in the fixture or on the ceiling whereas with LED the light is directional so minimal light is lost and it's delivered where it is needed. The real measurement to consider are foot candles which is how much light is actually delivered at the work surface.
With Lakeville Ice Arena they were currently getting approximately 50 footcandles and each fixture was using over 1,000 watts of energy, with the LED fixture the photometric report said they would get approximately 55 footcandles and each fixture would use less than 300 watts. In order to prove this, we installed one sample LED fixture next to several existing HID fixtures. The results were accurate-the LED using less than 300 watts provided more light than the current 1,000 watt fixture.
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Before- 1,000 Watt HID
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After-300 Watt LED
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By doing this project Lakeville Ice Arena became one of the first ice rinks in the state of Minnesota to convert to LED lighting. As LED lighting continues to evolve it is becoming the ideal lighting solution for more and more applications. As it stands now, LED makes sense over HID lighting in most applications and starting to for many fluorescent applications as well.
Our job at Premier Lighting is to make sure our customers are getting the optimal lighting solution for their facility. If you have any questions on lighting or would like a free analysis of your facilities lighting please call us at 651-490-0886 or email us at: sales@premierltg.com.
