5 Benefits For Facilities That Use Industrial LED Lighting

Five Reasons Why Industrial Facilities Are Better With LED

At the current rate of adoption, close to 90 percent of all lighting sources will be powered by LED by 2030. This rapid transition to LED lighting is unprecedented, and to remain competitive, it’s time for businesses to consider their own path toward LED technology.

This is particularly true in industrial settings, where LED lighting offers several notable benefits for facility managers. Better efficiency, productivity, controllability, safety and versatility are all standout features of LED lighting in industrial settings. It’s hard to pass all of that up, especially now that LED retrofit options are available for existing lighting systems.

If that’s not enough, here’s five reasons why companies are quickly making the switch to LED lighting:

Industrial LED Lighting Allows Managers To Prioritize Safety

LED lighting generates brilliant illumination that’s comparable (or superior) to other lighting technologies in terms of brightness and color rendering potential. LEDs produce more lumens per watt than metal halides and render color much better than fluorescent fixtures.

Your lighting’s output and color rendering capabilities are both critical safety metrics. In busy industrial facilities and warehouses, good decision making is essential to preserving safety. A lapse in attention may result in a worker walking in front of a forklift or missing critical warning signage.

Good safety practices start with good lighting, and there should never be a situation where poor lighting leads to an accident. LED industrial lighting minimizes the likelihood that such accidents will happen because they optimize visibility and visual communications.

No Lighting Technology is as Controllable as Industrial LED Lighting

Lighting controls are standard in most industrial facilities, but do you have the kind of lighting needed to take advantage of those controls? Older lighting technologies have compatibility issues with a lot of modern controls, and it appears that these issues aren’t going away.

Current LED fixtures have been engineered from the ground up to accommodate pretty much every lighting control product on the market. With LED industrial lighting in place, you can invest in cost-saving and comfort-enhancing lighting controls with confidence.

Add dimmers to fine-tune your lighting’s output. Pair the lights with timers to enhance automation and reduce waste. Consider occupancy controls like motion sensors for better security. Controls enhance the lighting’s efficiency, and no industrial lighting is as controllable as LED.

LED Industrial Lighting Will Also Improve Your Facility’s Energy Efficiency

Energy efficiency was LED lighting’s first major selling point and it’s still relevant for commercial and industrial buildings. LED lighting is the most efficient on the market, and this efficiency advantage can be a big deal for industrial facilities.

At the lamp level, LED lighting is pretty efficient. Source efficiency can reach 120 lumens per watt or a little above. By comparison, metal halides produce between 75 and 100 lumens per watt at the source. Fluorescent tubes emit between 50 and 100 lumens per watt at the lamp.

LED’s advantage really takes off when you consider the entire system’s efficiency. Not only are LEDs a bit more efficient at the source, but because they are directional by design, much more of that light can be targeted to where it’s needed. This can’t be easily done with metal halides and fluorescent tubes, as they radiate light in all directions. Bulky reflectors can mitigate some of those losses, but reflectors cost extra, and they can’t make up the efficiency difference.

LED Lights Help Industrial Facilities Reduce Maintenance Costs

LED’s efficiency advantage has been well-established at this point, but it’s not the only major cost-saving advantage that industrial LED lighting comes with.

LED fixtures also last much longer than other lighting options. On average, an LED lamp should provide between 50,000 and 100,000 hours of high-quality performance. As LED manufacturing improves, it’s likely that newer LED lights will last even longer. Compare this to metal halides and fluorescent tubes, both of which provide around 10,000 hours of lighting before replacement is needed. LED lights also fail gradually, losing output slowly as individual diodes die out on the LED chip. Metal halides and fluorescent tubes often have to be replaced early because they flicker before dying.

For every time you need to replace an LED light, you’ll need to replace a metal halide or fluorescent tube five or more times. LED industrial lighting systems are much less expensive to operate as a result, which makes their higher upfront costs worth it.

With Their Small Size and Directionality, LEDs Can Be Used to Light Anything

LED lamps are much more compact than other forms of lighting and emit illumination directionally. Due to these properties, industrial LED lighting can be installed just about anywhere and for any purpose.

LED fixtures can be used for general lighting purposes, offering more illumination than metal halide and fluorescent systems. They can also be used in task lighting applications or in secondary lighting applications, like illuminating warning signage.

They’re small and directional enough that facility managers can target spots where lighting could make the biggest impact. Quality check, inspection, and assembly stations, for example, are good targets for industrial LED lighting.

For Most Industrial Buildings, LED Lighting Can Make an Immediate Impact

What normally holds facility managers back from that needed lighting upgrade is the cost and effort associated with installing a new system.

That no longer has to be an obstacle. Industrial LED lighting can be retrofitted into an existing system as long as you have the right fixtures for the job. Finding those fixtures can be tough, though, because there are many LED lights to choose from. That’s why many facility managers look to a trusted lighting expert like Bulb Daddy when it’s time to retrofit or install a completely new system.