New Shop Lighting

+1 for the Led lighting.
In my house, I recently had to make a decision for the lights in my kitchen as they are 20+ years old and flaky in operation. Looked at the replacement tube in Led and thought that was a bit much.
So, I ordered a 5M strip of superbright 5630 (300 led/strip) lights and a power supply off ebay. To make a long story short, I am extremely pleased with the results as they appear to have at least as much light as the old lights and are instant on! Conversion was quick and easy. Like it so much, all the old fixtures in the house and shop will be refitted. Oh and the price of the strip and leds was cheaper than buying new ballasts. A 5M strip is enough to do two 4' fixtures and leaves 9 leds spare.
 
For operating efficiency, LED's have taken the lead. Next are HO T5 fluorescent's, followed by standard fluorescent's. For longevity, far and away , LED's. I have replaced most of the screw-in bulbs in the home and shop with CFL's. The few that I haven't are on dimmer circuits or are used so infrequently that their lower operating cost doesn't justify the higher initial cost.

CFL lamps initially came out with claims like 50,000 hr. life. In my experience, I would be lucky to get 5,000. I have a bucket full of those spirally things. LED's are also supposed to have a 50,000 hr life. I have been using them for area lighting for more than eight years and have yet to replace one. Our kitchen is all LED except for one CFL over the island and we have more than 1600 LED's in it.

In the northern regions, CFL's and other fluorescent's don't work well in a cold environment, so not a good choice outdoors.

On our front porch, I installed 16 ft. of high output strip lighting and it provides about 5,000 lumens of light. Because of the directivity LED illumination, this is roughly equivalent to a similar length of fluorescent lamps.

I mounted the strip in 1/2 aluminum channel, commonly used for edging in woodwork after milling the legs down so they wouldn't obstruct the light. I bought lengths of 1"square expanded PVC trim and split it on the diagonal, chamfered the square edge to provide for wiring and milled a groove to accept the aluminum channel. The resultant fixture fits neatly in the corner between the house wall and the porch ceiling. It operates on 12 v.d.c. and is powered by a 30W switching power supply. It also has a remote controlled dimmer so it can be powered on and off and dimmed from within the house.

I still have some CFL's in the shop, mainly because of the higher output. I am running 150w to 250W equivalent on three fixtures which compromise the main shop lighting. In the machining area, I have 10 4' ft fluorescent's, a legacy system, and I still have a box of replacement lamps so I'm not likely to do a replacement on those yet. Screw-in LED bulbs have come down significantly in price and when they're on sale at the local DIY I buy a bunch. The last sale, they were just over two dollars each for 60W equivalent bulbs. When they come out with 150W equivalent LED bulbs at a reasonable price, I will replace all the shop CFL's.

On the machines themselves, I have changed any incandescent lighting to LED. I don't know if it's true but those spiral lamps look rather fragile and I wouldn't want a stray piece of metal or tool to break one.

If I were rewiring the shop, I probably would run more screw-in fixtures so that I could take advantage of the more common 60W equivalent LED bulbs for general lighting. For lighting in the machine area, I would opt for more diffuse lighting so the choices for me would be fluorescent fixtures with the intent of converting to LED at a later date, an LED driven fixture in a fluorescent format.

4' LED replacements for fluorescent's are still up around $13/1000 lumens in the local DIY's although I have found replacement lamps online for as low as $5.6/1000 lumens. A typical 40W fluorescent puts out about 2600 lumens so I would want similar output from an LED replacement solution. At an operating cost of $.15/kwh, the differential is that great yet; about $.0004/1000 lumens/hr. At that rate the break-even point would be about 30,000 hrs.

However, the technology is improving all the time and cost is coming down. As I see it, the big roadblock to high output LED lighting is the required heat sinking. As the efficiency of LED's improve, the heat sinking requirements drop and they are able to squeeze more lumens out of a smaller package. I have two 6mm LED's on my desk that will put out over 1300 lumens each and Cree has a 9mm package that will put out up to 4,000 lumens.

Bob
 
mcoak said:
I will convert when LED prices drop. As a ham radio operator I am concerned about EMI from the LED power supplies. A couple of articles about LEDs and EMI:

http://www.ledbenchmark.com/faq/LED-interference-issues.html
http://www.emcrules.com/2011/07/radio-interference-from-led-lighting.html

Mitch
Click to expand...
LED power supplies can be as simple as a current limiting resistor. We are in the wild and woolly days of the LED area lighting technology and there can be all kinds of weird drivers out there. For high efficiency, high frequency switching drivers are typically used but isn't that where the fluorescent technology is going as well? As a former ham, I can relate to the issues with trying to eliminate points sources of interference. While I no longer search the radio spectrum for tiny signals and can't speak to that, I have been immersed in LED lighting for almost a decade and have never noticed any problems. The FCC has the authority to regulate this industry and I would expect that if it becomes enough of an irritant, they will.

As I see it, the biggest issue is that we are trying to convert an incandescent world to a new technology that doesn't like 120v.ac. Thus we come up with devices with point of use power conversion which, to be competitive, are subject to compromise. Maybe a better solution would be to add a low voltage d.c. lighting buss driven by a well designed central power source?

Bob
 
I found 4 ft fluorescent is the lowest cost to buy and run
LED is about same to run but larger price
I use both 4 ft fluorescent and standard LED/CFL in my shop

Dave

mcoak said:
I am finally getting electricity to my new shop space. It's about 15' by 30', no windows.

Would fluorescent fixtures be the best way to light the shop?
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
RJSakowski said:
Maybe a better solution would be to add a low voltage d.c. lighting buss driven by a well designed central power source?
Click to expand...

That's a sufficiently interesting idea that I may eventually try it in my small shop for some task lighting. I went with the T8 fluorescent bulb replacements for my main overhead LED lighting because I already had the fluorescent fixtures mounted on my ceiling, but if I was doing it from scratch I'd definitely think hard about running some DC power rails and building hanging (movable) LED fixtures (both spot and flood lighting).

I like the idea of doing the AC/DC conversion in one place but another advantage of low-voltage DC rails is that it enables movable fixtures on exposed (or somewhat exposed) rails. It seems like shop lighting would be particularly applicable for these types of hanging rails, especially if you could mix and match spot light and flood light fixtures. I'll have to research this.

Slightly off topic (LED task lighting vs. shop lighting) but the twenty bucks I spent adding these task spot lights to my mill were incredibly well spent. Really bright lights — perfect for this application:

IMG_0015.JPG

Regards,
--
Rex
 
Rex Walters said:
That's a sufficiently interesting idea that I may eventually try it in my small shop for some task lighting. I went with the T8 fluorescent bulb replacements for my main overhead LED lighting because I already had the fluorescent fixtures mounted on my ceiling, but if I was doing it from scratch I'd definitely think hard about running some DC power rails and building hanging (movable) LED fixtures (both spot and flood lighting).

I like the idea of doing the AC/DC conversion in one place but another advantage of low-voltage DC rails is that it enables movable fixtures on exposed (or somewhat exposed) rails. It seems like shop lighting would be particularly applicable for these types of hanging rails, especially if you could mix and match spot light and flood light fixtures. I'll have to research this.

Slightly off topic (LED task lighting vs. shop lighting) but the twenty bucks I spent adding these task spot lights to my mill were incredibly well spent. Really bright lights — perfect for this application:

Regards,
--
Rex
Click to expand...
Rex,

I did my kitchen on two low voltage busses. One is 30 volts and operates the LED spot lighting and under cabinet lighting and the other is a 12 volt bus which operates the strip lighting used for bounce lighting. I would think that some of the commercially available lighting tracks could be easily repurposed.

Bob
 
RJSakowski said:
LED power supplies can be as simple as a current limiting resistor. We are in the wild and woolly days of the LED area lighting technology and there can be all kinds of weird drivers out there. For high efficiency, high frequency switching drivers are typically used but isn't that where the fluorescent technology is going as well? As a former ham, I can relate to the issues with trying to eliminate points sources of interference. While I no longer search the radio spectrum for tiny signals and can't speak to that, I have been immersed in LED lighting for almost a decade and have never noticed any problems. The FCC has the authority to regulate this industry and I would expect that if it becomes enough of an irritant, they will.

As I see it, the biggest issue is that we are trying to convert an incandescent world to a new technology that doesn't like 120v.ac. Thus we come up with devices with point of use power conversion which, to be competitive, are subject to compromise. Maybe a better solution would be to add a low voltage d.c. lighting buss driven by a well designed central power source?

Bob
Click to expand...

Bob,

That's an interesting idea. Especially for task lighting as mentioned by Rex.

Haven't done any electronic design/build for a few decades. Can you recommend some web sites related to LED lighting?

Thanks,
Mitch
 
mcoak said:
Bob,

That's an interesting idea. Especially for task lighting as mentioned by Rex.

Haven't done any electronic design/build for a few decades. Can you recommend some web sites related to LED lighting?

Thanks,
Mitch
Click to expand...
Mitch,

For strip lighting, I have used Environmental Lights in the past. However, when I checked today they seem to have severely curtailed their offerings. http://www.environmentallights.com/
I have also purchased individual LED's and drivers from LED Supply. http://www.ledsupply.com/?gclid=CI2hyJ3FuMkCFRCqaQodWmoNKw
Some of the original Philips Lumileds LED's and drivers came from Future Electronics. http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/Search.aspx?dsNav=Ro:0,Nea:True,N:907
Lastly, the best deal that I found on 4' LED lamps for fluorescent replacement came from 1000 bulbs. I haven't purchased from them, though. https://www.1000bulbs.com/

Bob
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top