Applications
Recessed Lighting for Mid to High Ceilings and Canopies
Recessed lighting is so ubiquitous in commercial environments that it’s rarely noticed by those that pass-through spaces illuminated by these out-of-sight fixtures. Unless of course, you’re a facilities manager, an electrical contractor, or the person paying the utility, maintenance, and repair bills. If you’re one of these people, these recessed lights are quite familiar to you. HID lamps fail fairly frequently, they suffer from significant color shifts and therefore require replacement, and they use a significant amount of energy which has significant costs.
Commercial HID recessed lighting typically uses a 75 to 250W high-intensity discharge lamp (HID) that can appropriately illuminate a ballroom, convention center, retail or entrance canopy, or similar application. HID lamps have an almost omnidirectional light distribution and the reflector in the fixture is designed to capture and redirect as much of the light downward to the ground or floor.
It is possible to replace a HID lamp with an LED lamp and if one takes the time to understand how the lamp will perform, a high-value, long-lived, performance replacement is possible.
The Wrong Approach:
LED Corn-Cob Lamps
Corn-cob lamps, like the one shown here, often have a low cost and claim that they have very high light output. Sellers will also claim that because they use LEDs, they will last a very long time – which many have learned the hard way simply isn’t true. More specifically They might have fans or not designed for no air flow environment.
Yes, the lamps can be installed into existing recessed fixtures but there are a few major problems.
- The reflector and lamp were not designed to work together. As a result, as much as 20% of the light that’s produced gets trapped in the fixture and not reflected downward where it’s needed. The light that does escape the fixture usually doesn’t have the correct distribution to match the reflector.
The end result is poor application efficiency, lower than expected illumination, and shadows and dark spots instead of uniform illumination.
- These screw base lamps fit right in but require the HID ballast, so if something goes wrong with the ballast, facilities need to make a repair.
- No wireless control.
- It gets very hot inside a recessed downlight and LEDs and the electronics required to make them work don’t “like” heat. It lowers their performance and shortens the system’s lifetime. Instead of the promised years of operation, lifetimes are often measured in days or months.Many facilities have switched to corn cob lamps only to have them fail quickly resulting in a waste of time and money that could have been avoided.
The Right Approach:
Purpose-designed LED Lamp
Filamento designed its low-wattage, high-output lamps to put the light where it’s needed, to manage the heat, and to operate efficiently so that they last longer, are more efficient at the application level, and cost less to operate over their long lifetime.
Filamento’s lamp can be installed into existing recessed sealed fixtures, and they will function as warrantied.
- The optics of a Filamento lamp are designed to deliver the light where it’s needed. Because they’re directional, they don’t rely on the reflector to direct the light. This maximizes the efficiency of the entire solution and ensures that the illumination on the floor is uniform and consistent from lamp to lamp and area to area. Because all the light is managed and application efficiency is high, it’s common for a 30W Filamento lamp to replace a 150W HID source. That power savings translates into less energy use and less cost.
- Electrically the Filamento lamp can use the existing HID ballast, or the ballast can be removed, and the lamp can support 100-277V service directly.
- Wireless control capability is built into the Filamento lamp for optimal flexibility.
- Filamento’s lamp is thermally managed to ensure optimal performance of the LEDs and the lifetime of the entire system. In the heat or in the cold, just at night, or for 24/7 operation, the Filamento lamp simply works.
