Conventional Fixtures The $1,200 Worklight

[gafftapegreenia]

But, but, its green!

Lighting and Electronics Introduced the WorkLite LED | iSquint

(I don't always like to link to blogs but L&E's website is rather poor)

 

[MNicolai]

Normally, a hard to justify purchase. In new installs, though, starting with LED's wherever possible can mean running less copper wiring for the larger ampacity work lights, and now one 20A circuit can light the area that was normally lit by three or four 20A circuits, and won't require lamps to be replaced or safety screens put over them like PAR's to protect against lenses shattering. The energy savings is included, but that's not where you'll find any ROI (return-on-investment).

In retrofits, it'll remain to be a hard sell, because they only see the energy savings. LED's may be green, but just like tossing solar panels on your roof, the front-end costs are high and the ROI's are distant. I was talking with a solar contractor last summer, and he said that many homes don't pay off their solar panel installation costs until at least 10 years down the road, and that's including the government incentives to go green.

New installs are where the savings are at. More lumens per watt leads to fewer lighting circuits of lower ampacities, which leads to less copper for the installs, smaller branch panels, fewer circuit breakers, smaller transformers, and smaller service installs. Those savings add up. That is, if you can go LED almost entirely across the board.

That's where theatres futz up the works, because no roadhouses can go to LED's without still having to be able to accommodate all of the electrical infrastructure for incandescents. The energy savings alone are hardly significant enough to make it worthwhile.

 

[ajb]

Just for fun, let's run some numbers:

So $1200 / 2700 lumen = $.44/l initial cost

Compared to a more conventional worklight at, say, $50 / 9200 lumen = $.005/l with 500TCQ lamps.

The convetional with 2000 hour lamps would need 35 lamps to get 70,000 hrs of use as the L&E LED unit has, so figure 35 lamps * $5 = $175, or $.02/lumen.

Over 70,000hrs of use, the LED fixture uses 63 Wh/l, the conventional uses 3780 Wh/l. At a cost of $0.1065/KWh (2007 US average), the LED fixture costs $0.0068/l, the conventional $0.4026/l.

So total lifetime (based on the LED unit's lifetime of 70,000hrs) initial + energy + lamp cost,

LED: $0.44 + $0.0068 + $0 = $.4468 per lumen
Con: $0.005 + $0.4026 + $0.02 = $.4276 per lumen

So the cost of installation has to be at least $.02 less per lumen to make the LED fixtures break even, or a savings of about $184 for 9200 lumen. Is that realistic? It depends, it's very tough to calculate the marginal cost of the additional circuits, breakers, etc unless you've actually got a job bid in hand to look at.

I've attached a spreadsheet (remove .doc extension from filename, it's an .xls file) that has all of these calculations if anyone wants to play with the numbers.

 

[mstaylor]

In the retrofit market it is a tough sell without bringing the cost of LEDs down. Now in the new construction phase, you would have to factor in how much less copper needed, less or smaller sub panels and less labor. This may be a tougher number to come up with but would be interesting to see.
In the above cost comparison should the labor for changing the bulbs be figured or does that offset with the install cost?

 

[shiben]

In the retrofit market it is a tough sell without bringing the cost of LEDs down. Now in the new construction phase, you would have to factor in how much less copper needed, less or smaller sub panels and less labor. This may be a tougher number to come up with but would be interesting to see.
In the above cost comparison should the labor for changing the bulbs be figured or does that offset with the install cost?

And that starts getting into questions of scale of the installation, location (whos changing out the lamps, how hard is it), etc. This is why we hire people to figure stuff like this out.

 

[ajb]

That's a good point, I hadn't considered labor. It will depend on how hard it is to get to the fixture, and whether or not you have staff on hand. So if it takes 5min to fly in a pipe (marginal labor cost, say $1.25), versus 20min to drag out a ladder, (marginal cost $5), versus having to schedule a 4 x 4 special maintenance call (let's say you have a particularly onerous union contract) starting at $500. Add whichever of those numbers applies to your situation to the lamp cost and the effect is anywhere from negligible to swinging wildly in favor of the LED fixture.

 

[Footer]

When my father started with the IBEW in the 70's his entire job was to replace lamps on smoke stacks at the refinery he worked at. It was one of those famous never ending jobs. They have now swapped out all of those units with LED units saving the company hundreds of thousands. Its the access questions that is where you really get the savings.

 

[shiben]

That's a good point, I hadn't considered labor. It will depend on how hard it is to get to the fixture, and whether or not you have staff on hand. So if it takes 5min to fly in a pipe (marginal labor cost, say $1.25), versus 20min to drag out a ladder, (marginal cost $5), versus having to schedule a 4 x 4 special maintenance call (let's say you have a particularly onerous union contract) starting at $500. Add whichever of those numbers applies to your situation to the lamp cost and the effect is anywhere from negligible to swinging wildly in favor of the LED fixture.

I know places in Grand Rapids that require a 4x4 call. That right there is probably a major tipping point.

 

[MillburyAuditorium]

0_0 And your going to need a bunch of them.

Out work lights are just normal tube lights

Off topicish-
We cant control our worklights with our board, they are just hooked up to normal school power and theirs a switch backstage. normal or no?

 

[rochem]

Off topicish-
We cant control our worklights with our board, they are just hooked up to normal school power and theirs a switch backstage. normal or no?

You generally don't want your worklights to run through the board. On professional union shows, the Stage Manager can turn on the worklights for rehearsals and such, but if anything needs to be done with the board, a Union crew needs to be called for a 4-hour minimum call. Having worklights through the board would mean some VERY unhappy producers.

 

[MillburyAuditorium]

Yeah I was thinking that rochem. But wasn't sure i professional venues had some kind of override. Heh, wouldn't be to good at our place since theirs 2 people in hte school who know how to operate the board, one pbeing me, and some faculty know that slider 48 is house lights useally

 

[Soxred93]

Out work lights are just normal tube lights

Feel lucky. Ours are high-pressure mercury vapor lights. They're a real PITA for reasons too long to explain here....

 

[tjrobb]

Sox - if you mean actual mercury vapor and not MH, then you have the joy of green-blue "forever getting dimmer" lighting that is now obsolete (and being forced out of the US by the government). Ick. MH is better, and with the right variant can be fairly good.

 

[chris325]

My school has faders on the wall for houselights, along with a submaster on the board for them. Win-win situation. (Having a board submaster allows me to program in a two-minute warning easily, and the wall faders make it easy to turn on house lights if someone is in the auditorium for a short period of time.)

 

[mstaylor]

Most of the area theatres are set up the same way, house lights on the board but sub panels in the house and backstage.

 

[Footer]

You generally don't want your worklights to run through the board. On professional union shows, the Stage Manager can turn on the worklights for rehearsals and such, but if anything needs to be done with the board, a Union crew needs to be called for a 4-hour minimum call. Having worklights through the board would mean some VERY unhappy producers.

IA won't even allow you onstage without at least one person there. Some places want a min. 5 just to get the door opened. Wherever your working, consider yourself lucky.

This is just one of the reasons why we have rehearsal halls.

 

[Soxred93]

Sox - if you mean actual mercury vapor and not MH, then you have the joy of green-blue "forever getting dimmer" lighting that is now obsolete (and being forced out of the US by the government). Ick. MH is better, and with the right variant can be fairly good.

You would be correct, they are MH lamps. Still PITA though.

 

[Footer]

So... Mrs. Footer and I just spent the last 2 days getting all the asbestos out of our two spaces. We bought 14 of these to replace scoops. They replaced 500w scoops, 6 over stage and 8 over the house acting as house lights. We bought 6 on/off varieties, and 8 DMX models. We have not done the DMX models yet, but the on/off ones are in the air. They are brighter then the 500w scoops they replaced.


All the new fixtures lined up (6 LED worklights, 13 S4 19 degrees, 19 S4 fresnels)

And one of the worklights on the pipe...

 

[SteveB]

Total thread hijack, but how do you like the S4 Fresnel ?.

 

[Footer]

Total thread hijack, but how do you like the S4 Fresnel ?.

I'll let you know in the morning when we focus them. Build wise, they are stellar. They are replacing 8" Century fresnels.