An illustration of a little beach-style wooden exterior home with two stories, a gambrel roof, and a roof made of a variety of materials

(via Creating Beautiful Exterior Spaces Requires Well Controlled Site Lighting | World of Light)

These represent 1000 watts of energy consumption each (not counting the ballast). We're working on a replacement that can not only cut the energy consumption of these bad boys in 1/2 but will be dark sky compatible. Smart lighting replacements lower energy use, improve optics, and lower operational costs like maintenance. 

Sometimes, making the choice to change lighting technologies is hard, especially with LED. Will these LEDs make my art look as rich and full as halogen? Will this LED bulb dim as well in my bedside lamps? While LED gets better and a better everyday in these applications, I can understand why there might still be trepidation about switching. 

Then there are areas where it's such a simple no-brainer to switch to LED, I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. If you run a business with any outdoor site lighting, the time to switch to LED was yesterday. Here are some very simple reasons why.  

Energy Reduction

The first and probably most obvious case to make for the switch to LED is energy reduction. If you're business has a parking lot, or perhaps an outdoor display (like a car dealership) or if we're just talking about security and pathway lighting, LED lighting represents a huge reduction in energy use. When replacing metal halide flood light fixtures an LED can create as much light while using 50%-75% less electricity. This energy reduction results in direct utilities savings. 

Reduce The Need for Maintenance 

LEDs represent a quantum jump in terms of life of service. From 2,000 hours for a metal halide to 25,000 hours for LED, the performance over time for LED is on an entirely different level. Not having to change light bulbs means not having to have a crew with lift come and do a group re-lamps, replacing light bulbs when they still have service life and wasting money. I can't tell you how many car lots I've seen where flood light fail and they are simply left off, rather than have cars moved and bring in the equipment necessary to change out light.  

Extraordinary Evenness and Performance Optics

It used to be that a flood light was a flood light. It was essentially a very bright source with a reflector kicking out as much light as possible. There were few options in terms of optics so beam spread is what it is. The other challenge, when you put a very bright source in front of a reflector it's very difficult to prevent glare. LEDs change all of that. Now every LED can have it's own  optics allowing for numerous beam spread options ensuring even, consistent light. Glare can be prevented with individual glare shields at the chip level. Not only that, LEDs allow fluid continuous dimming, are instant-on and come in multiple color temperatures, none of which is possible with metal halide flood lighting.