Why LEDs offer better safety lights than HID lamps
One of the best reasons to add light outside your building is a good measure to increase security and reduce crime. But HID, as a predominant option before widespread acceptance of LEDs, is actually more expensive and less efficient than using LEDs. Here is a tip explaining why LEDs are perfectly logical in relation to HID.
- Instant On, Instant Off with LED
With HID, like Metal Halide, HPS, and other similar products, the typing time is long. Turning on the light at full speed can take between 15 and 30 minutes. This lends itself very badly to the controls of sensors such as motion sensors. For example, with a motion sensor connected to a LED Flood fixture, the lights can go out or shut down at full power in less than one second. When no further movement is detected, the lights may go out or go out.
There are 2 significant benefits to this: First, save energy, lights only turn on when needed secondly, nothing would be more surprising to an offender than going into an environment where it's dark and that becomes very bright in less than a second.
- Higher CRI = Higher light quality for working with security cameras
If you are integrating security cameras around your commercial or industrial area, be aware that having a high-quality light will help the police to identify people better than having to look at people or objects under a light source. Low quality. HPS is a notoriously bad light source, the metal halide is better, but the LED is the best.
What are Direct Connect LED products?
Directly connected products require a native alternating current. The LED driver uses AC power as input, then converts it to DC power to turn on the LEDs. So, if you are fitting an existing HID fixture to an LED, you will need to remove the ballast and bulb from your fixtures and replace them with the native LED driver and head. The best way to think about this is a bulb and ballast replacement. Since the LED driver requires AC power, the HID ballast has no value or use.
What LED products are compatible with the ballast?
Products compatible with the ballast are designed to use the existing ballast already installed in the device. This solution has certain advantages and disadvantages, the main advantage being the reduced installation time. However, there are several disadvantages to this type of installation.
Advantages and disadvantages
LED drivers that connect directly to native AC sources are extremely efficient and the full package is usually, if not always, more efficient than ballast-compatible solutions.
Direct Connection Installation times are slightly longer as additional steps are required to remove the ballast.
Compatible ballast is not universal. It is possible, better than average, that you have a driver that is not compatible with the LED product. Engineers who have designed the ballast-compatible product try to ensure that their product is compatible with most major flow ballasts. However, you can have one against which they have not been tested.
Ballasts fail. (The drivers do for). But if your ballast is old, you may have created a maintenance problem.
Our recommendation
We prefer direct connection solutions. It's more efficient and less problematic. Although there is a slight increase in installation time, its long-term cost is significantly lower than the maintenance of the old ballast a little later.
