Batten lights

[nick1967]

Morning

I have a car bodyshop and currently considering changing the lights in my Spraybooth to LED
Currently there is 24 6 feet fluorescent tubes within the spraybooth.

The spraybooth size is 8 meter long 5 meters wide 3.5 meters high

That may seem like a lot of lights but fairly standard for a car spraybooth

This booth is almost 20 years old and the ballasts are slowly going bang every other 3 or four month's
i have changed around 8 over the last two years.

Since i just renewed my electric contract at considerable uplift. I am looking at possibly upgrading the ageing setup for something that would maybe lower my bills even a little.

My conundrum is it appears to gain the same lumen output as a 70watt fluorescent tube i would probably need to go for around a 60watt LED

Suppliers bang on about low wattage LED battens saving you considerable amounts of power but going down to 20-30 watt led batten would save money no doubt but the light/lumen output just isnt there

Have i answered my own question or what am i missing

 

[winston1]

You are quite right. The lumens per watt output of LED tubes is similar to fluorescent tubes.

 

[SFK]

The light efficancy (amount of light emitted per watt of inputed power) of LED battons and fluorescent battons is currently about the same.
Fluorescent tubes are very efficent.

Not sure if this is an issue for you or not:
As this is for a spray booth, do you have to consider the colour of the light?

LED lights can have very narrow bandwidth of light, and 'might' make spray painting harder.
I ask as teh art industry have to use very special 'white light' led panels to ensure their colours are the same in their office as they are in the outside daylight.

SFK

 

[Lower]

Morning

I have a car bodyshop and currently considering changing the lights in my Spraybooth to LED
Currently there is 24 6 feet fluorescent tubes within the spraybooth.

The spraybooth size is 8 meter long 5 meters wide 3.5 meters high

That may seem like a lot of lights but fairly standard for a car spraybooth

This booth is almost 20 years old and the ballasts are slowly going bang every other 3 or four month's
i have changed around 8 over the last two years.

Since i just renewed my electric contract at considerable uplift. I am looking at possibly upgrading the ageing setup for something that would maybe lower my bills even a little.

My conundrum is it appears to gain the same lumen output as a 70watt fluorescent tube i would probably need to go for around a 60watt LED

Suppliers bang on about low wattage LED battens saving you considerable amounts of power but going down to 20-30 watt led batten would save money no doubt but the light/lumen output just isnt there

Have i answered my own question or what am i missing

If you replace fluorescent tubes with LED, you typically need an additional tube per light box to achieve the same Lux levels. You also need to be careful to go with decent quality tubes or you'll have issues with colour rendering. Lastly, LED tubes don't last as long in a spraybooth as they would in a non spraybooth environment because the heat of the bake cycle shortens their life.

That being said, i doubt your current fluorescent tubes are new, and as their performance deteriorates over time there is a good chance that the light output will be equivalent if you just replace this existing tubes with LED tubes.

 

[RandomGrinch]

Hi,

The only thing I would say is LED battens have better directionality (if that's a word!).
As all the LED's in a strip may be oriented to face forward, you are not wasting light that is being emmited all the way around from a conventional tube.
It may be worth trying to replace a couple of tubes and seeing?
Being able to select the colour temperature of the battens may be another advantage in a spray booth

 

[nick1967]

cheers guys some good comments