LED lighting / fixtures for novices?

[BillT]

Hi, I have just been tasked (unwantedly, grr...) with buying LED lights and fixtures for the boss. I know nothing about this, it's outside my usual area of expertise, but boss says learn all you can and then get on it. Aagh! I'm a mere office drone and spreadsheet jockey, but as I'm lucky to have a job at all, I think maybe telling the boss off is a bad idea.

Is there a tutorial for complete novices about lighting somewhere on the net? I'm hearing terms like troffer, suspended grid ceiling, diffuser, ballast door cover, and so on. It might as well be French for all I know. I've searched on the net, and it seems anyone who uses these terms is an HVAC professional who already knows what's going on. And this isn't HVAC, it's lighting, right? HVAC has to do with air flow. I just need a tutorial that says this is what a troffer is and it is used this way, a ballast is important because it blah blah blah, etc. Any links? Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

 

[ddawg16]

Here is a good place to start...

Candle Power Forums - Fixed Lighting

As you will find out....it's expensive....still bleeding edge technology.

In a nutshell...the LED light (in 120V applications) has about the same effeciency as Fluorescent lights....about the only advantage is life....even then, payback is pretty long.

I personally don't think LED is the silver bullet to lighting....I think it is still waiting to be found....especially when you consider that other forms of lighting are much more effecient....for example, High Pressure Sodium (street lighting) is about 10x more effecient....so...the real solution is still out there waiting to be found.

 

[Norcal]

LED is still too expensive for a lot of applications, I bought 3 LED PAR floods at Costco for $15 each to try out & they were a screaming good deal compared to current prices, but read on a forum showing pics of a parking structure w/ LED lighting fixtures that cost over $1000 each, I would suspect they have come down in price since then but it will be costly to go LED. Like Plasma TV's when 1st introduced the early buyers paid huge premium, LED is no different the price will come down.

 

[BillT]

Well...yeah...not really interested in the cost. What I'm really interested in is getting a rundown on the basics involved. Vocabulary, concepts, and so on. We may end up sourcing products from China, and I had better know what I'm talking about before that happens.

 

[Nostraquedeo]

Here ya go.......

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/

 

[MattT]

High Pressure Sodium (street lighting) is about 10x more effecient.

Where did you get that number from?

Anyways the color rendering for HPS ***** so it's out for anything but things like street lights. Metal Halide might make some inroads into indoor domestic lighting but it'll likely have to be in dedicated fixtures. I doubt the control gear can be miniaturized to the point it can be used for retrofit applications. That and manufacturers wouldn't want to chance a consumer getting hit with strike voltage.

 

[BillT]

Here ya go.......

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/

Wow, excellent! Thanks a lot! I appreciate the on-topic reply.