LED high bay 'upgrade' has commenced

This is, or rather was, the last bay at work to be fully lit with SON, loads of 400w no less. I actually got involved with repairing these maybe 2-3 years ago as they'd had a quote for an LED "upgrade" come in at something like £20k & luckily they couldn't justify it, especially as we already had boxes of spare lamps knocking about & a few chokes and ignitors.


I have noticed they've been dropping like flies recently and wondered when the inevitable would happen. Well, here it is, the LED'ing has begun. The fittings being used are JCC 200w LED UFO things. Not sure how good they are but they claim to use Samsung LEDs and Meanwell drivers so maybe, just maybe, they won't be complete turd? Time will tell I guess.


Incidentally, at the extreme far end of this bay (furthest away in pic) in the roof walk way is where [url=http://80.229.24.59:9232/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=8868][u]this[/u][/url] 1kw GEC mercury ballasts came from that'd been sat in a control gear box unused for 20+ years. I really hope to be able to get up there one day to rescue the rest.

LED high bay 'upgrade' has commenced


This is, or rather was, the last bay at work to be fully lit with SON, loads of 400w no less. I actually got involved with repairing these maybe 2-3 years ago as they'd had a quote for an LED "upgrade" come in at something like £20k & luckily they couldn't justify it, especially as we already had boxes of spare lamps knocking about & a few chokes and ignitors.


I have noticed they've been dropping like flies recently and wondered when the inevitable would happen. Well, here it is, the LED'ing has begun. The fittings being used are JCC 200w LED UFO things. Not sure how good they are but they claim to use Samsung LEDs and Meanwell drivers so maybe, just maybe, they won't be complete turd? Time will tell I guess.


Incidentally, at the extreme far end of this bay (furthest away in pic) in the roof walk way is where this 1kw GEC mercury ballasts came from that'd been sat in a control gear box unused for 20+ years. I really hope to be able to get up there one day to rescue the rest.

IMG_20190619_192102-1-1920x1165.jpg IMG_20191010_172833.jpg IMG_20200326_204634.jpg IMG_20200501_004714.jpg IMG_20201004_132856.jpg
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FrontSideBus   [28 Mar, 2020 at 05:13 PM]
We’ve had some of the machines moved at work and they have added some LED “doughnut” high bays and boy are they fucking bright! When I saw them I was staggered how good they were!
Hate to say it but working in there will be better once all the SON is gone... I’ve worked 12 hour shifts under SON and it is not a pleasant experience tbh!
Slyspark   [28 Mar, 2020 at 07:12 PM]
Never been a huge fan of SON indoors, halide would have been a better choice for better colour rendering. Still, they could easily have refitted the SON fittings with halide. Be interesting to see how long these LED fittings last - I bet nowhere near as long as the old ones did.
fluorescent   [28 Mar, 2020 at 07:36 PM]
What Oliver linked to in comment #3 look like the ones. 36k hours is a bit rubbish, but at least they're quite small & light and easy to change I guess
Andy   [28 Mar, 2020 at 07:54 PM]
As much as I like SON for outdoor floodlighting, it is awful to work under indoors for any length of time. 36k hours is crap though for these LED high bays. Osram Vialox lamps last 24k hours and all you do is change the lamp at EOL. If they do last the 36k they state, that's only halfway through the life of a second SON lamp!
FrontSideBus   [28 Mar, 2020 at 08:25 PM]
Probably would have been better off using those Philips CDM lamps!
AngryHorse   [28 Mar, 2020 at 09:17 PM]
I think 36K hours is more honest, at least their not boasting 100K hours, 36 will be similar to a 400 watt SON
fluorescent   [28 Mar, 2020 at 09:24 PM]
This bay was way over lit tbh, I did suggest once just having every other fitting lit which would have been plenty bright enough at half the power, it was met with a shrug and we were told to get all working, sigh. Yeah CDM would have been good but that would never happen at my work. Led or nothing.
oliver   [28 Mar, 2020 at 10:58 PM]
I wonder how long it will take for they to reach the 36,000 hours? It will be quite a big job to replace all of them and re-wire new ones. Plus the warehouse couldn't be used during the replacements. I'd say HPI lamps would have been the best. Lamps last about 20,000 but usually they would over-run till the arc tube breaks anyway! The fitting it's self would probably last at least 20 years.
Andy   [28 Mar, 2020 at 11:08 PM]
As Rich says, 36k hours is probably an honest stated lifespan but simply inadequte for something which has to be replaced in its entirety especially in a situation such as this one. That's 4 years assuming these run 24/7.
Slyspark   [28 Mar, 2020 at 11:44 PM]
Pretty poor really when you have to replace the entire fitting rather than just a consumable lamp. This is one of the biggest problems I have with LED - the volume of waste it creates!
oliver   [29 Mar, 2020 at 12:24 AM]
Yeah. Imagine the waste from a huge building when all the led panels fail for example! Fluorescent fittings would probably last about 30 years and only need tubes and starters which are cheap.
AngryHorse   [29 Mar, 2020 at 12:24 AM]
Trouble with halides though, CMH are not easy to get hold of unless it’s an online seller, and standard halides are pretty useless after 10,000 hours, either by turning a dirty white colour or having a sharp lumen fall off, and we’ve seen on here that even Belgium made HPI are now LESS reliable than LED!
oliver   [29 Mar, 2020 at 12:25 AM]
If LED hadn’t taken over, the lamps would still be in demand and be better made.
AngryHorse   [29 Mar, 2020 at 12:37 AM]
I don’t know why CMH were never offered wholesale, as a standard stock item, even today every wholesale has to order them in, whilst their outdated quartz counterparts are still the main ‘off the shelf’ item!
FrontSideBus   [29 Mar, 2020 at 03:36 AM]
Because they don’t want you to have them... they’d rather sell you some expensive LED fitting instead. Selling shit quartz lamps just makes more people think that HID is shit and LED is the way to go.
AngryHorse   [29 Mar, 2020 at 08:26 AM]
Well not exactly Confused, because they don’t stock LED low bays either!!!, their an order in item too!, so if you were thinking of using them as a HID replacement you can’t even get one or two, to just ‘try out’! A small company say, then has to hire some big lighting firm to send out an engineer/designer and assess their ‘warehouse’ an see what will be needed. This happened to ours that had 3E lighting come up from Bristol, rip out all our twin six foots and HID yard lights, then instal the cheapest nastiest LENA lighting fixtures they could find for a nice £35,000 price tag! Fast forward to now, and maintenance, (me), only have standard wholesale stuff to try and repair all the outages that are now out of control!
fluorescent   [29 Mar, 2020 at 01:27 PM]
I reckon the majority of electricians who actually ordered lamps from wholesalers only knew SON or metal halide (and LED of course) hence other lamp types would not be stocked. I must admit even I was a little confused by CMH & CDM etc. lamps & didn't really know what they were until the last couple years or so.

This bay is in use 24/7 and can be relamped easily, there is proper walkways up there & every fitting can be individually isolated.
fluorescent   [09 Oct, 2020 at 10:14 AM]
Only a handful of son fittings left in here now, will be all gone by the end of this year I suspect Crying or Very sad
FrontSideBus   [25 Jan, 2022 at 09:55 PM]
Any update on this by per chance?
fluorescent   [22 Apr, 2022 at 12:35 AM]
There's a handful of SON fittings still burning but most are LED now. No failures so far.

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