Throughout the last decade, BMS have been using LED lighting in domestic and commercial environments, they provide a low cost, environmentally sound and generally maintenance free lighting source, that is of a superior quality to the tradition lighting sources used in the agricultural sector. This form of lighting is expected to be worth 31.4 billion dollars by 2017, with all major engineering and development being focused upon this method. As traditional lamps are slowly beginning to be phase out and I feel this is fundamentally the time to embrace the future, and push this innovative lighting source within the agricultural community.
With JE Bachelors & sons we sampled LED fittings in the installation. Both parties found the results to be fantastic – this is why I would encourage and advise that LED fittings are installed within all our agricultural installations. This will not only save our customers money in the long term via running costs, reducing the need of maintenance costs, ensures that installations remain viably over the longevity of the environment by not using technologically obsolete products, as well as reducing the carbon footprint long term and the detrimental effect this has upon your industry.
Initially, LED lighting is more expensive than traditional methods, however with a guarantee life span of 5 to 7 years on most LED fittings, compared to 12 months of the traditional fittings and the additional costing of maintenance for lamp changing in hard to reach areas. It maintains the lighting quality, and retaining’s the food safe standard you have come to expect.
LED lighting covers a wide use of applications ranging from cold stores, offices, grain stores, outside lighting – In fact, there is no area of installation that an LED source cannot replace to the tradition lamp.
The below graph depicts the initial outlay of a LED and tradition lighting methods and the yearly cost of running, including the initial cost of a fixture for the lifespan of a LED lamp. This graph shows the purchase and running cost of the product not the installation cost - of which as a generalisation, LED continue to be the less expensive option to install as you can place more lights onto one circuit.
This graph is based on lighting on a 50x25x10.5m grain storage facility. Traditional lighting used is a 400 watt HQI fitting, with food safe cover verses LED Optilux Highbay fitting. Both fixtures were producing 200 – 300 LUX.
The below graph shows the savings of CO2 Emissions again based on the 5 year life span of an LED lamp.
