Replace Metal Halides with High Mast LED Flood Lights
Many customers send us inquiries asking stadium lighting cost and price, when illuminating football fields, and other large outdoor area size venues and facilities (usually involving the replacement or retrofitting of 1000w to 2000 watt Metal Halide old lighting sources).
So, how much is the cost of LED stadium lights and the price of sports lighting fixtures in 2020?
We have come to understand that the majority of pitches will have requirements of average 200 lux. However, we have experience with all the type of lighting installations going from 100 to 1200 lux. Nonetheless, 1200 lux usually only applies to higher leagues standards, that have weekly TV HD or 4K broadcasting.
Assuming a field needs about 200 lux, this means customers should be aiming at installing a total 22,000 Watt overall lighting power in the stadium (roughly between 20 to 24 fixtures of 1000 watt LED flood lights or sports lights). Generally speaking, the budget for accomplishing that particular type of football ground should vary from $18,000 USD to $25,000 USD, depending on the model or grade of LED Lights you choose. Even though the project value might be slightly more expensive than if using metal halides, it brings several advantages in the long-run, compared with the old lighting sources: brightness levels, 65% energy saving and longer life-span.
If you use our LED lights, then how many pieces of lights I should you buy? That might depend on several factors as the number of poles, their location, the height, etc. But still, for 200 lux average, you should expect 21Kw install on the ground.
Let us then give a concrete project example:
If a customer has a football field of standard size 105m x 70m, and knows he wants 300lux, he will ask us estimate a proposal and a lighting solution. How do we design it? When we think about this, of course we need to consider the customer’s budget plan, so we have a wide range of light models. Our customers can choose different specifications, performance as well as prices based on their specific requirements and budget plans; and this will impact the stadium lighting cost and price, and the replacement of Metal Halides by LED flood lights.
Energy Saving of LED Lights Compared with Metal Halides
At first, we need to know that the replacement rate of metal halides to our LED lights is 1 to 2.5. For example, our 1000W LED light can replace 2500W metal halide. Another concept that we need to figure out is that the energy consumption rate between LED lights and metal halides is different.
LED light has about 10% power drawing while metal halide has 25%, which means the 1000W LED lights actually consumes 1100 Watt. Likewise, when we install a 2500W metal halide, we actually need about 3100 Watt out of the grid.
Let’s say, if the customer’s ground requires 32KW, that solution actually consumes 36Kw (32KW*1.1) to illuminate the whole ground.
Similarly, if Metal Halides are used, the project will demand 100KW energy consumption (32KW*2.5*1.25).
If the electricity charge is $0.13/kw/h (U.S. average), then every hour the customer has to pay $4.68usd for having the LED lights on and $13usd in the case of metal halides. If every day the football ground needs to be used for 5 hours, then every week he has to pay $164 USD for LED lights and 455usd for metal halides, so LED lights will help to save 291 USD per week, and $15,142 USD per year. From this calculation you can understand how much energy LED lights can save compared with metal halides: 65% energy saving.
This is something worth considering on what regards stadium lighting cost and price, and when replacing metal halides for led flood lights
Life Span of LED lights Compared with Metal Halides, and How that Affects Stadium Lighting Cost and Price
LED lights have much longer life span than metal halides. The majority of our LED lights have 80,000 hours lifespan. This is already a high standard in the LED market. However, metal halides usually have about two or three years lifetime.
So, with metal halides, exchanges of bulbs happen much more frequently than with LED. Therefore, they spend more and their satisfaction levels gets lower and lower.
The above points are highlighted just to let you know that it’s an inevitable trend that LED lights replace metal halides, and due to so many advantages of LED lights, they are definitely more expensive than the old technology.
So if a customer is willing to use LED lamps, we have many different proposals for him, depending on his special needs. Regarding the pole design, there are many ways. For instance, we can set 4 poles 35m high, 6 poles 25m high or 8 poles 10-15m high.
The fewer poles in a stadium, the higher they need to reach in order to maintain the uniformity. In those cases, we need to use small beam angles, and light beams can travel further and keep higher ground reach ability. Thus, the whole football ground can be illuminated brightly and evenly. Also, the lighting effect can be influenced by the by the pole distribution. Poles at the corners and poles on each side can bring different light distribution, so we need different lighting solutions for different cases, which finally impacts stadium lighting cost and price.