LED Outdoor Lights For Low Running Costs
Filed Under Energy Efficient Lights, LED Landscape Lights | Leave a Comment
LED lights have several benefits when used for garden and landscape lighting, including:
- they are low voltage and energy efficient. In other words they throw out a lot of light for not much electricity in.
- they are versatile and so can be used for a variety of outdoor lighting solutions.
The good news is that the purchase costs of LED outdoor lights are starting to drop quite fast now. This is excellent news because they are also very energy efficient so the overall cost of ownership is falling.
LED lights can be used for ambient lighting, floodlighting, walkways in fact for most applications. Other LED outdoor lighting lighting applications include:
- BBQs & Tables
- Artworks
- Day Beds
- Water Features
- Paths/Decks/Stairs
- Trees & Plants
- Pool Landscapes
The benefits of LED landscape lighting include:
- You can reduce your energy bills with up to 90% savings and lower the amount of C02 emissions being emitted into the environment
- They are low voltage lights, typically running at 12 volts so there is NO SHOCK HAZARD
- They have a long life with no changing of globes for several years - LED light life is approx. 15 - 22 years
- Because LED light is cool, there is no more burning of foliage, pets, fingers, timber structures etc
- LEDs have low installation costs due to the reduced number of transformers required and ability to use lower cost cable
- LED lighting works well with solar installations.
Minimising Light Pollution - Bright Doesn’t Equal Safe
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Flagstaff is located in the dry West and it doesn’t have a lot of trees to block the street lights within the city and the air is fairly clean. This means that the distance that light pollution travels is astonishingly far. For example, from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon atr night, you can see the lights of Phoenix, as well as Las Vegas.
As a result, the city has strict lighting ordnances.
Health Impacts of Bright Night Lighting
Scientists are now just starting to understand the impact of nighttime lighting on animals and humans. Bright lights confuse animals and can alter everything.
Examples: frogs’ mating activities are disturbed, communication among coyotes is afected, baby turtles get confused finding their way to the sea and nocturnally migrating birds become disoriented.
The effects also extend to human health with new research suggesting that living in a neighborhood that’s too bright at night can interfere with the production of a tumor-suppressing hormone in women, raising the risk of breast cancer.
Bright Doesn’t Mean Safe
Contrary to what most people believe, the key to visibility isn’t intense light, but evenly spread light. Brighter isn’t safer and can even be more dangerous.
If a building has a typically blinding white, security lighting you can’t readily see someone in the shadows between lights. Your eyes can’t deal efectively with the contrast.
So stark white spotlights, or the dazzling white lights used at sportsfields that are visible for miles are not as effective as strategically placed, well-shielded fixtures that blanket the surrounds of a building in a mellow light.
Another example: At Flagstaff’s Thorpe Park shielded fixtures were installed last year and players can actually see the ball better without “light bombs” in their eyes.
This ”mellow lighting” can be provided by energy efficient and/or solar outdoor lights
So turn the brightness down to be safer, save yourself money and help the environment by using energy efficient lighting