Access Fixtures was recently contacted by a customer seeking a replacement option for over sixty 1500w quartz-halogen fixtures that were being used to light a baseball field in Texas. The lights had terribly short lifetimes and were also inefficient. The customer needed an affordable option that would decrease their energy bill and last longer than their current lamps.
Halogen Uses Excess Energy and Burns Out Fast
Energy used by the 1500-watt halogen light fixtures was excessive and expensive. The halogen lamps in the fixtures would frequently burn out, requiring constant and expensive maintenance. There was also was the issue of accessing the light fixtures to replace the halogen lamps at the top of the 40-foot poles.
Quartz-halogen lamps are essentially advanced forms of incandescents. Like an incandescent lamp, the inside of a quartz-halogen lamp contains a glass bulb; inside that bulb is a tungsten filament. As the strip of tungsten is heated up with electricity, it glows (producing light) and burns off. Eventually, all the tungsten burns out and the light dies. The glass bulb of a quartz-halogen lamp contains halogen, which captures the burnt-out tungsten and redeposits it so it can be reburned.
While quartz-halogen lights are certainly an improvement on incandescents, they aren’t without their flaws. First of all, quartz-halogen lamps can get incredibly hot—they have been known to burn the skin and even explode after too much use. By current standards, they are not an efficient lighting solution, especially for sports fields.
A More Efficient and Longer-Lasting Alternative: PSMH
The customer wanted a brighter, safer, more energy-efficient , lower-maintenance solution to illuminate their baseball field. Access Fixtures’ lighting specialists determined that the client would have brighter, more efficient results if they replaced the current sixty-four 1500w halogen luminaires with thirty-two 1000w pulse-start metal halide sports lighters .
Affordable Solutions from Access Fixtures
The 1000w PSMH sports lighters emit 72% more light than the 1500w quartz-halogen luminaires. This means the customer would only have to install thirty-two fixtures instead of the sixty-four they currently have. Once the sports lighters are installed, light levels on the baseball field will increase by 72%. Using PSMH lamps that last for 10,000 hours will reduce maintenance by about 80%. Best of all, energy consumption will decrease by 65%, from 96,000 watts to only 34,560 watts.
Do you have an athletic field that needs to be lit? Wondering what solution would be best for you? Contact an Access Fixtures specialist today. We look forward to hearing from you.