If you’ve ever considered purchasing an outdoor flood light, you may have already shopped around a little. If you’re on a budget, it certainly seems like a better idea to spend $20 to $30 on halogen outdoor flood lighting than to spend $75 to $90 on an HID light fixture. You can also buy standard incandescent lights for even less, but they cost much more to operate and the bulb will need to be changed often. If you plan to mount outdoor flood lights high to shine down on an area to highlight it or make it safer, you’ll have to get up to that fixture frequently to change the bulb. Halogen bulbs last longer than incandescent, and HID bulbs last 6 to 7 times longer than halogen.
That means not only less inconvenience in having to change bulbs (a 150-watt HID bulb used for 10 hours per night will typically last over 6 years) but also less cost in replacement bulbs. That alone makes the higher cost of the fixture worth it. But when you compare the cost savings you can realize on your electricity bill, it’s clear that an HID fixture is the best for your budget, and it’ll only take a few months for it to pay for itself.
The first way you’ll save is by using a lower wattage bulb. Outdoor flood lights of about 10,000 lumens are a pretty standard brightness. You’d need a 500-watt halogen bulb to get that much light. You can get the same brightness with only a 150-watt HID bulb. That naturally uses less energy. And the HID bulb is more energy efficient, so you get even more savings.
If you ran both those bulbs for a year, you’d spend 10 times more to run the halogen bulb than the HID fixture. So if you want the security of a flood light but don’t want it to really ramp up your utility costs, consider HID outdoor fixtures first.
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Please send me a catalog of any HID outdoor lighting that you have