How to Replace 500W and 1000W Mercury Vapor with LED?

Mercury vapor replacement has become very common and we can see more and more mercury vapor and high pressure sodium replacements in football fields, baseball stadium, tennis courts, parking lot, basketball courts, airport hangars, warehouses, seaports and other commercial areas. These places tend to use LED lamps to retrofit these HID lamps.

People can enjoy many immediate benefits when they replace 1000 watt and 500W mercury vapor lamps with LEDs. But how to replace the mercury vapor lights? The quick answer is, 125 watt LED lights can replace 500 watt mercury vapor, while 250 watt LED lights can replace 1000 watt mercury vapor or high pressures sodium lights. As a result, we can save at least 80% of energy.

What is mercury vapor and high pressure sodium retrofit?

We know that retrofitting means a direct replacement. We can just take out the old mercury vapor or halogen or high-pressure sodium lamp and screw the LED bulb back into the fixture. We can save a lot of installation time and cost. One important thing is that we need to choose the right wattage of LED lamps to replace mercury vapor and other HID lamps. Let’s see how we can do this.

How to replace 1000 watts of mercury vapor or halogen lights with LED?

The most important thing to know about replacing a mercury vapor or high pressure sodium lamp is the equivalent wattage. If you want to replace a 1000W mercury vapor lamp, we need to know the lumens of that lamp and then use an LED lamp with the same lumens.

For example, a typical 1000W mercury vapor lamp emits about 1000W x 40 lumens per watt = 40,000 lumens. Therefore, we need 40,000 lumens / 160 lumens per watt = 250W LED to replace 1000W mercury vapor light. Therefore, we can get about 75% power savings. If you are using mercury vapor or high pressure sodium lamps the original electricity bill is $1000, the new cost to run the equivalent LED light is only $250!

LedsMaster offers free lighting consultation and lighting design services. We can help you select the best wattage LED lamps to retrofit HID lamps such as mercury vapor and high-pressure sodium lamps. If you need our free lighting services, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

How to replace 500W mercury vapor lights? What is the power equivalent?

To calculate the power equivalent of a 500W mercury vapor light or high-pressure sodium lamp, we can use a similar formula. First, we need to calculate the total lumens of your existing mercury vapor light. A 500W mercury vapor lamp can emit approximately 500W x 40 lumens per watt = 20,000 lumens. Therefore, we need 20,000 lumens / 160 lumens per watt = 125W of LEDs to replace the 500W of mercury vapor and high-pressure sodium lamps.

Knowing the power equivalent of a mercury vapor lamp is particularly important for the replacement of mercury vapor or high pressure sodium lamps. This is because we can get more or less the same brightness after retrofitting mercury vapor lamps. If you want a brighter light in your area, we can increase the wattage of the LED lamp a bit. For example, we can replace the mercury vapor lamp with a 200W to 300W LED lamp and retrofit a 1000W mercury vapor with a 400W LED. You’ll have a much brighter area. Please feel free to contact LedsMaster for more information.

What are the advantages of replacing mercury vapor and high-pressure sodium with LED?

LED lights last longer

In addition to the energy savings mentioned earlier, another advantage of LEDs replacing mercury vapor and high-pressure sodium lamps is that we can enjoy a 150,000 hour LED lamp life, or up to 30 years after LED replacement.

The original mercury vapor lamp has a life of about 10,000 hours, so we need to replace the mercury vapor lamp frequently. The cost of installation and purchase of the lamps would be very high. However, after retrofitting HIDs with LED lamps, we do not need to replace the lamps for 30 years. Subsequent maintenance costs can be greatly reduced.

UV-free LED light

Mercury vapor and high-pressure sodium lamps may emit harmful UV rays due to the nature of their operation. Once other lamps break, UV light may be emitted from unshielded arc tubes. We may not be able to identify a broken mercury bulb, so it may pose a danger to the site owner.

However, by replacing mercury vapor lamps with LEDs, we can completely eliminate harmful UV emissions. This is because LEDs are light-emitting diodes and we can precisely control the spectrum of light, so LEDs will only emit light in the visible spectrum.

Precise Lighting Control

By replacing mercury vapor or high-pressure sodium lamps with LED lamps, we can have 10 times more optical control. Our LM75 technology polarizes light beams and then points them at designated areas on soccer fields, baseball fields and all other fields, so we can greatly control spill light and light pollution. Our LM75 optics also help improve light uniformity and substantially reduce glare.

Independent LED driver

The lamp body and driver (power supply) of the new LED lights can be placed separately, thus reducing the weight attached to the light pole. This is safer and more convenient for sports field owners if there are many mercury vapor lamps that need to be replaced.