6 Tips About Low Ambient Temperature Lighting

What is low temperature lighting?

When the ambient temperature is below 5 to 15°C, we need low temperature lighting. Comparing to normal luminary, the ones that applied as cold storage warehouse lighting, in frozen food processing, ice factory, supermarket, pharmaceutical factory, chemical plants, ski resort, ice skating areas have special protection on the flood lights. In the past, CFL is the major source of lighting in the past due to its price and availability. However, using LED lights for low ambient temperature areas have so many benefits. Metal halide, halogen, HPS, LPS, CFL replacement with LED lighting has become the best choice. Let’s explore the tips for using and selecting the lighting for the freezing, indoor & outdoor places.

Why should we do CFL or HID replacement with LED lights in cold storage places?

Under the normal environment, the lighting efficiency of CFL reaches 90 lm/W. However, this value drop significantly with ambient temperature. In the extreme case, the efficiency temporarily drops around 30 to 40% in temperature below 5°C. This phenomena is similar when using metal halide, or other HID lighting solutions. In addition, many studies also reveal that prolonged exposure to freezing temperature reduce the life span of CFL and MH lights; therefore, we can see the lighting performance of these conventional lighting is negatively affected under the low temperature applications. These problems are deemed unsolvable, until the introduction of LED lights after 90s.

Tips #1: Understanding LED features: BRIGHTER when COLDER

LED is highly resist coldness. As you can see from the above graph, the light outputs of white, red and blue are even increased with decreasing junction temperature (inside chips). The extreme cold environment from -20 to 0°C is suitable for cold storage warehouse lighting, ice manufacturing plants lighting and so on. And hence, the extreme low temperature will not negatively affect the lifespan and brightness of LED.

Tips #2: Cold storage warehouse and ice factory lighting should emit less heat

To store the frozen food, ice, dry ice, chemicals, and any items that is more stable under freezing environment, having the lighting that produce negligible heat is essential. Incandescent, MH or HPS lamps convert much energy to heat instead of light energy, and thus these lamps contribute a lot in temperature increase inside the cold storage place, and hence we need extra electricity on air conditioning to suppress the ambient temperature again before LED replacement.

LED lighting has the unique working mechanism that convert over 90% energy into light instead of heat. LED saves energy in 2 aspects – the energy consumption of the lamps themselves, as well as the air conditioning.

Tips #3: High CRI lighting attracts more customers in commercial refrigeration and food display

Customer’s behavior and retention rate in grocery stores and supermarkets are affected by the presentation of merchandise. If the items are easy to find and comfortable to see, all potential customers inside the store will be willing to put them into their cart. But now the question is, how to make the goods become more appealing? CRI of lighting is the secret.

LED lighting has the benefit of working under low ambient temperature while maintaining good CRI level. The customers can see the “real color” of products for higher CRI lighting. All our LED lights have high CRI of 80 to 90 depending on the model, such as recessed lighting, flood light, wall pack light, track light and so on.

Tips #4: Select the lighting has longer service life

Have you encountered frequent replacement of CFL or HID lamps inside cold environment? CFL has maximum 10000 to 15000 hour using time while LED has over 80000 hours. By retrofitting the LED flood lights inside the cold storage warehouse, you can enjoy above 25 years use without any significant decrease in brightness.

Tips #5: Decide color temperature for outdoor sports lighting

The working temperature for the ski resort lighting can be -20°C or even lower. You can decide the color temperature by yourself. Warm white lights are more recommended to reduce the glare while white light is more invigorating. Our low temperature LED lights function normally under temperature from -40°C to 60°C, which is fit for the general outdoor snow or stormy areas. In case there is extreme harsh weather condition, we have IP66 protective structure for our LED lighting fixtures.

Tips #6: Color changing lights for ice castles

RGB LED lights using USB DMX 512 protocol generates 16 million colors. LED lights combine all features of low working temperature, waterproof, long lifespan, less heat production. It is best lighting solutions for ice castles or ice sculpture.

If you are interested and need lighting opinion of low ambient temperature areas, please feel free to shoot us an email to beatus@ledsmaster.com