Before you deck the halls and transform your Florida home into a festival of lights this holiday, consider how your lighting display will affect your winter electric bills. Monthly bills can be especially expensive when you and your neighbors beautifully decorate your homes with holiday ENERGY STAR® qualified LED light strands you will save on your utility bills this holiday. And that’s not their only advantage—Use a timer to automatically turn on your holiday lights at dusk and turn off in the middle of the night. By limiting the amount your lights are on to times when people can appreciate them, you will reduce your energy bills.

There are plenty of ways to decorate your home for the holidays—ways that don’t impact your electric bills! Make use of other decorations like tinsel, wreaths, and jingling bells! Instead of decorating the front of your St. Petersburg home with strands of lights, consider buying a solar powered spotlight with different color filters. There are many ways to enjoy the beauty of the holidays without raising your electric bills exponentially.

If a ceiling fan has stopped working, has begun vibrating, or is not operating correctly, it may be wasting electricity; or worse, it may represent an electrical hazard. In this case, it is typically best to have a professional electrician install a replacement.

Sometimes a fan works fine, but a different model presents a more desirable appearance or more attractive features. While many homeowners are capable of installing a new fan themselves, we always recommend a professional installation by a qualified and experienced professional electrician. The reasons are many, but the most important reason is safety. Besides this, many homeowners installing their own fans damage the fans when dropping them, or fail to make sure their new fans are installed so the blades are balanced and operate smoothly, quietly, and efficiently. Other problems can occur when correct wiring connections are not made.

If you need a professional ceiling fan installation, please call Bryant Electric Service at 512-402-8587. Our licensed electricians are very experienced at installing ceiling fans, and are properly equipped for this type of service.

A well thought out lighting plan can really add a lot of interest and atmosphere to your home. And, if that plan is made with careful consideration of the way you use the various rooms in your house, it can provide light in just the right places to make household tasks and activities easier. With the help of an experienced professional electrician in Glendale, you can create a lighting design plan that is both pleasing to the eye and practical.

If your kitchen is due for a lighting makeover, with dark corners and shadowed work areas, a combination of lighting options can help create a space that is versatile and functional. Bright task lighting over work areas, such as counters, sinks and oven ranges, can make food preparation more convenient, while softer light can be more pleasant over dining areas.

Bathroom lighting plans should include bright lights for personal care areas, such as mirrors used for shaving or makeup. Softer lighting around the shower or bath can create a relaxing atmosphere to help you wind down after a long and stressful day at the office. Living room and bedroom lighting should be soft and relaxing, with a few strategically placed areas of task lighting for reading or other activities. The particular fixtures should be chosen with the help of your electrician, who can help you determine which options will work best with your home’s electrical system.

The Electric Connection has a reputation as being a top electrician in Glendale, earned with quality craftsmanship and an unswerving dedication to exceptional customer service. Give us a call for a free consultation and an estimate on your new lighting design plan. We can help you determine whether you’ll need electrical upgrades to make your remodeling plans feasible. You can do a fast Internet search for electrician Glendale and you’ll easily us, and then you can give us a call for suggestions on the best lighting fixtures to suit your kitchen or other home lighting needs.

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We all know or at least heard that converting from Metal Halide (High Intensity Discharge) to LED will save you money.

But how much? Are there any other reasons or difference you should know about?

In this article, we break down all the factors that you should be aware of before making a decision to convert from Metal Halide to LED. Here are the 9 reasons we think LED wins over Metal Halide.

Let’s take a look at the information on a typical 400 watt metal halide bulb. While specifications may vary, a visit to a popular online website that sells Metal Halide bulbs shows that a brand new bulb has the following specifications:

We have just as many customers wanting to convert to LED because of maintenance savings as they do for energy savings. Think about what we discussed, over the life of the LED retrofit kit, a customer would have to do 5-6 Metal Halide replacements. The higher the installation height, the higher the cost of replacement. And if you have a facility loaded with lights, this becomes a significant budget amount every year that you must take into consideration. Now, we know that reduced maintenance time on lights does not translate into dollars saved because it is highly unlikely that people will lose their jobs over the fact there is much less work to do. However, these people will have time to now work on things that matter, like fixing the machines that make the company money instead on replacing lights that cost the company money.

When you take a measurement of light with a light meter, it reads lumens. And this measurement of all the lights that contribute to the light at that location creates a measurement called foot candles. But let’s think about that light that is being measured. Metal Halide creates all sorts of light, in all spectrum’s, visible or otherwise. This includes UV and IR spectrum’s, visible to the measuring device but not visible to the human eye. LED, on the other hand, does not produce UV and IR. Therefore, its readings using the same light meter is only picking up visible spectrum’s.

So there is a fun little test you can do. Have 2 light sources, LED and Metal Halide. And first ask, which one is brighter? And if the right LED source was selected, they should say LED. And then use a light meter, and the light meter may say the Metal Halide area is producing more foot candles. And so now you know part of the reason, but wait, there’s 2 other pieces of information you need to know.

Click here to see our infographic on Retrofitting vs Replacing.

Conclusion

The search for commercial lighting systems can be confusing, misleading, and overwhelming at times. With all of the different terms, labels, and technologies being used how can anyone expect you to make any decisions with all of that going on?

Well, this post is going to at least relieve your confusion about DesignLights Consortium vs EnergyStar approved and qualified lighting products. There is a difference, and you need to be well aware of what it is when you are looking into a new lighting system for commercial Click here to read it, then come back to finish the rest (opens in a new window)!

The major difference between DLC and EnergyStar is that DLC is only for commercial lighting products while EnergyStar is more focused on residential purposes and applications, with a minor hint of commercial lighting in there as well. This makes DLC the more “go to” organization when it comes to commercial lighting qualifications as they are seen as the experts on commercial lighting products and technologies.

Anyways, when it comes to becoming EnergyStar qualified for a lighting product, a product needs to pass these (along with others) guidelines to be able to be EnergyStar qualified:

Conclusion

After this quick, simple, and brief overview of the differences between EnergyStar and DLC; we hope you’ve found some light on the topic (get it, light).

In a general sense, most of your commercial lighting purchases will include DLC qualified products, especially when buying for warehouses, factories, parking lots, street lights, and the like all except for those listed.

Are you confused on any point? Have any comments or questions? Comment them below and we will surely find an answer or response!