Choose Green Report: High Intensity Discharge Luminaires

July 2000

With so much information packed into 13 pages, it’s hard to believe this Choose Green Report installment is only the first in a series of three on current commercial and business applications of energy-efficient indoor lighting. But if businesses can bank energy savings of up to 50% or more through the “right” lighting system — as the report claims — then it’s a subject worthy of extra attention. Here, we learn about high intensity discharge lighting (or HID), which Green Seal supports using in place of incandescent or fluorescent lighting. The report provides an overview of HID lamp and ballast technologies plus financial and environmental carrots for encouraging their use.

The most novel information is a list of typical Illuminating Engineering Society light and color specifications for performing tasks in manufacturing, office, and retail settings. And in case you thought “light output” was the politically correct way to label the performance of a slacking employee, the report provides definitions for this and other lighting terms. Another section, called “HID Application Notes,” addresses concerns from dimming capacity to backup and instant-restrike systems. A concise table furnishes at-a-glance understanding of Green Seal’s selection criteria and rationale for its two pages of recommended products, all of which meet or exceed Federal Energy Management Program efficiency recommendations; another table supplies FEMP guidelines for comparison.

By no means a cliffhanger, the reports wraps up nicely with a short success story whose plot goes something like this: North Carolina bank replaces its incandescents with metal halide lighting and scores an impressive 60% drop in lighting energy consumption.