led commercial refrigeration system in a grocery store

LED lighting has quickly become the industry standard for lighting systems in both commercial and residential applications. Though both homeowners and business owners can experience huge energy savings by switching to LED technology, commercial businesses are in an excellent position to reap the benefits of cost-saving LEDs.

That’s why if you’re a business owner operating refrigeration and cooler systems, you’ll want to seriously consider making the switch to LED technology as soon as possible. 

The potential for LED lighting in commercial spaces is mostly due to the sheer amount of energy that many businesses use. Restaurant and retail spaces that operate cooler cases and refrigerators, for example, tend to use lots of energy for lighting up products and keeping inventory stocked and organized. Cutting down on costs in these areas can pay dividends down the line, equating to more money 

In this post, we’re going to take you through the top 5 benefits of installing LED lighting in your commercial refrigeration system.

 

1. You Can Retrofit Your Existing Refrigerator Lighting

One great aspect of LED technology is that many traditional lighting products can easily be retrofitted to accommodate LED bulbs. If your refrigerator is currently equipped with fluorescent tubes, there are a number of LED retrofit kits designed to fit inside fluorescent fixtures of different sizes and shapes.

Shine Retrofits offers a number of LED bulbs that are designed to replace existing fluorescent tubes in your refrigerators. Some of these LED retrofit kits include replacements for F58T8, F60T10, F60T12, F72T12, T8, T10, and T12 HO fluorescent systems. These kits are made by a number of trusted manufacturers including Howard Lighting and Light Efficient Design, and New Earth Lighting.

 

2. Savings on Energy Costs Can Be Up to 75%

Simply put, LED lamps are the most energy efficient lights available today. If you switch from more traditional cooler lighting, your business can experience energy savings of up to 75%. Calculating up your total energy costs at the moment, you can probably see that saving 75% on your energy bill would equate to a lot of extra money for your company, money you can reinvest in your business to increase profit and grow.

To understand the energy savings you can experience with LED, we recommend checking out this efficiency test that The Simple Dollar put together to compare the cost of operating, incandescent, fluorescent, and LED bulbs. What they found was that over 25,000 hours of use, LED bulbs cost them $38, fluorescents cost them $48, and incandescents cost them a whopping $201.

 

3. Reduce Lamp Heat in your Refrigerator

One unseen cost to running lights inside your refrigeration systems is that many types of lighting technology give off heat, thus making your system have to work harder to keep everything in your refrigerator cold. With LED technology, you hardly have to worry about this problem. This is because LED lights give off a fraction of the heat that other lighting technologies do, saving you money on energy spent keeping the products in your refrigerators cold.

That means that in addition to the regular energy savings of LED, you can also expect them to help your refrigeration system stay cold and thus run more efficiently as well. It’s just another benefit of making the switch to LED.

 

4. Improve Your Lighting Quality

LED technology can not only save you money on energy, it can also improve your lighting quality. Modern engineering has vastly improved LEDs to be able provide whatever type of lighting you’re looking for. If you want bright, energetic white light, for example, then you can purchase LED bulbs that provide a higher color temperature for your space.

On the other hand, if you prefer a warmer, more yellow light, then a lower color temperature might be what you’re looking for. Generally, LED lights are available in a range of color temperatures depending on what application you need it for. Modern LEDs also score high on Color Rendering Index, or CRI, scores, a rating that describes how consistently various light sources produce the same color light. That means that with LEDs you can expect your lighting color to stay the same across your spectrum of bulbs.

 

5. Enjoy a Lamp Life of 50,000 to 100,000 hours

Another way LED lights for your refrigerator save you time and money is with their long lamp life. Many LEDs last anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 hours, which is a significantly longer time than technologies such as incandescent and fluorescent last. Current fluorescent bulbs for refrigeration systems, for example, usually last anywhere from 7,000 to 15,000 hours.

The benefits of the long lamp life of LEDs is that they will last for many years without having to be replaced. Unlike other lighting technologies, you can almost forget about ever having to change an LED bulb. If your LED lasts its full 100,000 hours, that would equate to about 11 years of operation time.

And the benefit of long life LEDs is not just having to make less lighting purchases, it also means fewer headaches worrying about having bulbs go out and taking the time and energy to replace them. With LED refrigerator lighting, you’ll have less of these problems to deal with.

If you have any questions or concerns about changing your cooler and refrigerator lights to LED technology, please reach out to us. Our team of lighting experts at Shine Retrofits can walk you through the process of buying new LED fixtures or retrofits for your business. Please call our customer service team at 1-800-983-1315 anytime Monday through Friday, 6am to 6pm, Mountain Standard Time. We can’t wait to hear from you!