Post Top Lighting Guide

Post-top lighting is a term used to describe outdoor lighting typically mounted on utility poles and located in roads, paths, parking lots, and commercial and educational parks. Decorative post-top luminaires are commonly used to provide illumination for pedestrian and vehicular use as well as security areas, and the most common attribute is that the luminaire is mounted vertically on a 7-20 foot tall post. It is not uncommon for multiple fixtures to be mounted on a single pole, and the exact method of installation varies widely.

Most existing post-mount applications use High-Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps such as Metal Halide, High-Pressure Sodium and if they are very old, Mercury Vapor.

Common wattages for LED bollard lights range from 25 watts to 106 watts and typically reduce energy consumption by 35%-80%.

Also, because of the way LEDs produce light, they progress through their functional life in very different ways. Instead of ceasing to function properly, once the fuel source is significantly reduced, the light output produced by the LEDs decreases very slowly over time. As a result, LED products can potentially last much longer (typically over 100,000 hours) than HID lamps, which in turn greatly reduces the cost of maintaining post-top fixtures over extended periods of time.

Moving on to the way LED luminaires distribute light, LED post-top lighting applications typically provide a very evenly distributed light pattern due to the multi-point design. This means that light levels on a given surface vary less as the distance from the pole or light fixture changes. This compares to HID luminaires, which typically create a "spot" directly below the luminaire, where light levels drop off dramatically as the distance from the pole increases.

As a result, LED-converted candles are more evenly distributed than LEDs versus HIDs. In addition to evenly distributed light, LEDs are also available in a variety of color temperatures, thus providing a range of options for increasing the visual perception of "brightness".

All HID lamps have some inherent characteristics that can cause problems for those managing exterior lighting applications.

Common (HID) lamp wattages for decorative area fixtures range from 100 watts to 250 watts. The higher the wattage, the higher the light output. The function of the area to be illuminated, combined with the number, spacing and installation height of light poles and fixtures, had an impact on the available wattage. For a standard street or campus, multiple 100w or 250w HID fixtures (very common pole top wattages) can run between $6,300 and $15,700 per year in electricity alone.

As with most outdoor lighting applications, maintenance costs are often a big concern with HID decorative post-top installations. In addition to potential lamp life issues, pole top lights, typically mounted on poles longer than 10 feet, often require the use of bucket trucks or lifts to replace lamps or ballasts.

Many municipalities, campuses, and facilities management companies do not have bucket trucks or lifts, so outside contractors must be hired to maintain these fixtures. These costs can add up over several years. The labor and materials costs to maintain a post-top fixture can easily run up to $1,120 over a three-year period.

Depending on the type of HID lamps used in your facility, the performance characteristics of decorative post-top luminaires can vary widely. For example, if you use metal halide lamps, you may see whiter light, but these types of lamps tend to have accelerated lumen decay, which means that the light output of the lamp drops rapidly after initial installation, thus affecting the overall Fewer lifetime lights (we've all seen those decorative street lights with "pink" lights that barely provide any light on the ground).

You may see a longer "life" if you use high-pressure sodium lamps, as these lamps have less lumen falloff than metal halides, but their fuel structure produces a very "orange" light with a very low color rendering index. So basically you trade a longer life for poorer quality light from a visual standpoint.

The above briefly introduces some basic information about post-top lights. If you want to buy post-top lights, please contact us.

TFB Lighting is a professional custom outdoor landscape light manufacturer. The company mainly produces various column top lights, street lights, flood lights, garden lights, floor lights, lawn lights, wall lights and landscape lighting, and other products. With many varieties and high quality, it is widely used in decorative lighting in various roads, squares, parks, villas, pedestrian streets, garden communities and other places.