Applications
Outdoor and Post Top
Acorn-style and lantern style post top lighting is favored for beautifying and securing outdoor areas like parks and streets, often linking historic places to their past. However, replacing these fixtures is costly and style-altering. The preferred solution is an affordable, LED retrofit that enhances efficiency, supports dark sky initiatives, and maintains aesthetic value, although finding an effective retrofit can be challenging.
Post Top LED Retrofits are the Right Solution
A well-designed post top LED retrofit, ideal for decorative or acorn-style luminaires, combines optically managed LEDs with a system that integrates thermal and electrical management and control capabilities, achieving a sharp light cutoff. Filamento advances this with its patented reflector that precisely directs light, optimizing efficiency and minimizing unwanted upward or outward light escape.
Installation Flexibility
High-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, today’s prevalent lighting technology, require ballasts for voltage management. Filamento’s retrofit, designed for post tops, can operate with or without existing ballasts, removing the need for costly lighting re-engineering. Installation of a Filamento retrofit takes just minutes using common tools.
3-Electrical Options for Installing a Filamento Post-Top Retrofit
- Use existing ballast
- Bypass ballast
- Remove the screw base and replace with Fixture Retrofit Kit
BUG and Application Uniformity
The optical design and management in Filamento’s retrofit contribute to low BUG (Backlight, Uplight, Glare) ratings, enhancing uniform lighting across sidewalks, streets, or parking areas. Despite varying results due to different luminaire designs, Filamento offers a leading B2-U3-G1 rating, ensuring the Acorn or Globe luminaires are evenly illuminated. This detail results in a visibly improved environment, as seen in cases where Filamento’s retrofit replaces HID lighting. The upgrade benefits drivers and pedestrians alike by reducing glare and light pollution and saving energy—replacing 150W HID lamps with 45W Filamento Post Top Retrofits.
Conventional Corn Lamp B2-U5-G3
Filamento BUG Rating B2-U3-G2
Application Efficiency
All LED solutions will feature the life, efficacy, and energy savings that can be achieved with this technology. But at the end of the day. The only light that counts is the light where it’s needed. Filamento’s solution has been engineered to maximize the quantity of light where it’s needed. This allows less power to be used to achieve the results. In contrast, low-cost “corn cob” lamps boast of high output but in fact, much of the light goes upward and outward into trees and onto walls where it isn’t desired or functional and it creates light pollution and uncomfortable glare. The reality is that as little as 20% of the light being produced is illuminating the ground. The corn cob LED lamp may be very high lumens per watt, but the application efficiency is very low.
House Side Shield B1-U3-G1
The House Side Shield offers a simple and efficient solution for enhancing outdoor lighting by easily attaching to existing reflectors. Its primary benefit is the significant reduction of house-side light to a “B1” level, effectively minimizing light spill and glare into residential areas. This feature not only improves comfort for homeowners by reducing intrusive light but also contributes to a more targeted and efficient use of lighting where it’s needed most.
It is easy to evaluate different post top solutions with analysis that lamp and luminaire manufacturers should readily provide. In the examples below, it’s easy to see the power used, application efficiency, and distribution of the light on the ground. Never be hesitant to ask for the information you need to make a fully informed decision.
Tips for selecting the right post top solution
- Understand the effort and cost to install a retrofit solution
- Ask for details about application efficiency which is different from the lamp or retrofit efficacy
- Ask for details about backlight, uplight, and glare (BUG) and understand how these results will look in your application
