garage LED lighting project

[Brian_H]

You could improve the efficiency of the fixtures with even a basic reflector.

Please elaborate.

A reflector in combination with a diffuser would probably be beneficial in a design where the emitters were spaced several inches away from the diffuser, such as in a recessed can design; beyond that scenario I don't think there is much need for the combination in fixed lighting, as LED's are already directional light sources, having a directivity 2θ ½ of 120° or so. Since my diffuser wraps 180° around the LED's, all of the light hits the diffuser. A reflector would introduce losses to this system.

70% efficiency is not too shabby for a diffuser. Without the diffusion there could be some undesirable glare. The diffusion also prevents shadows, which are the enemy in a working environment. The ceilings and walls will be painted white to help the overall efficiency of the system as well as the diffusion. I could also paint the floor but I don't think I will. I only hope that the glare will be reduced enough with the diffuser I have chosen, as the LED's are not going to be recessed in the ceiling or fixtures.

Another option would have been to point the LED's up at the painted ceiling, but with the amount of dust in a shop I did not want to deal with cleaning them all the time.

Also it seems that using light sensors you could shut down some of the leds to decrease power consumption when the doors are open and providing light.

The array will be controlled by a dimmer and variable from about 0% to 100%. I will probably not have the garage doors open while actually machining anything as my shop is in a residential neighborhood and I wouldn't want to disturb the neighbors with my air compressor and milling machine noise, even though where I live there are no ordinances regarding this.

Sorry for geeking out a bit. I was a commercial lighting designer at one time.

You would have had to produce some ray traces and rant about angle of incidence or something to geek out.