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What are High Intensity Discharge Lights?
Unless you are in the electrical industry, you may not have heard of high intensity discharge lights or what they can be used for. These lights, called HID lights, produce their light via an electric arc caused by tungsten electrodes. These electrodes are placed inside a clear arc tube, the actual bulb of the light. This tube contains a number of metal salts and gas to help the arc strike and come on. Once it lights, it actually heats up and evaporates the salts, turning them into a plasma that increases the intensity of the beam of light and making the light more energy efficient.
How do HIDs lights stack up against others? Well, they obviously are much brighter and more luminous that both incandescent and fluorescent lights. They give off much more visible light than these other lamps, plus they put off less heat. When it comes to output per watt, HID lights put out a much larger amount of light than any standard bulb. For this reason, HIDs lights are quite popular for use as headlights on cars. They light up the road much better than older, more traditional headlights, especially during bad weather.
While HIDs headlights have been around since the early 1990s, they are not always popular with drivers, and not everyone has installed them. One of the issues is that, while the HID headlights do increase visibility at night, they also glare brightly on incoming cars, making it somewhat annoying for other drivers. For this reason, HID headlights in use in cars in Europe must feature lens cleaners, and the car must be equipped with a leveling system that keeps the HID beams aimed at the road, not at other drivers. However, there are no such restrictions in other countries. In North America, for example, not only is there no leveling system in use but many companies are also creating HID beam patterns that glare even worse than standard ones.
One thing that is restricted nearly everywhere, however, is the use of HIDs headlights in cars not originally designed to make use of these high intensity bulbs. Fitting HIDs bulbs into headlights that were not meant to use them causes very high amounts of glare and is very dangerous.
In addition to vehicles, HIDs bulbs are also often used in bicycle and motorcycle headlights. Many different aircraft also make use of HID lights for landing and taxiing down the runway at night.
In addition to vehicles, there are a number of other places that HID lights are especially useful. Any large location that features row after row of lights suspended from the ceiling is probably using HID lights. This includes large gymnasiums, warehouses, and many large parking lots. You will also find HID lights illuminating outdoor sports arenas and football stadiums since they put out so much light. Some movie theatres, illuminated pathways, and roadways also make use of HIDs lighting. A more recent use of HID lights includes retail stores, especially large shopping mall stores, and even some residential uses. HID lighting has proven to be quite useful in indoor gardening and greenhouses since the lamps can produce such a large amount of light. They can also be used as a source of light for aquariums that house tropical fish that are used to high amounts of sunlight.
One of the downsides to HIDs lighting, however, is that the lamps actually create a good amount of UV radiation. This means that all HID lamps have to feature filters to block out the UV radiation so that various components of the lamp do not degrade and so that any dyed items under the light do not fade. In fact, exposure to HIDs lamps that do not have a UV filter or have a broken filter can actually cause injury to both animals and humans, the least of which is a bad sunburn. For this reason, most HID lights have a safety mechanism installed that automatically turns off the light if the UV filter is broken.
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