Metal Halide to LED Conversion Chart & Savings
If your building still runs metal halide or high pressure sodium, this page tells you exactly what replaces it and what you'll save.
The conversion chart
| Existing lamp | LED replacement | Fixture |
|---|---|---|
| 175W MH | 60W–80W | Wall pack or small high bay |
| 250W MH / HPS | 100W | Round high bay or shoebox |
| 400W MH / HPS | 150W | UFO high bay, round bay or shoebox |
| 600W MH | 200W | UFO or round high bay |
| 750W MH | 225W–240W | Linear or UFO high bay |
| 1000W MH / HPS | 300W–400W | Linear or round high bay |
The rule of thumb is one third. A metal halide lamp radiates light in every direction and depends on a reflector to bounce some of it downward — a lot is lost inside the fixture. LED points where you aim it.
What the swap actually saves
Take a building with twenty 400W metal halide fixtures. With ballast losses each one draws about 460 watts, so 9,200 watts total. Twenty 150W LED high bays draw 3,000 watts.
| Metal halide | LED | |
|---|---|---|
| Total draw | 9,200W | 3,000W |
| 3,000 hours/year at $0.12/kWh | $3,312 | $1,080 |
| Lamps over 5 years | ~$1,500 | $0 |
| Lift rental and labor | Every 1–2 years | None |
That's about $2,200 a year in electricity alone, plus lamps and labor you stop paying for. Most commercial conversions pay for themselves somewhere between 12 and 24 months — faster if you run two shifts, faster still with a rebate.
Don't skip the rebate
Texas utilities including Oncor run commercial lighting incentive programs, and they pay based on the wattage you remove. The catch is that the new fixture almost always has to be DLC listed, often DLC Premium. Most of what we sell is.
Two things to know: apply before you install, because most programs won't pay retroactively, and ask us for the DLC listing numbers — the paperwork needs them.
Other reasons people switch
- No warmup. Metal halide takes 10 to 15 minutes to come up to full brightness, and if the power blips it has to cool down before it restrikes. LED is instant.
- No lumen fade. A metal halide lamp loses roughly a third of its output in the first year and keeps dropping. Your building got dimmer every year and you stopped noticing.
- Color. Aging metal halide drifts pink or green. LED holds its color, which matters for security camera footage and for anyone matching paint or reading labels.
- Cold starts. LED doesn't care about temperature. Cold storage and unheated warehouses start instantly.
What about the ballast?
Every fixture we sell is a complete fixture, not a retrofit lamp. You remove the old fixture, ballast and all, and hang the new one. That's the right way to do it — retrofit lamps that run off an existing ballast keep the ballast's power draw and its failure rate, and they void most rebate programs.
Not sure what you have up there?
Send us a photo of the fixture and its label and we'll tell you what replaces it. If you want the whole building laid out, send ceiling height and dimensions and we'll do it free. 817-440-4862. Also see our high bay sizing guide.