I have a bit of an issue with LED floodlights. We experimented in the ship's engine room for a little while.
Generally, they're made by combining three different colours to give the appearance of white light. It works, but the eye is unable to perceive the same amount of detail for the same degree of illumination. So with an LED light, you need several times the brightness to be able to see as well as a conventional bulb.
There are some out there that are good - but they are really spendy. We worked out that the payback time in replacing the ship's machinery space bulbs was somewhere in the order of 15 years - and that's with an electricity price in the order of 50p/kWh for the onboard generators.
Where they did work well though was on the deck - because there was no longer the need to run any beefy cables for 1.2kW floods. The saving in cable and installation time paid for the high cost of the bulbs, as well as being able to install them in locations which would make bulb replacement difficult. You wouldn't believe the hoops you have to jump through to change a bulb 'at height' or 'over the side'.
