Val could correct me on this but I think once you get it down to a habit in a show that big the time savings would be minimal. Energy and weight would be but the cost would override any advantages I would think
You are spot on. The cost is huge to make that upgrade, and the savings is weight (of little value to us) and power consumption (would be beneficial but so far not at the cost).
As to weight...well I guess it would be easier to put up lightweight cans, so would save wear and tear on our bodies. But really, hanging 32 par cans is not all that strenuous. Space in the truck would be similar. I guess one could argue that the LED pars could fit in a little smaller road case, or more in the same space, but space is not a premium for us. Likewise, weight in the trailer isn't much of an issue either. Right now our truck weighs in at under 40,000 lbs. With the single axle tractor we can take our total to 50,000 or so without much thought as to distribution of the load in the trailer. Beyond 50,000 lbs we need to watch the load on the drive axle or upgrade to a tandem axle truck. Now upgrading to the LEDs has a few advantages...like dimming. Dimming adds a lot of weight. I don't see much time savings making the change--right now we hang lights, run power (these run to ground), plug in control cable (these are a few feet long). As to heat, I guess that's just not much an issue. They are 15 feet in the air, and it's not like the first thing we do tearing down is grab a par can. There's an hour of wrapping cables before the truss comes down.
The stereo requires 220 already, so not like the lighting is pushing it over the edge. We are maxing out a 220V 50A circuit....actually typically pull several dimmers to 110's to lighten the load a bit. But eliminating the par cans from the power consumption mix would not change our tech requirements at all. The cost of upgrading the equipment would not make the system an easier sell, nor would it make it command more money, which sort of makes an illogical purchase.
As to cycling lights, we don't really have any that can't run full duty so that's not an issue.
We do have non-DJ events that would very much benefit from LED particularly for power advantages, and may utilize some in that arena.
Edited to add: the cost to replace the par cans with equivilent output LED pars is close to $1k per fixture. We have 32 par 64s in our big system. While the LEDs would afford us more color options, we can't get the coverage of our 65' wide dance floor with fewer fixtures, so it's not like we can replace the 32 with 16. For small events that would be feasible, but not for the type of event that we do.
