From Guest Blogger Dr. Bulb: Lighting An Office Building with LED Bulbs
Hey there lighting fans! Dr. Bulb here with some thoughts on the rise of LED lighting in office buildings. The emergence of LED lighting is causing the lighting market to change rapidly as businesses around the world recognize the benefits of taking energy management seriously. LED lighting can save energy, reduce costs, and even increase the quality of light.
When lighting an office building there are two options as to where to delegate the costs:
Option 1: The first and more traditional option is to buy inexpensive lamps, such as incandescent and CFLs, and pay for the maintenance costs and to have the bulbs replaced every year or two. Large office buildings can house hundreds of lighting fixtures, the maintenance and replacement costs of these lights can be astronomical if they are burning out quickly.
Option 2: The second option is (the right option) to spend a little extra on LED lamps, and then reap the benefits of a maintenance free, energy efficient lighting solution. LED lamps often have a rated life of around 50,000 hours which means they will last over 11 years it they are on for 12 hours a day, everyday.
Energy management is a rising field, and businesses are saving thousands because of low energy bills. LED lighting has nearly 80% efficiency, which means that 80% of the electricity is used as light energy. Incandescent bulbs, on the other hand, operate at only 20% efficiency. This means that 80% of the electricity you pay for is being lost as heat energy when using incandescent bulbs! And, all that wasted electricity from incandescent bulbs converts directly into wasted money for the building manager. When a large office building has hundreds of lighting fixtures, each LED bulb that can save a few dollars adds up to hefty savings.
Being “green” is a must for businesses in today’s world, but there is a difference between having a few recycling bins around your office and actually embracing the environmental trend. LED lights are a great way to start becoming environmentally sustainable. Not only do they use less energy, but they are not manufactured with mercury or other toxic chemicals. Customers and stakeholders appreciate businesses that take an environmental initiative, so the benefits of LED lights go beyond a reduced electricity bill.
New technology always spurs questions; everything from the automobile to the iPad has been through public doubt. Often LED bulbs are looked at as a “green” option, but they are believed to provide lower quality light. I cannot stress enough how untrue that statement is! LED bulbs offer excellent light quality, even comparable to natural light. Also, LED bulbs are directional and can point light in the desired area, while other bulbs splash light in all directions.
No matter what your building’s lighting needs are, be it troffers or wall packs, make sure you know the financial and environmental benefits of LED lighting. And visit Drbulb.com for LED lighting industry news.
One other thing about LED’s:
Most people are more familiar with lumens/watt, which is a more easily calculable (hence more easily comparable) metric. While the lumen/watt for LED options seem similar to fluorescent lighting (~70-100 lumens/watt for either LED or fluorescent), the LED lights are directional rather than radial, so you don’t lose some portion of half of the produced light being absorbed by the imperfectly white reflectors (or ceiling). The difference is probably at least a 15% advantage for most installations, and in some cases might be a 20% advantage.
Avoid screw-in LED bulbs. LED’s are sensitive to heat, and amassing enough of them to light a room from a central point is impossible – it just gets too hot. It’s better to use strings of light so there’s no concentration of heat that could damage the LED’s.
If you don’t mind a little soldering and gluing, a light tape with a power supply and controller are by far the best way to go.
I bought (and installed) a few as a Christmas present for my wife… and they are absolutely awesome. You can change the tone of the room by clicking a button on the remote: you can increase or decrease intensity over a broad range for any number of colors. The product I chose was this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0WP0H18699
But the controllers really don’t handle 6 amps, so if you want to splice more lengths together you’re going to have to get a better controller (and probably a better power supply).
I absolutely agree with the fact the LEDs are directional, this allows for the production of equal or greater lumens as compared to traditional while using less energy. Also being able to dim the lights really changes the whole feeling of a room.
I can’t recall the last time I saw an incandescent bulb in a business. Incandescent lighting in businesses was replaced decades ago by fluorescent lighting except in places where lights are used very little, such as closets, where incandescent lights make the most sense. Fluorescent lighting is also avoided where radio frequency interference is a problem.
There are LED light assemblies designed to replace fluorescent light tubes. However, it is necessary to remove the ballast from the fixtures before installing the LED light assemblies, which is not difficult.
Turning fluorescent lighting on and off frequently, regardless of whether it consists of classic fluorescent tubes or CFLs, greatly shortens the life. That problem does not exist with LEDs.
Generally, solid state electronic components DO contain toxic elements, including arsenic. Thus, without doing some research first, it might be prudent to avoid asserting that LEDs do not contain toxic substances.
In some cases, LED lights result in even higher savings than their superior efficiency indicates. The additional savings occur when a building which is frequently cooled by air conditioning, or a retail outlet with lots of refrigerated food cabinets converts its lighting system to LED.
In these cases, the saving on running the air conditioning resulting from less stray heat from the lighting system can be quite significant. (Almost enough to run the LED lights in some cases).
There are also both direct and indirect safety advantages when using good LED lights as compared to some other lights – less lamp changes results in less frequent use of ladders / working at height, and due to their much lower operational temperatures, a typical LED lamp can be touched or even held without burning fingers – try that with a halogen lamp and you will lose skin. Short of an electrical fault, there is almost no chance of careless contact between lamp and merchandise resulting in a fire – unlike halogen lamps which can run at several hundred centigrade (easily enough to cause a fire if covered) and on rare occasions have been known to explode showering hot broken glass in all directions.
With any LED lighting unit, there are two very important factors in ensuring long life and good retention of lighting efficiency.
1. A good heat sink big enough to easily disperse the heat generated by the lamp.
2. Quality components in the drivers – some cheaper makes compromise the quality of the lamp to save a few pennies on better quality capacitors.
One point on LED dimming – usually it is safest to use a trailing edge dimmer with LED lamps to avoid current spikes which can damage some dimming circuits found in dimmable lamps. It is necessary to limit the number of lamps per dimmer switch to around 10 to 12 lamps – see explanation below.
Suppose you have 6W GU10 x 10 (spotlight lamps)you would think that the current drawn by these lamps would be Watts / Volts. This is not always the case as there is a momentary surge current up to around 10 times the nominal current for a couple of milliseconds as the lamps switch on (or with some dimmers every cycle). This being the case, even though 10 x 6W = 60W, I would not recommend using any more than 10 such lamps on a 600W dimmer switch as even milliseconds of excess current can damage the electronics of the dimmer switch.
Be aware also that most dimmer switches assume a minimum wattage which might require several LED lamps to achieve – this being the case, with some dimmers you will need to connect 2 or more lamps to get good dimming performance, and may get flickering if only one lamp is used.
I’ve long been looking forward to the time when LED lighting began to take its proper place. I hope to someday see new homes wired with lower voltage renewable-fed circuits specifically for LED applications.
Incidentally, I note that Glenn’s Newegg product states, “No environmentally harmful components were used in manufacturing,” and I know many – if not most – electronic components now made for international sale/export are already RoHS compliant (in keeping with the EU’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive).
If that is the case, perhaps electronic items should be labeled as to whether they contain toxic substances. We are supposed to convey defunct electronic items to special disposal sites which are commonly very inconveniently located. We could save a bit of fuel if we did not have to drive to them and sometimes even more money by not having to pay special disposal fees.
Many devices are labeled as regards RoHS compliance. The deadline for the export rules has already passed some time ago.
Like for logo’s like these on the packaging:
http://www.google.com/search?q=rohs&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=4Z9bUbmpA4PmiwLmj4CIDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CE8QsAQ&biw=1440&bih=783
– Cameron Atwood