TAG | energy efficient lighting
Portfolio Update: We add the new Hawthorn IP22 range of slim LED round ceiling panels to our round panel and downlight collection today. These energy efficient panels are the perfect retrofit for old halogen or CFL downlights. Ranging in wattage from 6W to 24W with a variety of cut-out sizes they can be used to replace most ‘old technology’ downlights. Available in 3000K warm white, 4000K natural white, and 6000K daylight. IP22 with a 3 year warranty.
Energy savings of over 50% are achieved, and with a long lamp life above 50,000 hours, they will continue to deliver cost of ownership savings for many years.
The Hawthorn range of panels adds to our already strong family of LED round panels, where we offer IP ratings from IP22 to IP54 to suit project needs:
Our MEGE LED Round panels offer IP40 rating, with a 5 year warranty:
Our ThermaLED Round panels offer IP54 showing rating, with a 3 year warranty:
We also offer IP54 rated LED Downlights in a range of outputs from 8W to 23W
Applications include hotels, restaurants, Schools, Offices, Supermarkets, Hospitals, Commercial Complexes, and Residential/Institutional Buildings.
Visit us today at novelenergylighting.com to explore LED ceiling panels, or call for volume pricing, T: 0208-540-8287
energy efficient lighting · LED Ceiling Panel · led lighting · LED lights · led panels · led round panel · led slim panel · Novel Energy Lighting
Drax power station – Energy efficiency, including LED lighting, means the UK needs fewer of these
The Association for Decentralised Energy, which represents the combined heat and power industry, says that generating energy locally and using it more efficiently is saving consumers more than £37bn ($56bn) a year, compared to 1980.
The report, which looks at local energy generation and energy efficiency actions such as lighting, says that these measures have helped the UK avoid building 14 new power stations, the equivalent of half the country’s current power generating capacity.
But these benefits are often overlooked because policymakers focus too much on energy supply and not enough on demand, the association said. It’s easier for politicians to implement and evaluate big, centralised measures addressing supply than to grapple with the myriad smaller demand-side measures going on across the country, the report says.
Lighting industry figures have made similar criticisms of the government’s approach to energy, arguing that much more attention needs to be paid to reducing demand, rather than simply increasing capacity and moving to renewable energy.
Last year
Lux came up with
its own estimates of how capacity could be reduced if low-energy lighting were more widely adopted.
The ADE wants to move the demand side ‘from the margins to the centre stage, making it the primary focus of future policy’.
The association’s director Tim Rotheray said: ‘Actions on the demand side have helped keep Britain’s lights on, making the UK a better place to do business by keeping energy supplies consistent and reliable… Despite these considerable achievements, new energy policy often repeats the same patterns, taking a centralised approach to solving the energy challenge and overlooking the substantial contribution that users and individual actions can make.
‘With a clear, simple policy approach that values these smaller contributions, demand-side services can help consumers do even more to cut waste, improve competitiveness and reduce emissions. By 2020, we could save consumers a further £5.6 billion and make the UK a more attractive place to do business.
‘Adopting the right policy could mean that by 2020 we could save enough power to run the London Underground for 30 years, equivalent to 45 TWh (45 billion units). Further reduction in energy demand will make the UK more secure and enable greater energy independence.’
energy efficiency · energy efficient lighting · LED lamps · led lighting · Novel Energy Lighting
Simon Nicholas insists he’s not ‘anti-LED’.
It’s a point worth making, as he has become famous in lighting circles for his one-man campaign against bad LED streetlighting.
‘I believe LED is the future of lighting,’ he says. ‘But it’s a sophisticated technology being used crudely because of a lack of expertise. There’s a lack of understanding of the wider issues and a lack of skills within many local authorities.’
‘In many cases it’s cheap and cheerful. It’s not even cheerful, it’s cheap and nasty. In fact it’s not even cheap, it’s expensive and nasty. And if residents complain, all they get back from their local authorities are cut-and-paste platitudes.’
Nicholas thinks taxpayers deserve better, so he has made it his business to get councils to look more carefully at how they procure and specify LED streetlighting – and he’s getting results.
Looking for answers
In a world of confusion and misinformation about LEDs, many lighting professionals dream of customers who are as well informed about lighting as Nicholas. It’s not often you hear members of the general public throwing around terms like spectral composition and luminaire lumens per circuit watt. But be careful what you wish for: Nicholas has been giving manufacturers and local authorities a pretty hard time about their products and practices.
Nicholas is not a lighting man by background. He’s a mechanical engineer who runs a couple of transport and property businesses, and until recently had no more than a passing interest in LED lighting.
But when his local council in Trafford, Greater Manchester tried to replace the streetlights in the conservation area where he lives with brighter lights on higher masts, he complained, and succeeded in getting changes made.
Then he got wind of Trafford’s plans to roll out LEDs, and began to examine their plans.
Since then, his campaign against what he sees as bad LED lighting – either because it’s poorly designed, bad value for money, foisted on people without consultation or potentially damaging to health – has become, in his words, ‘a hobby’.
He hit the headlines in 2013 when the Manchester Evening News quoted (or rather paraphrased) him as saying that LED lights might ‘damage brains’, and last year he appeared on the BBC’s Daily Politics to speak out against bad lighting.
In his spare time Nicholas devours academic papers and policy documents, attends technical seminars on lighting, fires off regular Freedom of Information requests to councils and gets into lengthy arguments on theLighting Talk discussion group on LinkedIn.
He even came to LuxLive last year, and debated LED streetlighting alongside representatives of Westminster City Council, Balfour Beatty and manufacturer CU Phosco. Whatever you think about his views, he’s determined, engaged with the issues and very well informed.
It’s not all about energy
So what’s at the heart of Nicholas’ problem with LED streetlighting? Surely the benefits of this new technology – energy efficiency, light control, colour quality – are compelling?
‘The only criteria anyone cares about is energy efficiency,’ Nicholas told Lux. ‘When you’re introducing LED lighting, the whole process needs to be managed in a very measured and controlled way, and aspects other than energy efficiency need to be considered.’
One of his biggest concerns is the health risks of glare and blue-rich light from LEDs. It’s certainly true that blue light – in certain intensities and under certain circumstances – can damage the eye or disrupt sleep. Many experts insist that fear about the blue in LED streetlights is misplaced, but Nicholas is not satisfied that the risks have been properly researched or addressed.
Not only is there a ‘technical guidance void’ on how best to use LED technology for streetlighting, he says, there’s also a ‘policy void’. ‘Someone needs to put out some guidance. In my view it’s the responsibility of central government, but they don’t seem to have any appetite for it.’
‘Clients are just believing what people are telling them and taking a leap of faith. They’re being promised fit-and-forget for 20 years. In 11 years when the arrays have deteriorated, the driver has blown and the technology has moved on, what are you going to do then?’
He also objects to what he sees as an undemocratic approach to the introduction of LEDs. ‘This new technology is being imposed on people,’ he says. ‘Any negative feedback is being ignored.’
It’s not just Trafford Council that Nicholas has been complaining to – he has also targeted other local authorities, particularly those who have ‘made a big PR deal of what they’re doing’, such as Wigan.
‘They said they had done a trial and were going to extend their trial across the borough,’ Nicholas said. ‘So I ask them a number of questions and they’re struggling to answer them. So I send them some information and ask them to consider it, and as a result they’ve decreased the colour temperature by 40 per cent. I don’t know on what basis they’re thinking 4000K is OK and 5700K is not, but it’s a step in the right direction.’
Nicholas believes local authorities should explore the option of dimming existing streetlighting, which still has years of life left in it, rather than spending millions on brand new LEDs. ‘Manchester and Cardiff have both invested heavily in high-intensity discharge lighting over the last 15 years,’ he says. ‘Cardiff are spending £1.7 million to dim 22,365 lights and saving £312,000 a year. In Manchester they could save £570,000 [if they did the same]. Instead they’re planning to save £750,000 a year on an LED rollout that’s going to cost £33 million, and all the kit they’ve installed in the last 10 years goes in the skip. The lighting level will be less, the glare will be greater and generations of taxpayers will be paying for the debt.’
Follow the money
The way LED rollouts are funded doesn’t always help, Nicholas says. Initiatives like the Green Investment Bank’s loans for lighting upgrades worry him, because he feels they have not paid sufficient attention to quality, including health and environmental issues.
‘They seem happy to subsidise bad as well as good lights,’ he said. ‘The risk is that a local authority who got Green Investment Bank funding go and squander it on poor quality equipment and it won’t work and the company goes bust and the taxpayer is left holding the baby.’
He’s equally unimpressed by private finance initiatives. ‘PFI and LED are not happy bedfellows,’ Nicholas says. ‘The objectives of the PFI supplier and the client are, in my view, mutually exclusive. The contractor wants to do as much as possible and the client just wants to save money. And the contractor doesn’t necessarily give the client the best solution. Manchester is a clear example of this.’
Does he have much faith that the lighting industry will address his quality concerns? ‘No. I’m not sure self-regulation will work. We’ve got a perfect storm of new technology, huge financial pressures on local authorities and a lack of guidance from central government. That’s where the buck has to stop.’
But he has seen positive changes in attitudes from councils with whom he has raised his concerns. ‘I’ve been locked in a battle with Trafford for over 18 months and now we are starting to see some positive results, with a change of emphasis from purely energy savings to consideration of those wider environmental and health impacts which can result from the specification of the wrong spectral composition of outdoor lighting.’
Meanwhile, Cardiff Council has invited him to discuss LED specifications with its highways team, and he’s helping the ILP (the Institution of Lighting Professionals) update its guidance on LEDs.
A couple of years on from getting involved with LED lighting, Nicholas still hasn’t lost momentum. And if central and local government want to come up with effective lighting policies, and win the public round to them, they would do well to pay attention to determined, knowledgeable critics like this.
After all, Nicholas says: ‘If there were any serious counter-argument I’d have heard it by now. And I probably would have gone away.’
Novel Energy Lighting works with councils and developers to specify LED Street Lighting. Call us to discuss your needs: 0208-540-8287, or email: andrew.shuttleworth@novelenergylighting.com
energy efficient lighting · LED lamps · led lighting · led street lights · led streetlighting · Novel Energy Lighting · street lighting
A computer-generated image of a street scene in Tehran, as it would look if enhanced with new lighting. Designers believe an upgrade to public lighting can help draw tourists back to the city
Lux Reports: Better public lighting in the Iranian capital of Tehran could help encourage tourists back to the city, says lighting designer Roger Narboni, who led a workshop on the city’s lighting at a recent conference.
Narboni, a French urban lighting specialist whose company Concepto has designed more than 90 lighting projects in France and beyond, described Tehran’s current public lighting as ‘very basic’ and the lighting in its bazaars as ‘an amazing mess’.
Participants in Narboni’s workshop, including representatives from the Tehran Municipality, spent four days coming up with a lighting ‘masterplan’ for parts of Tehran’s historic centre.
The plan focused on the city’s Marvi and Oudlajan bazaars, which are currently being renovated, and the surrounding areas. Designers studied the local architecture, existing lighting, the kinds of activities that take place and how people move around by day and night, before coming up with designs.
The four-day workshop – which took place during the second Iran Lighting Design Conference in Tehran in November – really only produced a ‘sketch’ of a lighting plan for the area, says Narboni, rather than a full masterplan. But he hopes that the government’s ambition to bring more tourists to the city, and the current renovation of the bazaars, will create an opportunity for ideas from the workshop to be taken forward.
‘In the public spaces in Tehran it’s really functional lighting, high-pressure sodium, 12 metres high, very simple and without any attention to anything. There’s no pedestrian lighting. And in the bazaar, it’s an amazing mess of projectors and fixtures, some of them 40 or 50 years old, cables and wires everywhere. Nothing is ever cleaned or taken away, they just add and add. Lots of the fixtures are 10 or 20 years old. It really needs a big job, because it’s not just the lighting that needs to be changed – it has to be cleaned and completely rethought.’
For the first time since the 1970s, the number of outsiders who visited Iran last year was greater than the number of Iranians who travelled abroad. If tourism is to continue to grow, Narboni says Tehran needs to be made more hospitable at night.
‘It’s a big challenge for many huge cities that are not really appealing and friendly at night, he says. ‘At the moment people just stay in their hotels at night, because there’s nothing to see. The city needs to create things that can be seen at night. There are huge heritage buildings and palaces to be seen, so they need to make it possible to see these things at night. The bazaar closes at night, but if we could light some part of it, it could stay open later.
‘It would totally change the city. It would totally change the way of being in the streets and in the public realm.’
Narboni is optimistic that the plan will help the municipality to install better lighting. ‘They need help and expertise,’ he says, ‘but I hope they will go on doing things, to follow up our ideas and come up with a masterplan that’s more professional. Hopefully this is just a beginning.’
energy efficient lighting · led flood lights · LED lamps · led lighting · led street lights · municipal lighting · Novel Energy Lighting
LUX Reports: Hadrien Bera leads a team of 20 engineers responsible for the overall asset management of London’s grand hotel Claridge’s in Mayfair. It’s a challenging role; requirements to save energy aren’t easy to balance with the need to maintain the look and feel of a lavish Grade II listed building with art deco interiors, frequented by the royals and sometimes referred to as the ‘annexe to Buckingham Palace’.
Lux spoke to Bera to find out how he plans to make the lighting in the prestigious, 200-year-old building more efficient.
Lux: What are the biggest lighting challenges you face at Claridges?
Bera: We’ve got a lot of different systems and it is difficult to keep enough stock because a lot is custom-made. That forces me to plan ahead and to create stocks of critical spares so any issues would have as little disruption to the hotel’s operations as possible.
We’ve got chandeliers in the main reception that use incandescent candles, which also comes with challenges: I am looking at replacing these bulbs which are energy hungry and more and more difficult to source but I cannot just replace them with anything. This is one of the first features our many guests will see so it has to look in tone with the rest of the art deco style of our lobby. It’s easier to be creative and to focus on energy efficiency in the back of house areas.
Have you had much experience using LED technology?
We’re replacing all the filament lighting in our suites with LEDs. The project is still in the early stages and I’m experimenting with different LED manufacturers. With this kind of major refurbishment project, we use lighting designers who will specify the best fittings to meet the operational requirements and also the best lighting outputs.
We’ve got 197 guest bedrooms and the amount of lighting will vary from 10 to 50 light fittings per room. In all our latest rooms, the lighting is 100 per cent LED, from the strips in the pelmets and the wardrobes, to the candles in the bedside tables, the GLS in the standing lamps and the spot lights. At this stage, about 50 bedrooms are fully lit with LEDs, so we still have a long way to go.
Do you have energy reduction targets?
There is not a set target in regards to energy saving. The aim is to ensure that we do not compromise on quality and that we do this in the most sustainable way possible. Then, it is up to me to propose projects to accomplish that. I obviously ensure that the energy is not wasted by having a strict maintenance program but this is not enough, we need to be as proactive as possible to ensure we remain at the top of the game.
Is it difficult to justify investments in energy-efficient lighting?
It’s relatively easy if payback is short. Any investment that would take longer than three years to pay for itself would be difficult to justify and anything that would take less than two years would always be preferential. A business case needs to be submitted to show and justify the return on investment. This requires a lot of research and months of trials. That also gives us the time to negotiate with our lighting provider to make sure that we get the best products at the best price.
In my opinion, many people had a bad first impression of LEDs when they were at their developing stages. This is slowly changing but it is up to us, facility managers, to change this by shortlisting the best possible applications, showing the difference in regards to the ‘feel’ LED can provide, the energy consumption and the associated CO2 emission reduction. This is important and this is why this process is so lengthy.
How do you go about installing new lights without disturbing guests?
When we’re satisfied with the lighting products, we have to do a whole bedroom in one go. We’ll do a survey first to ensure we know exactly what is required, place the order, block the room off and then go in one day and replace all the lighting. Once the room has been converted, we would leave it for a couple of months to gain additional feedback from the rest of the team, from the guests and from the hotel management team before we move on to the other rooms.
For the corridors, the same process applies but the work would be carried out at night when we would convert the corridor into sections, which can take up to two or three nights. This is to ensure that the task doesn’t affect the operations of the hotel or disturb our guests.
What other lighting plans do you have for Claridges?
Façade lighting is another project that I am working on. The hotel is a listed building and its architecture is spectacular. It deserves the best façade lighting we can obtain. There are, of course, different ways to achieve this and everything we do has to be submitted to the authorities to gain the mandatory planning permissions.
At the moment I am at the design stage where I am reviewing with a lighting consultant how we can achieve the best results. In previous Lux editions, there have been a lot of interesting case studies, especially the feature on the Science Museum façade lighting replacement. The result was amazing and it was interesting to see their process.
Novel Energy Lighting supplies LED lighting to hotels and the hospitality sector. Please call (T: 0208-540-8287) or visit us today to discuss your needs.
claridges · energy efficient lighting · hospitality lighting · hotel led · hotel lighting · led bulbs · LED Candles · led filament candle · led lighting · Novel Energy Lighting
Afterglow: This tone from a halogen lamp could soon fade into history if the EC sticks with its 2016 ban on one of the last vestiges of the incandescent business – halogens.
LUX Reports: Neonlite director Fred Bass argues against the industry’s case to keep energy guzzling halogens alive, calling such a move ‘nonsensical.’
—
Sometime in the next few weeks, the European Commission is expected to vote on whether to delay a ban on halogen lamps. Halogens are the last real bastion of incandescent technology. They are a thriving holdover of conventional filament burning bulbs – superior in many ways to standard filament lamps because they are treated with a halogen gas, improving their colour temperature and their efficiency.
Although the industry has long promoted them for their so-called ‘eco’ benefits, they are only slightly more efficient than the conventional filament bulbs that the EC has already widely banished. They are terribly inefficient compared to modern LED (light-emitting diode) and CFL (compact fluorescent) bulbs. Thus, halogens are carbon culprits. That’s why the EC in 2009 scheduled them for a September 2016 retirement.
The conventional lighting industry, represented by the Brussels-based trade body LightingEurope, is now campaigning for a stay of halogen’s execution. It wants to push the halogen ban out by another four years – to 2020, nearly six years from now. It seems stuck between a rock and hard place: While it tries itself to steer consumers toward an LED future, it claims that quality, performance and price of LEDs will not be ready to meet mass consumer demand until 2020. Europeans today are buying more halogens than anything – more even than CFLs it notes, warning of a bulb shortage if the ban takes hold. As good as LEDs are, they just aren’t ready yet to provide the same quality of light as halogen at an affordable price, nor will they be by 2016, LightingEurope claims. It notes that LEDs lamps are still too different from conventional lamps in appearance, price and quality, and that this difference is confusing consumers.
‘Nonsense,’ say LightingEurope’s critics. LEDs have arrived, are more than ready for prime time, and the sooner the better from an environmental perspective. The conventional industry has had already had half a dozen years to prepare for the ban, which, ironically, it lobbied for itself in the first place. If the big traditional lighting companies like Philips, Osram and GE can’t meet LED demand, then the newfangled companies born in the CFL and LED era can – companies such as Aurora, Neonlite, TCP, LIFX, Opple, Cree, Acuity – they note. Some suggest that the big companies are simply trying to hold onto their old ‘replacement bulb’ business model for as long as possible while they make the difficult transition to LEDs, which vendors say last for 20 years.
Lux recently spoke at length with two leading voices on opposite sides of the issue: Diederik de Stoppelaar, secretary general of LightingEurope, and Fred Bass, a director of Hong Kong-based Neonlite and managing director of its UK-based Neonlite International group, which includes the Megaman brand of LED lamps. Neonlite has no incandescent legacy. It started life some 20 years ago as a CFL company, and today about 90 percent of its business is in LEDs. Bass firmly opposes any delay to the halogen ban.
Bass (pictured, right) and de Stoppelaar are not completely at odds. They agree that the industry must weed out inferior LED products that are tarnishing the technology’s reputation. They also implore the industry to clear up the confusion surrounding the relative merits of the different lamp technologies – confusion that the industry itself fosters through loose, or at least non-uniform, performance claims via packaging and merchandising.
But they couldn’t be further apart on the subject of the ban. In a two-part series, we bring you an edited version of our questions and answers with de Stoppelaar and Bass. Yesterday, de Stoppelaar made the case for delaying the ban until 2020. Today, Bass lays out why the EC should stick to its guns and just get on with the ban as planned:
Lux: The halogen ban is set for 2016, the EC is voting on pushing it back to 2018, and LightingEurope says that’s not even long enough of an extension. They want 2020. What’s your take on all of this?
Bass: I’m very much on the side of no delay at all. You’ve got to understand Megaman’s position. We’ve been making low energy lamps since we started 20 years back. We have no legacy in high energy lamps. We just have low energy. (Almost) all of our business is in LED. So to be fair my perspective is just go for the ban because obviously it suits my business. But taking that apart, if you just look a the bigger picture, the environmental picture and all athe rest of it, to me it makes no sense to delay when LED technology has moved at such a pace compared to all the market predictions. The price is half of what it was expected to be at this stage and it’s going to keep going at that pace. To consider pushing out the ban, it’s just nonsensical.
It would be less credible if they moved the dates. It was such a landmark decision. Then to sort of say ‘oh well the industry doesn’t really like it, we’re going to push the dates out,’ then I think the directives will lose their credibility. So you have the credibility issue, the energy issue, and you have technology that is moving at a much faster pace than was ever predicted. And you have LightingEurope saying we don’t want it to change until 2020. It’s very very strange to me. The consumer is only going to gain by switching to the new technology.
Is there any argument at all for delaying?
If there is a need to change a date you shouldn’t make big changes like 4 years, you should make modest changes, 1 year perhaps. I’m not in favour of any movement at all. I can accept that in some parts of Eastern Europe maybe, the standard of living, market pricing may make the lamps less affordable. I also accept that some of the lamp technology hasn’t got a direct LED replacement, so maybe there could be a case to say that certain types of lamps can be delayed but the vast majority of the common GLS type, A-lamp type products are available, they’re at the right price and to a standard which is good enough for the domestic market. It may not be a 50,000-hour lamp, but 15,000 hours is already good enough for 10 years use or whatever. I can’t understand why you’d push it back.
But then, as you said, you don’t have the legacy business to worry about, the way many of LightingEurope’s members do.
They have a different perspective. They’re not like Megaman without the legacy in halogen. These are big companies with lots of production in these areas. And clearly there must be a conflict of interest when they offer a view on the situation. On the one hand they want to see progress and environmental improvement and on the other hand they’ve got a vested interest in these older technologies as well. It’s not easy for them to manage the situation. But I can’t agree with their position.
Yes, it’s almost bizarre. The industry has been telling the world to move to LEDs for several years, and now their message is that LEDs aren’t ready.
It doesn’t ring true. LightingEurope was taking a a leading role in establishing legislation with Brussels getting the directive in place. They had lots of input. And for them to turn around now and say ‘we want to push it out four years,’ even though we see all the market indications moving faster than we anticipated, I have a problem with that. I suppose in principle we can leave the ban in place for the vast majority of lamps, and maybe there’s some compromise on some smaller issues where the technology isn’t quite ready on certain types or whatever. But I don’t see any need to change it on the mass market.
Are they just holding on to the vestiges of the good old business model of selling replacement lamps, and trying to extend that for as long as possible until they figure out how to make money from long lasting LEDs?
There’s probably something in that. There’s a massive price range in the market. That means margins on LEDs are now very very slim. And there’s an awful lot of new players in the market in LED. It’s fragmenting. If you look at that dynamic for the big players, their predictions on profit on LED will be quite different from what they were a few years ago. So in as much as we see a huge drop in the price of LEDs, that will hit clearly hit the potential profits of big manufacturers clearly. And there’s a lot of new players on the market, so I think market share of the large companies is an issue. If a huge volume of LEDs is required in two years time, I think the market can supply it, but maybe it’s not them.
So there’s not really an overall manufacturing capacity issue that will lead to the bulb shortage that LightingEurope is warning about?
From a Megaman perspective it’s an opportunity. Why isn’t it an opportunity for them as well? It’s odd. There’s going to be a very different model going forward. Five years down the line, whatever state the ban’s in, everybody will be using the longer lasting LED technology and therefore there won’t be the same replacement market. The dynamics of the whole lighting industry are changing. Everybody accepts that and we’re planning for it. We all understand that the traditional incandescent retrofit business is finished. Whether it finishes in 2016 or finishes in 2020, it’s finished.
A lot of LightingEurope jobs are in Europe. Closing down halogen lines could mean costly and politically difficult layoffs.
True. And there again there’s another conflict of interest. From a European perspective one tends to be very mindful of any threat to the loss of European jobs. That will be another factor in their argument. I still don’t think it’s sufficient to delay.
Although your company doesn’t have the legacy burden, it’s a tough business for any company new or old. Nobody’s future is guaranteed.
No. There are lots of new players in the market. It’s a very volatile situation. I’ve been in the business a long time. It’s the most exciting time I’ve ever had in the industry. When I started in the industry, we were using technologies that were 100 years old. Now nothing’s for sure.
So where will the money come from in the future?
It will be a combination of things. The retrofits will be very strong for I guess the next five years. But there will be an increasing amount of integrated fixtures business. The estimates are that in new builds, in five years time, half of the fittings will be LED. So we have to be in integrated fixtures as well as retrofits. And we have to be in other areas like smart controls. We don’t know how big that will be but we think it’s a very significant development; it adds considerably to energy savings. The Megaman philosophy is not to get into complex building management system, but to find solutions that can be fitted almost like a retrofit. Wireless systems and so on mean we have a ready market without rewiring a building.
What about the problem that LightingEurope secretary general Diederik de Stoppelaar mentioned – that there are non-brand names selling substandard lights at very low prices, tarnishing the reputation of the LED industry?
That’s one area where actually I agree with him. There’s a lot of new players. Market surveillance in Europe is a key issue that we’ve been going on about for many years – LightingEurope and ourselves. So I would agree, but I don’t see that that has anything to do with the delay in the ban. There is an issue with keeping out the rubbish but that is not I my mind any excuse for a delay. It’s nonsensical: ‘We’ve got rubbish in the market, we must delay the ban.’ What’s that got to do with anything? It’s a separate issue.
I think you also might agree with LightingEurope’s point that the industry needs clear, consistent marketing and merchandising in which the consumer can understand and trust the information on packaging, signage and so forth.
(Yes). I walk into a retail shop and I’m totally confused by the whole display in the lighting area. I’m a lighting guy for 35 years and I’m totally confused by the way it’s presented, the way it’s sold to the public. There’s an environmental organisation in Brussels, ECOS (European Environmental Citizens’ Organisation for Standardisation) where one guy, Edouard Toulouse is really big on this.He wants to change the whole way this thing is sold to the public. And I’m totally with him. It’s so confusing. Waht does the normal guy do when he walks in the store? What does he buy? It’s impossible. Lamp packaging and display is a mess. The industry knows it. The authorities know it. But it has nothing to do with whether you should ban the product or not.
energy efficient lighting · Halogen Lamp · led bulb · led GU10 · led lamp · led lighting · led mr11 · led mr16 · Megaman LED · Novel Energy Lighting · philips led
When H&M arrived on Australia’s shores last year, it did so in style with a vast, mostly LED-lit flagship store in the former General Post Office building in Melbourne.
The building’s long history, and its 18 meter high ceiling, presented the facility team with a challenge of respecting its heritage while ensuring that the fixtures were as easy to maintain as possible.
This has been achieved mainly with linear LED luminaires, recessed from existing ceiling pockets, which focus the light down the central spine of the building’s three-storey glazed atrium.
Lighting designers kept in close contact with Heritage Victoria throughout the project and ensured that the lighting installation was fully reversible and didn’t do any damage to the building surface.
As well as recessed ceiling fixtures, linear LED luminaires have been placed high up to uplight the ceiling and emphasise the columns and the geometric shape of the atrium.
Lower down, mannequins sitting on swings and posing on podiums are lit with narrow-beam metal halide spotlights. The spotlights are placed in pairs on the columns around the atrium with linear LED uplights positioned in-between the spotlights to highlight the top part of the columns above.
The arcade arches around the building are lit with linear LED fixtures concealed within the structure. All light sources are warm white with a colour temperature of 3000k.
Using mainly LED light sources means the store has achieved an electrical load of 12W/m2 for the downward light and 10W/m2 for the architectural lighting to the arches, trees and ceiling structure.
Novel Energy Lighting supplies LED lamps, fittings, and controls for many retail applications. Contact us for volume quotes or for lighting designs: www.novelenergylighting.com, or Tel: 02085408287
energy efficient lighting · energy saving lighting · intelligent lighting · LED lamps · led lighting · led tubes · linear led · linear lighting · Novel Energy Lighting · retail lighting · shop lighting
Lux Imagines: What would happen if all the fittings in Britain’s hotel bedrooms were replaced with LEDs? And what if we add all the corridors and toilets to the equation? Lux‘s lighting economist, Dave Tilley, has done just that in this thought-provoking calculation based on hotel industry information and 2015 projections.
First, Tilley considered changing eight incandescent and halogen lamps to LED in every one of the UK’s 615,000 hotel bedrooms – and then a complete changeover including common areas in 31,000 hotels.
Let’s see what happens:
Conclusion
The results are staggering: £131 million ($199 million) and 677,000 tonnes of CO2 could be saved if Britain’s hotels changed their bedroom, corridor and toilet lights to LED.
But for many businesses, the capital investment needed to do this is still considered a barrier, even when it might pay for itself in a year or less.
The scale of the potential savings – and their contribution to CO2 reduction targets – should capture the imagination of the hotel industry. But government should also be more involved in encouraging better lighting, if it is serious about lowering the country’s energy consumption.
Novel Energy Lighting has supplied LED lighting to many hotels in the UK, and can support you in your hotel retrofit. We also offer
LED lighting finance through our partners at Lombard Capital to eliminate the capital barrier, and allow you to pay for your upgrade from the energy savings alone! Visit us to discuss the opportunity in more detail, or call: 0208-540-8287
energy efficient lighting · hotel led · hotel lighting · led financing · led lighting · LED retrofit · led upgrade · Novel Energy Lighting
Lux Reports: ROME – If you’ve been to the Sistine Chapel, you probably recall the crick in your neck and the strain on your eyes as you gazed upwards to spot Michelangelo’s ceiling.
Strain no more.
The Vatican will today officially switch on 50 new luminaires containing 7,000 LEDs that illuminate masterpieces such as The Creation of Adam and The Last Judgement in a way that brings the paintings and frescoes into full, clear and colourful view, as was evident at a press preview last night.
‘We want to honour the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo’s death by providing new lighting for his work,’ said Prof Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums.
The great artist would probably be proud of the project, led by Germany’s Osram, which said the new LEDs provide ten times the brightness of previous lighting, while slashing energy consumption by 90 percent.
What was the most difficult aspect of the two-year job? ‘To prove that the light was not harmful for the art,’ said Martin Reuter, senior technical project manager at Osram, speaking to Lux at the event.
In order to be kindler and gentler to the paintings, the company did not use phosphor-coated white light, but instead used of a mix of blue, red and green LEDs. Osram sent original pigments for the ceiling, which Michelangelo completed in 1512, to Hungary’s Pannonian Univeristy for testing. Pannonian gave the all-clear after a year.
Other partners included Barcelona’s Instituit de Recerca en Energia, which investigated the energy reductions, and Rome-based lighting designer Faber Technica.
The European Commission helped fund the partners (the money did not go straight to the Vatican, as the Vatican is not part of the EU). The parties have not revealed the cost of the project. But the results speak for themselves, as the photo above shows.
Novel Energy Lighting has provided LED lighting for many churches here in the UK – contact us for details for your upgrade to LED, to save up to 90% energy
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Photo is from the Vatican
church led · church lighting · energy efficient lighting · LED · led lighting · LED spots · Novel Energy Lighting · osram led · sistine chapel · vatican
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