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LED Lights - The next step in efficient lighting |
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An important part of reducing your ecological footprint is to convert your existing lighting to a more efficient form. It has been reported that around 9% of a households energy costs come through lighting the home. Many of us have already converted our incandescent light bulbs to the more energy efficient compact fluorescents (CFL). However as technological advances occur new forms of lighting are becoming more readily available and affordable.
One such technology is the light emitting diode (LED). Although they have been around for many years in household appliances they are only now reaching a point where they can produce enough light for household and commercial lighting. LED lamps last 25 - 55 times longer than incandescent lamps and their high-efficiency can lead to savings of 70% - 90% in power consumption.
Some of the advantages of LED lights are: - High durability - no filament or tube to break;
- Long life span - LEDs last approximately 100,000 hours;
- Low power consumption - reduces overall electricity bill;
- Flexible application - the small size of LEDs can lead to unique lighting devices. For example, with a cluster of LEDs a wide variety of illumination distributions can be generated; and
- Low heat generation.
LED lamps are currently available as either the traditional LEDs (typically around 5mm) or the larger high power LEDs. Lights using traditional LEDs require a large number of LEDs to produce sufficient light while the high power LED bulbs use a lot fewer to generate an equivalent amount of light. Some tips when buying LED Lights: - The more LEDs the better the light dispersion;
- Some of the LED products available today are marketed as "energy-efficient," but actually have very low light output compared to typical light sources;
- Find out how many watts the product consumes and how many lumens of light it produces. Lumens per watt (lpw) is the commonly used measure of how efficiently a light source is converting electricity into useable light;
- Evaluate the cost by comparing cost, energy usage and expected life of the different lights before purchasing;
- Check the color of the LED light. White LEDs are typically “cooler” and bluer, even compared to fluorescent sources. Often there is a trade-off between efficiency and color. The warmer colored white LEDs provide less light per watt of electricity consumed, compared to the cooler white LEDs;
- Ask for a sample of the product. This will allow you to evaluate it yourself. Due to a current lack of standardized testing procedures and product specifications among LED product manufacturers, it can be difficult to compare product performance purely based on information provided by the manufacturer.
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