21 Feb 2012 01:02:11
Why choose LED Lights?
It seems like only the day before yesterday when we were all being told that compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) would be the future for energy-efficient lighting – so why LED lights all of a sudden?
These tiny light sources made perfect sense for video walls and electronic gizmos, but they hardly looked like the stuff that the future would be made from. But if there was a single aspect of the new LED High Performance lamp that made it a preferred light source, it was the size of the diode source and the amount of light that it became capable of producing (still increasing, even as you read). Let’s face it, the CFL lamp is ‘compact’ only in comparison with the traditional fluorescent tube – and since the LED has come along it's difficult to imagine a more unwieldy device than the CFL.
Lighting LED developers (and there are still other kinds of lighting developers, lest we forget) have followed a variety of routes to market. The obvious path to follow was to find energy-efficient replacements for conventional lighting fixtures – and here we’re mostly talking about the ubiquitous downlight, so beloved of electricians and house builders, but no one was surprised to see the early attempts to replace the most common light source of all, the traditional 60W light bulb. And now dimmable LED light bulbs for the home are just a step away, as soon as the developers have worked out a lasting relationship between the LED and the domestic dimmer.
But the very best in LED lighting design is coming from design houses where the LED is being treated as a light source in its own right, rather than clone of what used to be. These companies are addressing the issue from the point of view of getting the very best from the LED source within a fixture that has been designed for it, rather then the other way around. This kind of sympathetic design shows where the LED can take us when it’s allowed to perform to its very best.
At the end of each of our blogs, we’ll be offering you:
Energy Conservation Tips – Multiple circuits.
When you’re planning the lighting for a room, consider the number of circuits that you need, and split them into smaller groups where it’s possible. That gives the option of only using a portion of a room’s lighting, rather than always having to use 100%.
This blog is brought to you by High Technology Lighting - suppliers of professional lighting solutions. High Technology Lighting are an authorised partner of the Government’s Carbon Trust Scheme, enabling enhanced capital allowance to be claimed on a range of products on the Energy Technology List. Download their LED Catalogue now to see how you could dramatically reduce your energy costs
