We replaced eight 50 watt halogen lamps with the same quantity of 7 watt LED MR16 V3s in this estate agent’s display windows early in the spring. Now that the nights are drawing in, I had the opportunity to wander by in the evening and check them out. They look great.. I haven’t had time to work out how much energy has been saved since installation, but these lamps are using just 56 watts in total, compared with 400 watts with halogen.
First test results for the forthcoming EQ80 LED light bulb have been very positive. This bulb is the 9 watt evolution of the successful 7 watt EQ60 LED energy saver.
As the image shows, the base of the EQ80 bulb is slightly longer than the EQ60, but the diffuser cap is identical.
As with the EQ60, the light diffusion is excellent, with no LED-specific points of light. The EQ80 will also be available in Cool White 5000K and Warm White 2700K colour temperatures.
The EQ80 bulb is noticeably more powerful than the EQ60. Having tried LED lighting throughout my own house, I have become accustomed to the light levels in each area. I used to run a 100W incandescent bulb in a room which we use as a bike store and general workshop. Initially, I replaced it with an EQ60, which was fine for most purposes, but when fixing a particularly fiddly bike part (or chasing it around the floor), I would have been glad of a little more light. The EQ80 certainly provides it. The room appears bright and contrast and colour are good.
There is still no way of creating uplighting from this design – all of the light is distributed in a 140 degree arc in front of the bulb. This does mean that lamps suspended some way below ceiling height may create shadows on the ceiling. It is not a big issue, but one which we would like to improve for future product generations. The positive aspect of this is that in all other applications, there is less light loss.
We hope to get this bulb on sale in the very near future, probably before the end of the year.
10:10 is all about persuading people to cut their carbon by 10% in a year. It is a good campaign and they work with businesses, charities and individuals to secure carbon reduction commitments. Then they supply help and support to enable those who sign up to achieve their goal.
On October 1st, they launched a promotional video, which ended up offending a few people. They have now pulled the video and apologised for any offence caused. If you are easily offended, please don’t watch this entertaining but slightly borderline video!
Cheap, bright LED lights are being promoted on a fair number of web sites now – often with very impressive performance claims. We have always taken a long hard look at the components, construction and overall design of products before we sell them and our workshop is full of rejected substandard lamps. These pictures of one such product demonstrate the dangers of buying on price!
A client recently had a problem with GU10 LED lamps which he purchased from us. The lamps were working perfectly when switched on, but flashed occasionally when switched off. We were confident that the lights were fine, but we struggled to understand the cause of the problem. Obviously, the capacitor was discharging accumulated charge – but the power source was a mystery. Our client investigated further and found an explanation which may be of interest to others who encounter the same issue.
Our client writes:
“A final update regarding my LED flickering. The issue has returned, but I have been given a reason and a solution that may be of interest to you. The bulbs are fitted in a new-build house and it has a PME (protective multiple earthing) system. It has been explained to me that when my light switches are operated, only the ‘live’ wire is disconnected; the neutral is left connected and an EMF (electromagnetic field) is generated and picked up by the capacitors in the LEDs, causing flickering – there is no power in the neutral, only an EMF. The solution is to change the switches so that both the neutral and live wires are ‘cut’ when the switch is operated. This situation has occured because building regulations only dictate that a standard wiring system be installed at the build stage, and ‘new specification installations’ (namely my LED bulbs) are not catered for. I have decided to tolerate the flickering as it is not all the time and will hopefully not affect the longevity of them. A bit lengthy, but I wanted you to have the explanation as it will (in my view) occur more and more, and it may be worth indicating that a simple change of light
switch may be required with some bulbs. Anyway, I am still delighted with your product. Regards – VT.”
We are big believers in the cloud computing model used by Brightpearl. The Brightpearl software isn’t loaded on to our servers here at the office in Ubley, it sits on nice, secure web servers out there on the internet. That means that communication with the data takes place using a web browser, which means that we can access it from wherever we are.
But it is more than that. Business is all about communication – it is about sharing information with customers, suppliers, trading partners. By using a hosted platform, we are able to provide portals for our clients and suppliers to allow them to access data and to provide us with data, which all adds to the speed and efficiency of our organization. That results in better prices, better service – overall, a better business.
Because Brightpearl covers all of the core functions of the business, it transfers data between the various elements. That eliminates re-keying of information, saving us time and reducing errors. It all adds to our ability to work quickly and smoothly – which is what our clients demand.
Because we rely on Brightpearl, it is important to us that the software continues to be the best available. It gives us an advantage that we want to maintain. That’s why we are absolutely delighted that the company has just announced a round of investment from two of the leading Venture Capital firms in the UK; Eden Ventures and Notion Capital.
Brightpearl are now expanding their team, accelerating development and building loads of exciting new features into their software. For more info, visit them at http://www.brightpearl.co.uk/
One of the key benefits of LED lights is that they don’t produce heat – isn’t it? Well, yes and no. It is true that LEDs produce far less heat than comparable Halogen lamps, but they still do produce a small amount of intense heat at the Thermal Junction.If this heat is not managed properly, it can cause catastrophic damage to the LED.
As the LED generates heat, the thermal design characteristics of the lamp itself come into play. The total amount of heat produced is actually relatively small – remember that total power consumption is typically less than 10 Watts and most of this is converted to light. Put your hand in front of a halogen light when it is operating, then do the same with an LED to appreciate this fully.
The problem is that the heat at the Thermal Junction is intense in a very small area and this area is critical to the performance and longevity of the LED itself. Many LED suppliers quote a generic 50,000 hour lifespan for the product, but this is normally calculated on the basis of a Thermal Junction temperature of 25 degrees Centigrade. Achieving a TJ temperature as low as this in an application is rare – it is normally only possible under laboratory conditions. The higher the TJ temperature, the faster the LED performance deteriorates.
The design of a good quality LED lamp will incorporate two main thermal design aspects. The first is a mechanism to draw heat rapidly away from the TJ. The second is a mechanism to remove the waste heat from the lamp entirely, to avoid heat build up. Primary heat transfer is normally achieved by the use of conductive materials to mount the LED to the main base substrate. This ensures that heat passes rapidly to the main thermal management system – normally either a heat sink or a heat pipe, or a combination of the two.
An ideal heat sink will have a very large surface area, with all surfaces exposed to an air flow. Consider car engine cooling systems, where a radiator has a very high surface area generated by the fins which make up its structure. Air is passed through the structure, either by the speed of the vehicle, or by a fan system. The heat sink on an LED must achieve a similar effect.
Many low cost LED lamps use die-cast heat sinks, which are cheap to produce, but are not very effective. The surface area is normally small and the bulk of material permits heat build up. Now look closely at a product such as the LightPlanet V3 GU10 bulb, which uses a very fine fin system and is therefore much more effective.
A further enhancement is active cooling, such as heat pipe and loop heat pipe technologies. This cooling technique, originally perfected for cooling processors in laptop computers, employs water evapouration and condensation in a closed pipe to carry heat away from its source. This is particularly effective in lamps which require a lot of light from a small area – a high light concentration – in such cases, the heat pipe can be used to transport heat far enough from the source to allow it to be dispersed in a cooler area. Our track lights employ heat pipe cooling to allow them to be used for retail lighting 24 hours a day without overheating.
LED lighting is an emerging implementation of exciting new technology and the market is already crowded with products – some of them excellent, but many of them poorly designed. So what is it that makes an LED light work well in a general lighting environment? In this article, we take a quick look at some of the performance features of LED chips.
This is a very broad subject, so we will only be able to cover the basics here, but starting from the top:
It is, as the name suggests, a diode – electricity flows from one substrate to another in one direction only. The clever bit is that, in doing so, it emits a photon – the basic unit of light. Sounds simple, but light emitting diodes have been around for over fifty years without troubling the market dominance of the incandescent filament based bulb. Why? Because producing light that is suitable for general lighting in offices and homes is a far cry from the early implementation of LEDs, such as red indicator lights on radios. Along the development path, various companies have filed a fair few patents. In general, the LED producers who hold the key intellectual property are able to produce the best LEDs.
The key characteristics are efficiency, consistency, cost, colour temperature, CRI, optical characteristics and packaging.
LED efficiency is all about how much light, measured in Lumens, is produced per unit of electricity consumed, measured in Watts. So the measure of efficiency of an LED is expressed in Lumens/Watt and this is improving all of the time.
LED consistency is all about successful replication of all of the key performance parameters throughout production batches. LEDs, like wines, are sorted into bins. Each bin will meet specification tolerances and is priced by performance. So you can buy LEDs from a high price bin, where all of the LEDs in the batch are closely matched at the upper end of the production tolerance and these are expensive. At the other end of the spectrum, LEDs are available from bins which contain the production items which are at the outer limits of the specification. These are far cheaper.
Cost is self explanatory, except to say that you normally get what you pay for. If a product contains a high performance LED chip, but is very cheap, be suspicious. There is almost certainly some level of performance deficit.
Colour temperature is an indication of the colour of light which the LED produces. Expressed in degrees Kelvin, this measurement describes whether the light is very cold, towards the blue end of the spectrum, or whether it is warmer and closer to the red end of the spectrum. As a guide:
2500 – 3500K is warm white, similar in appearance to an incandescent light source
3500-4500 is approximated to day light
4500-6000K is cool white, which can appear very clean, but quite harsh
CRI is an acronym for Colour Rendering Index. It is a measure of the ability of a light source to accurately reproduce the colours of objects when compared with an ideal light source. It quantifies how accurately colours are represented. Low CRI lights make colours appear to be different from their appearance in natural daylight.
The optical characteristics of an LED chip are mainly defined by its primary optical packaging – that is, the lens system built on to the chip itself. When the diode produces light, the challenge is to project this light in an efficient way – and one which will be suitable for the final application of the chip.
LED chip packaging is the way in which the diode is mounted onto its substrate and prepared for use. As we will see in later articles thermal management is critical to performance over time and packaging has a notable effect on this. Other packaging aspects include primary optics, physical size and durability.
A new support programme aimed at helping businesses to reduce emissions through improved efficiency is gradually being rolled out throughout the UK.
Improve Your Resource Efficiency, or IYRE, is an EU – funded package which gives businesses access to expert help as they endeavour to analyze where resource efficiency improvements can be made. IYRE provides a broad range of free business-focused support – from telephone advice to face-to-face, expert environmental consultancy – targeted at helping businesses to cut costs. Businesses can also access a consultancy grant to assist with the implementation of Resource Efficiency improvement programmes.
5000 UK companies are now subject to compulsory participation in the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, a programme which is designed to force businesses to reduce their carbon emissions or pay financial penalties. On April 1st this year, the process of monitoring emissions and trading in carbon allowances began.
Participating businesses will be issued with allowances, which will reduce each year. If an organization fails to reduce its emissions sufficiently to operate within its allowance, it will be required to purchase further allowances, initially at a cost of £12 per tonne of carbon. An organization which manages to reduce its emissions below its allowance will be able to sell spare allowances and gain revenue.
The scheme is intended to drive organizations to implement energy saving technologies, such as LED lighting.
5 Watt Dimmable GU10 LED Spot Light
£22.98
LED Power Supply Driver for 12v MR16 Spot Lights
£6.95
LightPlanet EQ60 LED Light Bulb
£14.99
V3 Ultimate GU10 Warm White 120 Degree Beam Angle Spot Lights - Pack of 10 - SAVE 10%!!
£237.99
V3 Ultimate GU10 Warm White 120 Degree Beam Angle Spot Lights - Pack of 20 - SAVE 20%!!
£419.99
