LED Lighting: Guiding Light Or False Dawn?

Posted on 30. Jan, 2009 by Ross in Energy News

As the downward spiral in the world economy forces companies to look to protect their profits and CO₂ targets translate into restrictive corporate financial penalties, a range of new technologies and products from the burgeoning green and clean technology sectors promise substantial savings in energy, money and carbon emissions. One such technology competing for the attention of businesses is LED lighting: here we take a look at the pros and cons of this infant industry.

LED: The Lighting Solution?

LEDs themselves have been around since the early 1960s but their application in lighting installations is a relatively new phenomenon, brought on by increased power and performance in parallel with other advances in semi-conductor technology in electronics. Instead of being restricted to individual wavelengths of light, phosphor-coated LEDs are now able to emit crisp white light, and LED arrays have recently been declared to be able to produce up to 2000 lumens. Lifetimes can be up to 100,000 hours, and better energy-saving efficiencies than conventional HID lighting solutions are also often reported.

Problems

However, despite the tantalising prospect of lower energy costs, LED lighting has its drawbacks and problems. The cost of the LED lights themselves remains substantially higher than other competing solutions, making Return On Investment periods far longer and making large-scale commercial investment an unattractive proposition. Whilst lifetimes of 100,000 hours are possible, this requires running the devices at very low currents and more realistic lifetimes are between 10,000-20,000 hours, over which the LED lighting will usually lose around 30% of their output. Conversely, the high efficiency claims made of LEDs require running the devices at high currents, which drastically impacts their lifetimes and takes no account of the energy losses from resistance in the surrounding circuitry.

More Harm Than Good?

Finally, whilst LED lighting can claim to be environmentally friendly due to the ability to recycle the components parts, their manufacture can be highly environmentally damaging. As well as the high energy costs involved, semiconductors require large volumes of heavy metals and chemicals: on average, the manufacturing of just 1/8-inch of a silicon wafer requires about 27 pounds of chemicals, 29 cubic feet of hazardous gases and 3,787 gallons of waste water. On top of that, semiconductor manufacturing plants tend to use in excess of 240,000 kWh per day.

In contrast, the Somar Eluma is an intelligent energy-saving lighting solution with a proven track record of delivering financial and environmental savings whilst improving the operational environment of business premises around the world. Its high level photometric design and intelligent sensor controls enable it to deliver energy savings of up to 80% - for more information visit the Somar website.