Energy-Saving News

LED Lighting Still Not Ready For Commercial Buildings

Posted on 10. May, 2010 by Ross in New Technologies, Retail & Commercial, Warehousing, Distribution & Logistics

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) will remain too expensive for mainstream commercial applications for the next decade compared to other energy-efficient lighting systems like Somar Eluma.

Despite grand predictions of LED lighting taking over the world, and of rapidly falling costs in the manufacture of these semiconductor-based low-carbon lights, they will remain too expensive to effectively compete against highly energy-efficient fluorescent technologies which are saving companies substantial quantities of energy, money and carbon already with much lower initial capital outlays.

That is the recent assessment of analyst firm Pike Research; the news should dampen the spirits of environmentalists who have been quick to champion emerging green technologies like LED lighting without proper consideration of the business case involved. Whilst LED lighting is highly efficient, it is also much more expensive than more established low-energy lighting systems which use highly reflective designs and intelligent sensing controls to routinely achieve savings of 60-80% compared to standard lighting technologies such as metal halide lamps.

The commercial lighting market is worth $4.4bn every year, but most of LED lightings penetration has been in the areas of street lighting and traffic signals. The bulk orders associated with government light purchasing has provided an easy area for growth, with city and regional bodies as keen on attention-grabbing PR as saving money. The result of this is that LED lighting in many applications is thoroughly unoptimised, and that there is insufficient volume of production for most applications to drive prices down sufficiently for them to become competitive.

Additionally, there are some commercial lighting applications, such as high-bay lighting, where LED lighting is simply unsuitable due to the quality and strength of light that they produce. Energy-efficient fluorescent lighting, whilst already enjoying a competitive advantage throughout most of the commercial lighting market at the moment, is likely to remain dominant over LED lighting in high-bay lighting applications due to the vastly superior operating environment it provides.

The report expects LED lighting to command around 46% of commercial lighting sales by 2020 once the price finally drops to a competitive level, but don’t wait around for that! Every day that you delay in installing energy-efficient lighting is another day of wasting more money lighting your building than you need to. What LED lighting provides - low energy lighting, lower overheads, less carbon - is available today in similar levels from other technologies but at a fraction of the cost.

Somar International have been specialists in energy-efficient technology since 1991, and help companies to cut costs and carbon through low-energy lighting solutions. Constantly driving their technology forward, their newest version of the Eluma high-bay energy-efficient lighting system is a market-leading product which can help you to realise the benefits of tomorrow’s future today.

Image of LED lights in a drinking glass by Dean Harvey @ Flickr

Related posts:

1. Household Flourescent Lights Finally Catch Up With Commercial Lighting
2. Mercury-Free Energy Efficient Lighting From Vu1
3. Retrofit Comparison Calculators: T5 vs Metal Halide Lighting
4. LED Lighting: Guiding Light Or False Dawn?
5. CFL Life-Cycle Declared Greenest, Ignores LED Lighting

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Tags: led, lighting