Focus on whole of life cost

There has been a steady and marked improvement in the energy efficiency of lighting over the years. Unfortunately, the energy efficiency gains have been punctuated by inevitable waste. The progression from T12, through T8, T5 and on to LED has been marked by an enormous amount of waste, as old fittings are consigned to waste skips.

LED lighting, has reached an inflection point. The efficiency of LED fittings is such that further gains in lumens per watt efficiency, will have little practical benefit for most buildings. The key opportunity is automated control.

It makes little sense to install LED fittings that are not compatible with IoT controls. These controls allow the light output of the connected fittings to be optimised and automated. Specifying D4i sensor ready drivers – compatible with IoT sensor controls – in your future LED projects is one of the most important decisions to make today.

A typical LED upgrade will reduce lighting energy consumption by around 50%. Combing IoT controls can result in savings of up to 90%. The additional cost of the intelligent controls will soon be recovered from the increased energy saving.

Failure to choose the intelligent controls option – and installing standard LED fittings will almost certainly result in those fittings being replaced prematurely due to climate change targets and the need to minimise energy costs.

Including IoT controls will not only reduce energy consumption, helping to future proof your buildings against rising energy costs, they will also extend the service life of the luminaires.

Upon installation, its typical to find that the measured lux level is considerably more than that calculated by the Lighting design software. With intelligent controls, the delivered lux level can be tuned to the exact area requirement, saving energy and reducing the heat within the fitting. This ‘task tunning’ energy saving can be as much as 30% and is seldom less than 20%. That’s a lot of wasted energy and a lot of unnecessary heat in the light fitting.

The intelligent controls that we recommend use a sensor per fitting. In areas that benefit from natural daylight, the fittings in the ‘bright’ areas, automatically adjust. Reducing their output and power consumption yet further.

Using a sensor per fitting allows unprecedented levels of local area control. We no longer face the challenge that some people feel an area is too bright, whilst other in the same area feel it’s too dark!

Having a fully optimised system will create maximum energy savings and extend the life of the installation. With energy prices at unprecedented levels and set for further increases, a ‘whole of life’ costing approach makes sense, even in the short term.