Leading Edge Design Group

In makes economic sense to use timers or occupancy / vacancy sensors in public restrooms. There is no need for the lights to be on in an unoccupied space. However there are problems when these technologies are combined with energy efficient fluorescent lights.

Fluorescent lights can take up to two minutes to reach full brightness. In many cases by the time the light has properly illuminated the space it is no longer occupied. This could create a safety concern in a public restroom. Also the constant on off cycling of the light reduces the life of the light creating a maintenance issue. Many fluorescent lighting manufactures recommend a minimum on time of thirty minutes in order to maintain lamp life.

The solution in these applications is LED. Light emitting diodes reach full brightness instantly and the on off cycling of a motion sensor increases their useable life. The combination of a properly placed intelligent sensor and a LED light fixture in a public restroom will maximize both efficiency and safety while eliminating any maintenance issues for many years (Usually the entire career of the maintenance staff).

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The buzz today is about renewable energy, producing power from the sun, the wind and the earth. All of these methods show a great deal of promise to help us reduce our carbon footprint .However  while we wait for more economical ways to produce power from renewable energy sources there are plenty of cost effective choices that could help us right now.

It is much easier and more cost effective to save a kW than it is to produce a kW.

As an example a recent press release from a solar power panel manufacturing company was celebrating the fact that they were successful in reducing the cost of manufacturing panels to only one dollar per watt!

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I don’t know about you but when I was a kid my dad Bert followed me around turning the lights off behind me. Where ever I went I was always turning the light on and leaving the room, soon after Bert showed up to flick the switch.  You see, Bert had to pay the electric bill every month, I didn’t. He understood the cost of leaving the lights on, I didn’t.  I was just a kid - what did I know?

In my first job my boss was always playing the role of Bert and turning the lights off behind me. He had to pay the bill!!

In a large commercial facility with thousands of lights employees are turning lights on in every square foot of the building. They complete their task and sometimes turn off the lights when they exit an area but they aren’t paying the electric bill so the added capitol expense of leaving the light on may not occur to them.  Where’s Bert?

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Online stores have a traffic pattern of the sites that people visit; monitoring how consumers got to the site or specific page and how much time they spent looking at products and recording what was purchased.

Owners of retail stores gather information about sales at the register every day. They have a daily record of what items or combinations of items were purchased by each customer, however they don’t have any record of where customers traveled in their store and how much time they spent shopping in a given area of the store. Imagine if that information was available to them so they could better streamline their displays based on foot traffic and shopping behaviors.

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LED lights are here and they are here to stay. The efficacy of the products has got to the point where they have surpassed all of the existing technologies in many applications. Outdoor lights, cold storage facilities and refrigerated cases are ideal uses for LED (LED’s unlike other light sources produce more light and last longer in a cold environment). In these areas well designed LED light fixtures provide a more even distribution of light with far less power consumption than any other lighting technology.

Then why are we not seeing wholesale changes to the current lighting? The answer is cost. Most customers are afraid of the larger upfront cost for this new more efficient product. The LED products are three sometimes up to ten times more expensive than other products on the market. But are they really more expensive?

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The product should have an addressable module that would allow custom adjustment of the ballast factor preferably wirelessly from a laptop or a wireless connection to a regional gateway that is connected to a building automation system.

This would allow you to be able to customize the light levels in a space to meet standards without over lighting or under lighting. This would maximize the kW savings and the associated energy costs savings with out the trial and error that could be associated with drawings and projected foot candle predictions.

In a retro fit application existing conditions do not always present easy ways to hard wire cables and controls.