Reversed education

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Singapore 19^th March 2013

Back to LED! It’s been a couple of blogs I have not mentioned LED’s I believe 🙂

Yesterday I met with one of the LED suppliers and had an interesting discussion. At least this one is on my page and understanding that conversion to LED (he specialises in retrofit LED) is not a matter of just replacing a conventional light bulb, like most cowboys who promote their LEDs to prospective but unsuspecting clients. Our discussion reminded me of one of the many LED sales people that use misleading comparisons, diagrams and application pictures to state their case (I had one recently), comparing only the technical features. Rarely do we see sales person talk about the lighting effects to be achieved. In this case a conventional light source of 35Watt was to be replaced by a 12W (LED)… is that a good thing? The beam diagram shows both having the same angle, the energy consumption is clearly less and the LED lifespan is a multiple of the conventional source. But on closer inspection we notice a few things. The lumen package of the LED is only about 2/3 of the conventional source and the beam shape of the LED has a sharp cut-off while the conventional lamp has a soft fading beam. It is unlikely (assuming the colour of the light is the same) that the lighting effect (light distribution/ brightness/ contrasts/ overall mood) will be the same…

Also who talks about proper return on investment? It’s not just an energy story! It is also the frequency and cost of replacement, noting that we do not necessarily need to replace one on one! The morale is that I find myself doing reversed education lately, where I need to educate my suppliers and clients about the benefits of conventional lighting in order to bring out the real benefits of LED. Reversed psychology I guess… 🙂

Light Watch 4-48: It is not surprising that my favourite city of Paris has recently decided to refurbish all their metro stations in to LED lighting. Being one of the oldest metro networks in the world it is probably an easy ROI to convert into LED. It is said the contract for the replacement (one station was outfitted with LED as a test) is about Euro 11 million…big business. Reason the more to be well educated before making the decision to change…you want your money well spent! See also the City’s announcement: http://www.ratp.fr/en/ratp/r_76407/led-lighting-for-ratp-metro-and-rer-stations/