The Future of LED

LED crystal ball
Lightfair, the world’s largest annual tradeshow and conference for lighting professionals, came to Philadelphia in early May, lighting up the Convention Center in a brilliant blaze of LEDs. Nearly every booth on the exhibit floor sprouted LED light bulbs in every conceivable size and shape. According to workshop leader Mark Lien, a lighting specialist with Osram Sylvania, we have just begun to discover the amazing capabilities of this technology. Here are some excerpts from his presentation:
 
• The Climate Group, a nonprofit organization advocating for clean energy, recently completed a study of 15 lighting projects in 12 cities. Results indicated that switching to LED street lights may have been responsible for as much as 85% of the energy savings.
 
• Entire industries are shifting to LED – Automotive News magazine, for example, is advising car dealerships that it’s time to go LED in their showrooms and lots.
 
• Leasing as alternative to buying LEDs – in some cases, lease payments are lower than energy savings, providing a positive cash flow from day one. And in three years, when the lease is up, there will be newer, better lights available.
 
• LLEDs can carry WIFI signals faster than anything else can – up to 130 megabits per second. The possibilities are endless. Think of walking into a store, typing the product you are seeking into your smart phone, and hitting “submit.” This sends signals to the LED lights in the store to locate the product and send that information back to your phone. The product then shows up on your phone as a dot on a map of the store. Soon, there will be an app for that.
 
• LED’s are having a positive impact on the grocery industry. Typically, 14% of a grocery store’s profit is lost by food expiring. However, red meat will last one day longer under LED lights because their lower wattages produce less heat. That translates to significant savings for a business that runs on narrow margins.
 
• LED impacts productivity in a wide range of areas. When the fluorescent overhead lights that are used to grow hydroponic plants are replaced by LED lights, the plants grow faster and better. Likewise, when LEDs are used in dairy production facilities, the cows produce 6% more milk. And in poultry production, LED lights produce chickens with less leg breakage, who reach their required weight earlier.
 
• Until now, manufacturers have been incorporating LED lights into traditionally designed fixtures instead of creating designs that take better advantage of the technology. Take the humble flashlight, for example. Since an LED light is typically composed of multiple diodes rather than one single bulb, these diodes can be spread out over a large flexible surface instead of being stuffed into one end of a tube. So instead of the narrow beam of light thrown by traditional flashlights, you could have a broad swath of light shining from a surface that can be folded, bent, or wrapped around another object. Time to think out of the box!

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