Safe & Sustainable: Making the move from incandescent to LED

By ETC 

As technology evolves and restrictions on incandescent lights are upon us, more venues are making the switch to LED fixtures. From a safety standpoint, moving to LEDs makes sense. The external temperature of an LED fixture is substantially lower eliminating the danger of burns. Lower temperatures also mean a substantial saving on building cooling costs. Because there are no more lamps or gel to change, maintenance costs lower, as well the risks incurred by sending staff up on ladders or in man lifts to service incandescent fixtures.

Beyond system cost savings and improved safety however, moving away from
incandescent is a big decision that should be viewed as a long-term investment. In addition to looking at what LED fixtures can do, specifiers should also consider how long they will last. While external fixtures temperatures are substantially lower with LEDs, how a manufacturer manages the internal temperature matters. Here are a couple of questions to consider ensuring that you end up with quality fixtures and beautiful light for decades to come.

1. How efficient is the fixture?

If your LED fixture can meet your artistic needs and consume less electricity, it has been designed to mitigate a major accelerant of the aging process: heat. Any heat that is produced by a luminaire is wasted energy that both causes LED quality to droop and ages electrical components. In an LED light engine, saturated color equates to fewer lumens, and less saturated color equates to more lumens. Luminous efficacy or, the amount of light emitted for each watt of power consumed, helps ensure that no lumens are wasted as the fixture works to put out a light that is both saturated and bright.

Higher efficacy means you can use more colors and get brighter results. This is a big win for the design team, but also a huge indicator that you’ve found a long-lasting LED fixture. Higher efficacy reduces heat, which protects your LEDs from deteriorating over time and reduces the likelihood of burns when making adjustments.

2. How consistently will it perform?

LEDs by nature are inconsistent. No two LEDs are exactly the same. To further complicate things, each LED’s intensity is dependent on its ambient temperature. Individual LEDs will droop as they heat up and different colors of LEDs droop at different rates. To avoid color shift in your fixtures as they warm up, you’ll want to find a manufacturer that regulates the internal temperature of an LED array. These fixtures automatically adjust the intensity of the LED emitters to maintain a consistent output.

Finding a manufacturer that understands color droop, studies the binning options of each color, and purchases the ones that yield the most consistent performance is a must. As you might expect, getting fixtures from the same manufacturer to match each other in color output and intensity can also be an issue. Many companies run a calibration process for both intensity and spectral output, which makes a notable difference to your entire inventory. Purchasing fixtures that have these technologies built in means that you, the user, will never have to worry about anything other than if the fixture is on or off.