The long life and high efficiency of modern, low-energy lighting makes it an attractive way to slash both energy consumption and maintenance burden on site. And, as prices drop, technologies like LED are finally becoming affordable. Yet energy-saving lighting is evolving so rapidly that it can be hard to keep track of the latest facts. LED lighting, in particular, is a market filled with myths and half-truths.

Outdated notions

These myths generally arise as a result of either outdated notions or overzealous selling. With technology changing rapidly, much of what was true five years ago (or even one year ago) is no longer true today. Myths resulting from misinformed salespeople are more insidious: this is a market flooded with newly-formed ‘lighting’ companies that are promoting LEDs using misleading data.

All of this means that those managing industrial environments need to get to grips with the current thinking on LED and other low-energy lighting, in order to find out which energy-saving solutions can really work for their sites.

The first myth to tackle is that all LED lighting is basically the same. In fact, LED products of different quality can vary dramatically in terms of colour, temperature and performance. Many poor-quality LEDs have a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) of less than 80. Under this kind of light, only some colours will look natural; the rest will look distorted. What’s more, an LED on the extreme blue end of the visible light spectrum (in scientific terms: 6000+ Kelvin) will feel Arctic.

Generally, LED products can be divided into ‘performance’ and ‘low spec’ products. Depending on the type of industrial site, CRI and colour temperature may not be the overriding concern. However, in any industrial environment where people are working for long periods of time, it’s prudent to select a product with a CRI of 80+ and a colour temperature of 3500–4000 Kelvin (warm-white).

Beware the glare

Another myth is that LED lighting functions in the same way as traditional lighting. In fact, LED, by its nature, is highly directional and prone to creating glare. Part of the reason LEDs have such potential for energy saving is that they are able to generate a huge amount of light from a source the diameter of a pencil lead.

Originally categorised under ‘lasers’, some poorly-designed LED products still resemble lasers. Low-quality LED lighting is often designed as an array of lots of small LEDs, with no glare control. Needless to say, working in an industrial environment where the light source consists of laser beams of bright light can be highly dangerous.

In, for example, a warehouse that uses forklifts to load and unload goods from high racking, lighting glare can be potentially hazardous. If a forklift driver glances up directly at the laser-like lighting, he’ll be dazzled. Even momentarily, this could cause him to lose control of his forklift.

R&D advances

The good news is that lighting companies at the forefront of R&D are now developing solutions that limit glare from LED and make it suitable for all industrial spaces. Tamlite Lighting is offering LED solutions with glare control, with the launch of HILUX-LED. This is the 3rd generation system of the HILUX luminaire range which now comes with the option of high-quality Philips LEDs and drivers. Tamlite Lighting’s in-house design team has developed a high-performance portfolio of reflectors and optics to ensure that the HILUX-LED delivers energy savings – without the problem of glare.

A final myth is that LED offers by far the greatest energy savings in lighting. In fact, T5 fluorescent lighting (such as the original HILUX T5 range) offers energy-efficiency and long lifespans that are comparable with LED. Don’t be fooled by those who would suggest that LED is the only energy-saving technology that matters.

Indeed, technologies like HILUX-LED make a notable case in point: this technology is moving so fast that the facts about LED (and energy-saving lighting in general) are constantly changing. This fast-moving environment makes it even more vital that industrial managers must know their facts and use only well-established suppliers when investing in lighting upgrades.