Page 24 - Enlightenment Magazine - July 2013
P. 24
The FuTure Is (Almost) Now
iven the recent atention our industry has
paid to solid-state lighting, I am sure it is
Ghard for you to believe that fuorescent,
high intensity discharge (HID), and incandescent
products still represent 85 percent of all lighting
sales. Afer all, like you, Ive atended and led innu-
merable discussions at industry gatherings on the
emergence of LED. And from what weve heard,
the future is now. However, new technologies al-
ways take time to gain full acceptance. The legacy
lighting manufacturers have millions of capital dol-
lars invested in tooling, machinery, and processes
that limit their ability to make wholesale changes
to their companies. The new entrants have no em-
bedded capital limitations, but they don t have the
channel relationships to push LED adoption at a
greater pace. And, their limitation in lighting exper-
tise reduces their ability to match LEDs benefts
with lighting application expertise.
According to a Department of Energy Report
from last year, LED lighting will reach a predicted
The Future Is market share of 74 percent by 2030. I believe the
rate of adoption will be far faster than that, but the
limiting factor will be centered on design.
(Almost) The Big PicTure
There is no greater challenge for companies invest-
NOW complete building systems, while also providing
ing in LED than the one they face in developing
designs that allow lighting to be integrated into
proper illumination for tasks. LED enables the in-
tegration of lighting into complete building systems
in ways never possible before: controls, sound,
security, datacom, and communications are all able
to communicate with LED in applications that have
never existed.
Lighting systems can improve the fow of goods
within plants to ensure accuracy, integrated with
sensors that illuminate only areas that require a
LED is all the lighting industry talks about, seeing task, improving operational efciency.
Street lighting and parking garage systems
but its not mainstream yet. There are utilizing LED are raising and lowering brightness
depending on trafc paterns.
many exciting design & collaborative Optically, LED systems can be specifed to illumi-
opportunities that still need exploration. nate a rectangular or curved patern.
Many of the legacy design limitations that are
tied to a bulbous emiter are rendered obsolete:
By Ted Konnerth, Type 2, Type 3, trofer, downlight, etc. are unneces-
CEO of Egret Consulting Group sary constructs from the past.
22 enLIGHTenment Magazine | July 2013 www.enlightenmentmag.com
