Category: Lighting Retrofit Useful Resources
When A&K Energy Conservation, Inc. meets with our vendors, and the LED topic comes up. There is a concern that the scores of rushed, untested, and unproven LED systems that make it to market will ruin an otherwise excellent technologies perception to the buying public. It is very important to make sure that you are buying a quality LED system. It can be tough to figure out who is good and who is not. The good news is that the Department of Energy has been paying attention to all of this and has developed a program to test the claims of these mfg’s. They call it the CALiPER Program for LEDs (SSL-solid state lighting).
What is CALiPER?
DOE’s SSL Commercially Available LED Product Evaluation and Reporting (CALiPER) program independently tests and provides unbiased information on the performance of commercially available SSL products. The test results guide DOE planning for ENERGY STAR® and technology procurement activities, provide objective product performance information to the public, and inform the development and refinement of standards and test procedures for SSL products.
High power LEDs from Philips Lumileds Lighting Company mounted on a 21 mm star shaped base metal core PCB (image credit: wikipedia)
LED’s meteoric rise from a status or test light to spacial lighting has been nothing less than astonishing. LED’s (specifically HPLEDs) are emerging as a great new tool in the array of lighting available to the commercial, government and private sectors. As a lighting maintenance contractor, we have had the pleasure installing some of these new fixtures with great effect. The maintenance and energy savings are very attractive attributes when coupled with the right applications.
We have been told by those pioneering LED technology, that this is the future of lighting. Huge efforts and money have been spent advancing LEDs to the point where they are barely recognizable to it’s predecessors.
Wikipedia has what we think, a pretty well written resource for those wanting to brush up on the history and direction of LEDs.
“ light-emitting diode (LED) (pronounced /ˌɛl.iːˈdiː/[1]) is a semiconductor light source. LEDs are used as indicator lamps in many devices, and are increasingly used for lighting. Introduced as a practical electronic component in 1962,[2] early LEDs emitted low-intensity red light, but modern versions are available across the visible, ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, with very high brightness. – Continue