Appliances & Lighting

By Anne Rialhe, AERE & Pascal Lenormand, Incub

Part 1 - Lighting & Human Life

This is the first article in a series of three in which we will focus on the relationship between lighting and human life. This topic is much broader than merely ‘ensuring vision’. After defining some important terms and measurement units, we will discuss how the quality of lighting interacts with and effects human behaviour.

This will set the background for the forthcoming articles, where lighting design and lighting technologies will be discussed.

Part 2 - Lighting Design & Techniques

In this second article, we focus on lighting design and lighting systems. We will discuss the relationship between illumination criteria and appropriate techniques, including energy savings considerations. Some actual technical solutions are reviewed.

Part 3 - Lighting Equipment

The two previous articles in this series of three have described backgrounds and base lines for a comfortable and energy efficient lighting design. In the third and final article, we focus on electrical lighting components. Each element will be reviewed and the consequences of an appropriate choice are examined. Some technical solutions are also reviewed.

We conclude that today it is possible to design a comfortable, end-use adapted and energy efficient lighting system for each individual situation.

By the way, even if you proceed in the most efficient way and compensate the reactive power of magnetic ballasts right in place within the luminaire, one capacitor may suffice for no less than four lamps. In public and commercial areas you often see this type of square luminaires with four lamps rated 18 W each.

They can be operated in tandem mode, two of them in series on one ballast, incurring the cost of only one ballast and also the heat loss of only one ballast. Moreover, one of the two systems can be compensated with a serial capacitor, so as to combine the tandem connection with a lead-lag compensation, which also abandons the stroboscopic effect sometimes cited as a disadvantage of magnetic ballasts.

Creating a sustainable energy system requires commitment and firmness. A suggestion to the latter is to put warning labels on low-performing equipment and has been presented on workshops in Korea.

When the deep pockets consider what humanity needs for the future they come up with the idea to procure a space-ship! Then they launch a procedure, not unlike the Technology Procurement (TP), to tickle supplier competition for a huge price-sum. It is called X-prize. It has a high component of celebrities and stresses publicity as a driving force, at least to find the donors.

Now they have come up with a more down to earth project (no pun intended) for transportation. The idea is basically the same. A specification of what should be produced (just as TP), a huge reward (a little bit like TP) and a business-plan is required (where TP provided real customers).

How to cope with harmonics from a PC power supply? This is one cheap and very sturdy solution: A reactor in series with the input side provides a substantial mitigation of the harmonic level, though not a perfect one, of course, but enough to comply with the requirements of EN 61000-3-2. The reactor cannot be designed with a much greater inductance because then the voltage drop would be too great and the behaviour of the PC would become inductive. While this approach is already commercially available, the next step would be to connect it in series with a capacitor dimensioned to form a 50Hz acceptor circuit. Then there would be no 50Hz voltage drop across the complete filter, while the suppressing property for higher frequency currents could be designed to be nearly perfect.

When did you last hear an industry ask for more legislation? Well now it happens! It is the European manufacturers of white goods, CECED, who says that Voluntary Agreements do not work and asks for legislative measures on energy performance standards. They claim that a faster replacement 188 million large domestic appliances more than 10 years old could save 22 million tonnes of CO2 annually. And they substantiate their claims with a set of fact sheets.

The problem they say is that present labelling is poorly enforced and that there are "free-riders" that undermine the fair competition. But also that consumers are reluctant to replace functioning goods. In the case of enforcement on could recall that the manufacturers have not always greeted e.g. a revision and a monitoring of the labelling with joy. Now it shows that the situation when all equipment is in the best class (A) and no-one really monitors the market is not good (to put it mildly).

As for replacement of functioning working equipment it is important that the old does not find its way to another place and user but really is scrapped! Denmark tried a scrapping rebate many years ago where the customer was rewarded proportionally to the age of the equipment that was turned in. The oldest refrigerator was said to be some 50 years old and of course highly remunerated.

There is a growing tendency to phase-out and ban inefficient equipment such as lighting, but also low performing household equipment, from the market. Australia advertised such a ban of incandescent lamps some time ago. UK has announced a similar ban and Belgium has shown "yellow card" to household equipment lower than class A.

The European Energy Label System (A-G) is falling apart

..and it is a shame! Now is your chance to help pull the pieces together again and begin with voicing your view in the questionnaire open till March 2. The old system has been a model for many in the world except for the fact that it was not following technology development.

Energy efficiency standards and labels (S&L) for appliances, equipment, and lighting products are an especially cost-effective policy for conserving energy. They fit well with most other energy policies and can play a role as the backbone of all countries' energy policy portfolios. Efficiency standards and labels can force a shift to energy efficient technology and dramatically improve national energy efficiency.

CLASP is an outgrowth of an initiative begun in 1996 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to help developing countries pursue S&L policies. Shortly afterward, USAID embraced the effort and funded LBNL to pursue various aspects of the initiative. The next year, USAID continued this funding with additional support to the Alliance to Save Energy (the Alliance) and the International Institute for Energy Conservation (IIEC) to pursue other aspects of the global S&L initiative. In the fall of 1999, the three organizations agreed to form a strategic alliance with the sole mission of promoting energy efficiency standards and labels and the intention to evolve into an open, collaborative global partnership. In December 1999, they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) creating CLASP. With it came on-going support at the founding partner organizations from the Energy Foundation, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the International Copper Association.

Two billion people do not have access to electricity and are therefore deprived from many blessings that most of us take for granted. The IEA and G8 have taken note of the fact and argue the need to embark on development programmes to make a change, but there are in the shorter term opportunities to jump-start the change. One is to support Practical Action, which is an organisation that takes into service innovative low-demand energy technologies and renewable fuels to disseminate in small scale among the poor. Or as the say themselves: "using technologies to change the world".

They have a multi-facetted energy menu and also publish good energy technology briefs that help selecting the proper technology for each situation. And the projects also have a distinct social function. One example is the energy-efficient stoves that reduce the need for fuel collected by women and children in hostile neighbourhoods. Such stoves save both suffering and probably also lives.

This summer has been the warmest ever in the northern hemisphere and it is still not over. Whether this is an effect of the global warming or not can be left for discussion but it is certainly an illustration to what global warming will bring us in the future. Power failures comes from summer peaking due to air-conditioning and reduced power output due to the temperature rise in the cooling water to the condensing power stations. And on top of all this we are adding more and more heat (to be cooled) to our homes and offices with electronics.

Will half of the worlds lighting 20 years from now be from solid state LED (Light Emitting Diodes)? From a device that some years ago was used only to indicate that electronics was in stand-by? If so, this source have to improve its performance in lumens per watt by a factor 5 (to 150 lumens per watt), but would then be able to reduce installed power  with 120 GW and saving 350 Mtonnes of Carbon-dioxide each year, according to the MIT Technology Review.

It may sound as science fiction or wishful thinking and to understand the opportunities we will have to look beyond the simple energy issues and into the other properties of LED-lighting such as size, configuration, life-time, colour rendering, etc. When talking about energy efficiency, we are basically trained to think in terms of replacement. We have seen how Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) has gained a certain market share by just replacing incandescent light bulbs only with difficulty and over a fairly long time period. LED may also be used as replacement but its properties may be of such a nature that the entire concept of lighting could change. But let us begin with the energy part.

One comparison presented at the Right Light conference in Shanghai 2005 states that CFLs today has a performance rate of 60 lumen per watt and deliver light at a cost per lumen of 1 cent. The same author predicts that white light from white LED may be above 60 lumen per watt  the year 2010 (presently at 30 lm/w and costs 35 cents per lm), but at a lower cost per lumen than from today’s CFL! This seems to be a conservative estimation considering that US DOE predicts 150 lumen per watt the year 2012 in their road-map for LED-lighting.

Reducing cost from 35 cent per lumen to 1 cent seem rather drastic looking from a learning curve perspective but we may have to remember that LEDs will be produced in huge amounts not only for lighting and that there will be breakthroughs in the electronics, i.e. how the photons are produced and directed in the LEDs.

Another breakthrough will happen to the lifetime that would be more than 100 000 hours for an LED 2010, i.e. 100 times the life time of an incandescent bulb and more than 10 times than that of a CFL.

And it is here we start to see that LED-lighting might be revolutionary. They are (among other things) small, have a long life-time (and thus less frequently need to be changed), operates at low-voltage, are hard to break, has no mercury content, offer several choices of colour etc. etc. They are in short a dream both for a lighting designer and for the maintenance staff. Consequently the US Department of Energy in their estimations assume that the commercial sector will be the market that pulls LED-lighting in the time-span 2010-2025 with a market share of some 70%.

But if LEDs has the capacity to drastically change the lighting in the commercial areas of the affluent world it may do even more so in the developing countries. In so many countries lighting today is fuel-based. In some cases because people do not have access to the grid and in some other because of tradition. In any of these cases the fuel lighting is a bad alternative being expensive, polluting and providing lousy lighting. With LED a brilliant alternative arises since the energy-consumption is low and since it can be supplied by Photovoltaics. So LED can open up for poor people to study and work with better light and cheaper!

From small steps to long strides.

At the Right Light conference was also an example of how LED may be adapted into the type of lighting we are used to, with success. LED seems then not only able to work in the replacement market, where e.g. CFL has failed, but also have such properties that enable it to capture entirely new fields. As always, the biggest barrier will be in our own minds to embrace the change, but if we think about how we listened to recorded music in the past and how we are doing it today we easily understand that the small steps can take us a long way.

So all things considered, the solid state lighting with LED,  may very quickly turn from a twinkling star to a supernova that have all the goodies we ask from new technology  in terms of cost, environment and social benefits.

One of the (for industrialised countries) less known burdens for ordinary people in developing countries is the fuel-based lighting. Lack of access to electricity forces use of kerosene lighting that burdens both poor people's economy and the climate! It also has an impact on women's labour and on the local environment. A change would give multiple dividends.

The total global potential for efficiency improvements in lighting is enormous and has been studied by Evan Mills. Out of a total spending of 230 Billion USD per year for lighting, the savings could be in the area of 75-115 Billion. The real challenge is the lighting in developing countries, where the savings count also in social impact. Kerosene for lighting is more than 300 times more expensive for the energy service (lumen-hours) compared to incandescent lamps and more than 1600 times compared to using a CFL! Poor people are simply made more poor by bad lighting! Kerosene lamps provide bad lighting, bad indoor environment and, to add further to the problems, it is typically women who are charged to find the fuel, walking long distances. In some cultures it is also from the women household budgets that the kerosene is paid whereas electricity comes out of the husband's pocket!! The reason women can afford it at all is that they exchange services (barter trading) between them. There are therefore many good causes to change to electricity but that would not necessarily reduce the total emission of carbondioxide. People would certainly want to improve their lighting standard so the choice of technology is crucial. Use of (developed) LED would be the better choice. The industrialised countries could serve their own needs in aiding electrification of the developing world as a niche market to develop both LED (for our own use as well) and PV, riding down the learning curve. And at the same time reduce GHG-emissions. Is this a win-win-win or not?

21 – 23 June 2006, Millennium Gloucester Hotel and Conference Centre, London, UK

This prestigious international event, organised by the UK government's Market Transformation Programme and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, will once again provide a unique forum to discuss and debate the latest developments in energy and environmental impact of residential appliances and lighting. In particular, in-depth discussions will be stimulated on existing and new policies and programmes, as well as the technical and commercial advances in the dissemination and penetration of energy efficient residential appliances, consumer electronics, heating equipment and lighting.

ELI, The Effiicent Lighting Initiative, begun as a global project with projects in all continents but is now transforming into an institution that sets the standard for efficient lighting products. ELI now operates from China, which seems logical because the lions share of lighting products are produced there. Only recently ELI has published a specification for self-ballasted CFLs. And more products are on the list:

A basic introduction to appliance labelling and efficiency.

View minute lecture

Bruno De Wachter, Forte

October 2003

This paper demonstrates how over the past 30 years, public lighting has developed into an increasingly complex domain. Maintenance costs, minimizing light pollution, the feeling of added security, and aesthetically aspects have become just as important as light output and the lifespan of the lamp. Although dimming and maintenance by remote monitoring have not yet found their way into widespread use, subtle advances in technology are everywhere. Examples are the reduction of toxic waste, increasing energy efficiencies, and an ever-smaller size of lamps. A revolution is on the horizon if high power LEDs can be developed fulfilling public lighting needs. Regarding traffic safety, a consensus whether dimming affects safety is still not achieved.

The most wide-spread lamp type (incandescent) is also the most inefficient one. It is more like a heating convector that just happens to produce some light. Per watt input power, incandescent lamps produce typically about 10 lumens. Cf below graph, fluorescent lamps do a factor 8 better, while technologies exist today to achieve more than factor 10. Going the other extreme, a candle just produces 1 lumen/watt, and is even 10 times less efficient than an incandescent lamp.

Figure: light efficiency for various technologies (source: European Ballast Group)