GENERAL DIY
long lifetime, many colours and easy controls
for dimming.
Still for customers to benefit from all these,
lighting manufacturers should take care of the
thermal management of the LED chips inside
their lamps or luminaires. These small chips
emit heat inside the chip, and this needs to be
extracted from it. Otherwise it becomes too
hot and its lifetime is heavily impacted, along
with delivering less light. So manufacturers
have to develop new competencies. Note
that some electronical companies push their
products into markets without having a
clue about lighting… Also, some cheap LED
solutions are offered in South Africa – these
only offer a blueish, cool light, and often little
light too, and doubtful lifetime due to poor
thermal management.
A quick mention of quick win retrofit LED lamps. It is best for
manufacturers to make sure that their lamps perfectly fit existing
luminaires and deliver good lighting. Allying innovative LED
technology, with ‘old’ phosphors technology as used in fluorescent
lamps, allows users to benefit from warm, stable light, which is
dimmable and offers good colour rendition of interior decor and
objects.
LED technology evolves quickly and it requires agility from the
manufacturer. Philips have predicted that by 2015, LED technonology
will make up 75% of the lighting market. So lighting companies have
used their market knowledge to adapt the LED technology – and
other innovations such as smart controls – to offer all applications
a perfect, sustainable lighting, still saving up to 80% of the energy
devoted to lighting, and some of the air conditioning too…
Michael Rafferty, Tier One Electronics: As an audio visual
distributor we have noticed a dramatic change in the market.
Customers are no longer look for the huge hi-fi system that was so
popular years back. Now the minimalist, sleek approach is definitely
the preferred option. Customers no longer look for the largest and
most outrageous systems and the same holds true for lighting and
general modern decor. We have seen a trend where customers are
looking for smaller yet most effective solutions with a trendy modern
design. And with that came the birth of the Wireless Light Bulb
Speaker, a system to suit the needs of the modern customer.
Continued
page 90
We have seen
a trend where
customers are looking
for smaller yet most
effective solutions with
a trendy modern design
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