LED Lighting – 11 Biggest Trends

by | Jan 17, 2018 | Lighting Market

There’s so much going on in lighting these days that we couldn’t fit it all into a standard list of 10. So sit back and bone up on the technology trends to watch

 

1. Connectivity

With LEDs comprehensively in the mainstream, the next frontier in lighting is controls. Call it smart, call it connected, call it what you like – the point is that your lights can be controlled. Dimmers and sensors have been around for donkey’s years, but the challenge now is to make them more sophisticated, get them to communicate with other devices and make sure people use them. Energy saving is only the start of the potential benefits – connected lighting also promises to make us safer and pave the way for…

 

2. The internet of things

The internet of things is the term used to describe what happens when it’s no longer just computers and smartphones that are connected to the web, but also your fridge, your coffee cup, your heart monitor and your LED lights. Lighting is an ideal network for internet-of-things services to be built on – because it’s already there in the ceiling of every building, looking down at us, wired up and ready to go. You only have to add a few sensors or cameras and some kind of data connection.

Pictured: Round light engine from Forge Europa.

3. Built-in light sources – good idea?

Because LED light sources don’t have to be replaced very often, and because no standards have emerged for what they should be like, manufacturers have got used to building them into fittings, rather than designing new luminaires around replaceable ‘lamps’. But what happens if they fail early? Or a better, more efficient module comes on the market? Organisations such as Zhaga have sought to address the issue by coming up with agreed designs, but integrated modules are becoming the norm. Will we regret lumbering our clients with light sources they can’t change?

4. New power technologies

Until now, LED luminaires have typically come with a ‘driver’ that converts the mains electricity supply into a form the light can use. But now new power technologies are appearing, with a range of benefits. Drivers are often the first component of a lighting system to fail, so some companies are taking them out of the equation – Iviti has a lamp with a DC LED chip that needs no driver at all, and Isotera (pictured) sells a power system for lighting using a central hub, with each fitting connected directly to a bus cable. The latest innovation is power-over-Ethernet, which provides electricity through data cables.

5. Retrofit lamps – on borrowed time

According to Time magazine, 2013 was the year of the LED lamp. That now seems a long time ago, as manufacturers begin to wonder what happens once the market for these long-lasting lamps is saturated. There are two ways they can go: up or out. Either move upmarket by adding value to this commodity product (internet connectivity, colour-changing and so on) or leave the market completely. Osram, Philips and Samsung all tried option one, then opted for option two – Osram is selling its general lighting business, Philips is selling a big stake in its own, and Samsung pulled out of lamps completely.

6. Look, no wires

Everything’s going wireless these days, and lighting control is no exception. It’s particularly appealing for retrofit projects. As well as radio-frequency-based systems, there are technologies such as power-line communication, which uses mains power lines to carry data to and from your fittings. And even for traditional wired control systems, it’s going to be more and more common for the user’s control device to be a tablet or phone that’s not wired to anything.

7. Healthier lighting

Light influences how productive we are at work, how well we learn and how quickly we recover from illness. The rise of LEDs means it’s gradually getting easier and cheaper for lighting manufacturers to put this knowledge into practice, and make products that promote health – usually by adjusting the brightness and colour of the light during the day to mimic natural light.

Pictured: The maternity ward in Hillerod Hospital in Denmark uses a programme of light and sound to help mothers feel more relaxed.

8. Revolutionary materials

Nobel Prize winner Shuji Nakamura (pictured) has moved from blue to violet LEDs. Nakamura’s violet LEDs put the gallium nitride on a base of some more gallium nitride rather than sapphire – ‘GaN-on-GaN’ in technical parlance. Not only do they render colours better, they also open up the possibility for longer lives and greater efficiency. Also set to revolutionise the world of LEDs is wonder material du jour graphene, which its proponents would have you believe will be used in everything from phones to buildings to water filters. Researchers at the University of Manchester say graphene’s high conductivity will make for brighter, longer-lasting and more efficient sources, and they hope to have a graphene LED lamp on the market soon.

9. The last few application areas fall to LED

‘LEDs aren’t for every application…’ That’s something we’re hearing less and less. Some areas have been slower to adopt them than others – the efficiency of T5 has been tough to beat in offices and LEDs have struggled to match the output of floodlights until recently – this year’s Super Bowl took place under LED light. In the past 12 months, manufacturers who had clung to old technologies such as metal halide and cold cathode have had to embrace LEDs.

Pictured: Ephesus Lighting replaced 780 metal halide fixtures with 312 LED units at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona in time for the 2015 Super Bowl in February. 

  10. The flight to quality

  We’ve all seen examples of poor-quality LED retrofits  that make a shop, café or office look dreadful, all for the sake of saving energy. But the Wild West of the LED market is being tamed, and even those who had their fingers burned in the early days are coming back wiser, with a renewed focus on quality.

Pictured: LED luminaires from Hacel provide a crisp, white light in Alice Temperley’s franchice in Doha.

11. Beyond light

Lighting isn’t just about light any more. It’s about data. Technologies such as Li-Fi (like Wi-Fi, using light) and indoor positioning (that tracks people’s position using LED luminaires and their smartphones) are both based on visible light communication. It’s set to transform our shops, museums and indoor spaces, and to turn the industry on its head as lighting products are used for completely new purposes.

Source :: Luxreview.com | Robert Bain

LED Lighting – Impact of Goods & Services Tax

by | Jan 17, 2018 | Lighting Market

GST: Boon or bane?
Till now, the possible impact of GST on the LED lighting industry is not entirely clear. The pros and cons are summarised below.

Pros

  • A unified tax structure may help to create a unified market across the country.
  • A unified tax structure may encourage big industries to support the formation of manufacturing clusters to avoid logistics costs, which were earlier nullified by differences in taxes across the country.
  • Non-tax payers, who account for 30-35 per cent of the LED industry, have been enjoying an unethical price advantage compared to the big brands. Implementation of GST will compel non-tax compliant players to adhere to the tax system. This will have a long term positive impact on the market as well as give genuine brands a fair advantage.
  • Less paperwork and borderless transits may bring down costs and delivery timelines, creating benefits across the value chain.
  • GST will improve the efficiency of the supply chain across industries, including the LED lighting sector.

Cons

  • The rate of GST on LED lights or fixtures including LED lamps is 12 per cent, whereas the components and raw materials used for manufacturing LED lamps have GST rates ranging from 18 to 28 per cent. This anomaly may result in huge revenue leakage, and might even lead to unethical accounting practices like under-invoicing.
  • Metal core printed circuit boards (MCPCB) and LED fixtures will be roughly charged 12 per cent GST. This may result in higher imports of fixtures rather than them being assembled in India.
  • Some of the imported raw materials, which have been sourced from the countries under category C of the Foreign Trade Policy 2015-20, were earlier attracting tax at the rate of 2 per cent, but after GST implementation these will come under the 28 per cent tax slab. This will make local manufacture of products that use these materials unviable. Similarly, most of the electronic components fall under the 18 per cent category, up from 6 per cent earlier.
  • In the case of most SMEs, some amount of work is done by unregistered dealers. Earlier, such services attracted 0 per cent tax as the turnover of those unregistered dealers tended to be very low. After GST implementation, companies are bound to pay 18 per cent tax (as reverse GST) even in the case of services offered by non-GST registered vendors.

Industrial LED Tubelights – Manufacturing

by | Nov 3, 2017 | Lighting Promotion

This video illustrates the key component used in our manufacturing process to ensure quality and repeatability.

Watch as Mr.Anandakumar (Director Operations) guides us through our key manufacturing equipment which ensures that our customers get a quality product every time.

Industrial LED Tubelights – Testing

by | Oct 10, 2017 | Lighting Promotion

The above video elaborates on the rigorous testing process done on our industrial LED tubelights @ Ready LED

Mr.Anandakumar (Director Operations) talks about the various steps taken to test the product and ensure a quality product is being produced that can withstand the industrial operational conditions.

For more details please mail us at [email protected]

CAI Expo – Construction Architecture Interior Expo 2017

by | Oct 10, 2017 | Lighting Promotion

 

Ready LED participated in the 5th edition of the CAI Expo 2017, which opened for visitors at the Chennai Trade Center on the 1st of September 2017. Over 85 companies from construction and design sectors put up stalls and exhibited their products and services.

CAI (Construction Architecture & Interior) 2017 is the ideal opportunity for our organization to access major developers, contractors, and clients procuring work. One can gain access to a competitive construction boom across India! This is a Build & Design Exhibition of ingenious designs and construction facets. CAI brings an amalgamation of exquisitely informative collection of modern technologies and materials in the field of the construction, architecture and interior designing.

Dilip Kumbhat, President, Indian Society of Lighting Engineers and Chief Executive Officer, K-lite Industries, said the expo brought the entire construction industry on a single platform. According to him, it has helped companies penetrate the South Indian market, where there is hardly any platform for all players in the construction industry to get together.

Kumbhat said the industry is growing at the rate of 15-20 per cent. This is in part due to the push from the Centre to boost LEDs in municipalities and corporation and also the increasing environmental awareness of consumers. In case of lighting, the market grew after the introduction of LEDs that are more energy-efficient. The market size of the LED is around ₹20,000 crore. “We want to use the platform to spread awareness,” he said.