| New Emergency Light sources |
CCFL & LED TechnologyNew technology is being adopted by many manufactures for use in exit sign and emergency lighting products. With all new technology users must be wary and understand it fully. The primary reason that CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamps) and LED(Light emitting diode) technology is being introduced into exit sign products is the stated life of these products. CCFL technology is not a new technology, It has been used for years in the backlighting of LCD screens and today is used in Plasma screens. These technologies have different grades lasting from 1000 hours to 60000 hours (depending on the yield and manufacture) and the life of LED and CCFL technology is not defined in the same way as traditional lighting sources; instead the life of the product is defined by the time it takes to reach 50% brightness. LED and CCFL technology under normal conditions don't fail, instead their brightness decreases. LED technology has made a lot of inroads in the last few years as the lumens/ watt has been increasing at a phenomenal rate and is becoming hard to keep track of. The LED technology is a solid state device made from silicon. Because it is a silicon type device temperature is one of the major factors which limit the LED life. Care must be taken when comparing LED technology, as many manufactures are using a low ambient temperature of around 20-25 degrees when calculating the life of the unit. This is ok if this temperature can be guaranteed. Using expert knowledge in LED and CCFL products we have created a range of exit devices which utilize these technologies. Over lighting Exit signsIt is typical to over light an exit sign. This over lighting is not required to meet Australian or New Zealand standards. Typically a designer can save a customer huge amounts of money in long term costs by reducing the exit signs brightness. For example consider a 10 watt exit sign which is used to light a building. While this device is not in an emergency mode the unit will be running at approximately 10watts utilizing a 10 watt ballast. For this example lets assume the ballast has an 80% efficiency. This means that the unit will be losing 2.5watts in heat. In emergency mode this 10watt unit runs at 4watts. If the unit was running at 4 watts in both emergency and standard modes then a lot of energy can be saved.
This means that there is a saving of 7.5 watts/ hour. Assuming that this sign is lit 24 hours a day 365 day / year (typical operation) a saving of 65700 watts / year is possible. At 0.13 cents / kilowatt this equates to a saving of $7.88 per year per device. For this reason we have designed a range of low output CCFL and LED exit signs to save owners both energy and maintenance costs. |