How an Expert Can Make Your Lighting More Efficient

For businesses in all industries and of all sizes, finding ways to reduce operating costs to improve profitability is very important. For many companies, one of the best ways to reduce costs is by reducing energy costs. For those that are looking to reduce their energy costs, working with a lighting efficiency service provider could be very beneficial as they can provide you with a number of different tips and services.

Consultation

One of the first things that a lighting efficiency expert will be able to provide you with is a consultation on your current situation. The company will be able to examine your property, your energy bills, and areas of lighting usage to determine where lighting is being used the most and where it is being wasted. Based on this information, and other information about your business, the company will be able to provide you with a detailed plan to reconfigure your lighting sources. This will help to drastically reduce the amount of light you waste in unnecessary areas of the building.

Automation System

A lighting efficiency provider will also be able to help you to establish an automation system for your lighting plan. Building automation systems provide a range of different services to organizations. One of the main benefits is that it can help to control energy and lighting usage at your property. For example, this can include turning off lights in rooms that are not in use and reducing the amount of light used when the building is closed at night and on weekends. Over time, this can drastically help to make your property more efficient.

If you are interested in learning more ways that you could reduce your lighting usage, you should contact us to learn more about the services we provide and how we could make your property more efficient.

The Many Benefits of Motion Activated LED Lighting

LEDs are ideally suited for use with motion sensor technology. And while there are many benefits and uses of LED lighting in business settings, combining them with motion sensors expands the possibilities further. Here are five benefits:

Saves Energy

If you are already using energy-efficient LED lighting, why not get more of a good thing by having them turn off automatically when no one is using a room, and switch on when people enter? LEDs require no warm up time and have no problems with being turned on and off as people go in and out of a work area. Another benefit is there is no need for you or an employee to make sure the lights are off at the end of the day.

Increases Convenience

The problem with light switches is you have to find them in a dark room. This is especially difficult for visitors or employees unfamiliar with the room. Sometimes the elusive switches are inside the room next to the door somewhere, and sometimes they’re outside. The problem is yet more awkward when a person entering a dark room is using both hands to carry something. These problems go away with LED lighting activated with motion sensors.

Improves Safety

One way to ensure that stairwells are well-lit when people use them is leaving their lights on all the time. The same is true for outside walkways and parking lots. However, motion activated LED lighting ensures that people can watch their step where they need to while saving energy as well.

Increases the Longevity of Your Lights

Although many LEDs last 50,000 hours, turning them off when not needed further increases their working life. This means money is saved on the LED replacements and on the installation labor.

Gets Customer Attention in Retail Stores

If you want to ensure that customers notice specific product displays, motion activated lighting of the display will certainly get their attention. In fact, it will do a better job than using signs with large bold lettering, to which the public has become blind.

The above listing is just a sampling of the many benefits of LED lighting when used with motion detectors.

Hotel Lighting: Save On Operational Costs And Create An Enjoyable Experience

Managing a hotel brings its own set of challenges. It is not an easy job to keep your guests happy while trying to keep your employees motivated to perform at a high level on a daily basis. Even if you do have success, you will still need to effectively monitor all of your operation costs so you can keep both sides happy.

However, while you are monitoring you operating costs, you should not have to lower your operating costs at the expense of the quality of services you provide. When hotel guests visit your hotel, they expect to be comfortable and they expect to be treated well by your entire staff. When you are considering making important decisions regarding operational costs, you should always consider how the changes will impact the type of comfort you can offer your hotel guests.

Although every hotel operates differently, every hotel owner or hotel manager wants to retain the loyalty of their current customers. They also want to be able to attract new customers. One of the best ways to increase comfort in your hotel is to take advantage of the LED lighting technology. The LED lighting technology has given every industry, especially the hotel industry the opportunity to operate at a greater efficiency.

LED lighting requires less energy, repairs, and maintenance. As a hotel owner, manager, or operator, you will have the ability to take control of the type of lighting you want to offer, while saving money at the same time. You will have the ability to create the perfect ambiance in the hotel rooms, the lobbies, the bars, lounges, breakfast room, etc. Your hotel guests will not just see your hotel as a place to stay, they will begin to see your hotel as an entire experience that will allow them to sleep, eat, drink, and have an incredible time.

Design Considerations for Manufacturing Lighting

Many elements go into creating a successful manufacturing facility, and good lighting is one component that should not be overlooked. Good lighting in an industrial facility can keep workers safe and more productive, and a cheerful, well-lit workplace can be good for morale. However careful consideration must be given to the lighting system, since not just any lamp will do.

Cost

In today’s global manufacturing environment there is a level of competition unknown to our predecessors, and companies must keep costs low in order to come out on top. Outdated lighting can eat up large amounts of energy and require frequent, costly bulb replacements. Less money spent on operating costs means higher profits overall, so products that offer great performance while keeping plant energy and maintenance costs low are an excellent investment.

Adequate Lighting

Poor light levels can make it more difficult, or even dangerous, for workers to do their jobs. Many tasks performed on the production floor require great attention to detail. In addition, safety is of the utmost importance in a manufacturing facility and workers must have adequate lighting to avoid any potential hazards. Manufacturing plants often have high ceilings, so lights must be powerful enough to reach the work floor. Consideration should also be given to color and placement of lights to optimize lighting levels in the facility.

Resilience

Finally, the conditions found in an industrial environment are harsher than those of, say, a shopping mall or high school gymnasium. Manufacturing lighting must be resilient enough to withstand harsh conditions like high humidity, heat, vibrations, chemicals and large equipment that could damage it.

At Relumination, our seasoned professionals are well-versed in manufacturing lighting design and will work with you to design a lighting layout that is ideal for your facility.

LED Lighting: It’s Time to Let Go of Glass Tube Technology

LED is short for “light emitting diode.” The light emitting part of the name is easy enough to understand. However, the diode part is less so for many non-technical people. A diode is a solid state device that allows electric current to flow in one direction only. Diodes are used in electronics, and exceedingly small diode elements are present within the integrated electronics used in computers. In any case, an LED is a diode that lights up when electricity flows through it.

Before solid state devices such as diodes and transistors were invented, radios and even computers were made from glowing glass tubes called vacuum tubes. These put out lots of waste heat and didn’t last long. Thanks to solid state devices, commercial electronics and especially computers advanced rapidly. They got smaller, became more powerful, and consumed less energy. Today, the only vacuum tube based computers are found in museums.

Oddly enough, the lighting industry took much longer to make commercial use of solid state LEDs. It’s also odd that we still use vacuum tube based lighting, otherwise known as incandescent lights. An incandescent light is just a glowing filament placed inside a vacuum tube. Like the vacuum tubes used in the old 1950s computers, incandescent lights put out tremendous waste heat.

In fact, about 90% of the electricity that powers an incandescent bulb turns into heat. The old vacuum tube computers required constant maintenance to replace vacuum tubes that were always burning out. Likewise, incandescent light bulbs require a fair amount of maintenance compared to LED lighting.

In some ways, fluorescent lighting is an improvement over the incandescent bulb. But it too, is just glass tube technology that uses a gas as its “filament.” It’s just as bulky and fragile as incandescent lighting and puts out more waste heat than LEDs. Why didn’t glass tube based lighting die off like the vacuum tube based computers and electronics? Because glass tube lighting does its job well enough, provided you have plenty of energy to waste.

Today, many business owners are learning first hand about the cost savings in reduced energy use and reduced maintenance requirements of LED lighting. They have chosen to leave the old glass tube, 20th century dinosaur technology behind.

Five Reasons to Use LEDs for Decorative Lighting

Decorative lighting adds visual appeal, style, and professionalism to your business establishment. It differentiates you from your plainer looking competitors. It makes your business look more successful. To make it worth your while, decorative lighting shouldn’t require excessive maintenance, become a fire hazard, or cause big increases to your energy costs. Here are five reasons LED lighting is the best choice:

Energy Efficient

Compared to other technologies such as incandescent and fluorescent lighting, an LED light converts more of its electrical input into light. Incandescent bulbs for example, produce more heat than light. To put out the same amount of illumination as an LED light, the incandescent bulb requires higher wattage. This extra power is wasted as heat. Although your money isn’t going up in smoke, it is going up in heat.

Efficient Color Production

There’s another type of efficiency that LEDs enjoy over incandescent lights. To produce a color, an incandescent light uses a filter, that is, the bulb uses glass with a translucent color such as red, that only allows red light through. The light is dim because most of the bulb’s light doesn’t pass through. This is energy inefficient. On the other hand, a red LED light only produces red light. The power going into the LED directly produces the desired color, such as red.

Safe

Because LEDs produce little heat, they don’t get hot and aren’t fire hazards. You can safely leave them on for hours. They won’t burn the fingers of anyone who handles them.

Versatile

LEDs don’t require a warm-up period. If you want them to blink, they’re perfectly suitable. They’re easily dimmed and amenable to all kinds of control schemes. You can program a controller device to turn them on and off and vary their brightness in very complicated patterns.

Rugged

An LED light is a solid state device. There’s no glass bulbs, tubes, filaments, or glowing gas. It isn’t a collection of separate parts. It’s a solid piece of material. This means it tolerates vibration and shock impacts better than other types of lighting. When using them outdoors, you needn’t worry about wind storms. This saves on maintenance costs. In addition, LED lights outlast other common forms of lighting, which further reduces the cost of maintenance.