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Sustainability talk is ‘tiring’ says architect   3

I would hazard a guess that 99% of the people and companies that use the “S” word don’t understand what it really means…

Tony Marshallsay
Riyadh

UAE uses 83% more water than the global average per head of the population, and about 6 times more than the UK.

People in the UAE use about 550 litres of water each day – 200,750 litres a year.

Dr Walid Fayad an authority on energy and utilities, said excess consumption in the GCC can no longer be ignored.

“Water scarcity is a reality in just about every Arab country if the don’t make changes these countries will find themselves in serious trouble.”

The last drop

That 3 degrees rise in temperature is comparable with global heating that occurred between the least ice age, approximately 15,000 years ago and the warmth of the 18th century.  Late this century when it is three degrees hotter glaciers everywhere will be melting in a climate of often unbearable heat and drought, punctured with storms and  floods. The consequence for humanity could be truly horrific; if we fail to act swiftly, the full impact of global heating could cull us along with vast populations of plants and animals with whom we share the earth.

By James Holloway | Published 5 months ago

The London Eye upgraded to color-changing LEDs in 2006

Light bulbs haven’t been sexy tech since Thomas Edison’s day, but innovation has come to an industry that has seen relatively little of it for a century. Today, the lighting industry is in a remarkable state of flux, and much of it has been driven by government action.

Over the last half-decade, a gradual shift toward more energy-efficient light sources has gathered momentum as nation after nation legislates against the sale of incandescent light bulbs. Venezuela and Brazil started the trend in 2005. Australia and the European Union began phasing out tungsten lightbulbs in 2009. Argentina, Russia, Canada, Malaysia and the United States will have joined the throng by 2014, either by phasing out incandescents outright or (as in the US) by setting minimum efficiency requirements which in effect prohibit most incandescent light bulbs.

With recent data published by the Earth Systems Research Laboratory putting global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher than ever, such legislation is certainly timely. Consider the tremendous impact of electric lighting: Department of Energy figures cite electric lighting as responsible for 11 percent of residential and 25 percent of commercial energy consumption in the US. That’s all energy, not solely electricity.

This is the story of the four main heirs to the incandescent throne—linear fluorescent, compact fluorescent, LED, and OLED—and of the future tech that may one day dethrone these upstarts.

From pocket calculators to living room lamps

The story of the last decade of electric lighting is dominated by the rise of the light-emitting diode (LED). LEDs are members of a new family of solid-state lighting technologies that eschew traditional means of illumination, such as electric filaments or plasma discharge, in favor of electronics. Simply put, LEDs are semi-conductor devices which, when transmitting electrical current, corral electrons into lower energy levels, emitting photons in the process.

LEDs began their commercial life at the outset of the 1970s as humble indicator devices, used in simple displays like the lava-red seven-segment display of Hewlett-Packard’s first pocket calculator, the HP-35. Today, LEDs are the diminutive powerhouses of lighting. Commercially available units have broken the killer 100 lumens per Watt (lm/W) luminous efficacy barrier (the “lumen” is the standard unit of luminous flux—useful light output—while “efficacy” is the ratio of light output to power and measures the efficiency of the bulb).

The exponential increase in LED efficacy was identified in 2000 by Dr. Roland Haitz. The Haitz Law, loosely analogous to Moore’s Law, predicts a doubling of LED lumen output every three years, with cost dropping by a factor of ten every decade. That year, Haitz predicted that the 100 lm/W benchmark would be broken in 2010. He was right. Rocketing efficacy has allowed LEDs to conquer niche after market niche, from the bicycle headlight to the traffic light, from the emergency light to the desk lamp.

But LEDs have more to recommend them than mere efficacy. Manufacturers’ claimed lifespans routinely exceed 50,000 hours—that’s the better part of six years continuous illumination. They can now can be had in a range of colors, including cyans, magentas, ambers, cool whites, and (recently) warm whites, which was a crucial development LEDs needed to mount a serious challenge in home and office lighting.

High upfront prices have kept LEDs out of many homes, but prices are dropping, and manufacturers believe that LEDs has a bright future in the home. Peter Soares, Director of Consumer Channel Marketing at Philips Lighting, told Ars, “As prices come down, LEDs will be able to replace the more powerful incandescents. It’s more a rugged technology, it doesn’t have glass or a fragile filament inside, and doesn’t have any mercury to worry about at the end of its life. LED will certainly be the long-term winner in the home.”

They are also close to taking on exterior lighting. Gas-discharge lamps (particularly metal halide and high pressure sodium lamps) were traditionally the first choice for decorative illumination of building exteriors. These high-powered pieces of kit, sometimes rated at more than a kilowatt each, are effectively light canons, illuminating entire building façades from the ground. It’s a brute-force approach to lighting in defiance of the inverse square law, necessitated by the heft of the lamps and the need to get at them for maintenance.

LEDs provide a lower-energy alternative to gas-discharge, but it’s not because they’re is more efficient (they’re not, yet—high pressure sodium lamps reach 150 lm/W). But LEDs can save energy because their size and long life allows them to be mounted on every story of a building’s façade. You can light the top floor of a building from close range rather than from the ground, and you don’t have to get at the lights every 18 months to replace blown lamps.

More importantly, LEDs have allowed architects to literally cast their buildings in a new light, every few seconds if necessary, by means of dynamic color changes. Arrays of individually dimmed red, green, and blue LEDs can be programmed to fade between any colors in the spectrum.

The Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Fort Erie uses some 700 RGB LED color-change lighting fixtures

Philips Lighting

The benefits of LEDs in architectural lighting are overwhelming. It’s this foothold that has seen the LED become a mainstream illumination technology, with architects rightly ignoring the warnings of engineers initially skeptical of manufacturers’ lifespan claims. Buckingham Palace, the Cristo Redentor and the Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi are three high-profile examples of decorative LED lighting, though each admittedly has the budget to cope with the increased initial outlay for LEDs. Projects like these give the LED serious sex appeal.

Estimates value the world LED lighting market at $15.4 billion in 2011. That’s 10 percent of lighting’s market share, up from 5 percent in 2010. Helped by the phasing-out of incandescent bulbs, LEDs are projected to take 16 percent of the total lighting market by 2013. Naturally, lighting’s innovators are ahead of the curve. Lee Dryden, a spokesman for Osram, told Ars that “in the last fiscal year, we made around 20 percent of our sales with LED-based technologies”.

But to gain further ground, the LED has to knock off the reigning champ in commercial interiors like offices, universities, and hospitals: the venerable fluorescent light. Despite Haitz’s Law and the sense of inevitability it gives to LEDs, fluorescent lighting is mounting a serious defense of its entrenched position.

The benefits of a low upfront cost

Excited vaporized gas is a funny thing; it emits ultraviolet light that’s useful for illumination only if you stick some luminescent phosphor in its way. But it’s a much more efficient way of converting electrical energy into light than making tungsten extremely hot (as in incandescents), and fluorescent proved dirt cheap to operate. It wasn’t expensive to buy, either.

Until very recently, unless one exhibited a flagrant disregard of electricity bills, fluorescent was the only viable choice for the workplace, and the perception of fluorescent lights as flickering, green-tinged “sick building syndrome”-inducing tubular horrors is well out of date. Magnetic control gear (the means of regulating the flow of current through the tube) has been superseded by electronics, all but eliminating flicker. Triphosphor tubes emit light in red, green and blue spectra, emitting white light so workforces no longer appear to be suffering from outbreaks of communal nausea.

Modern T5 fluorescent tubes exceed 100 lm/W efficacy, putting them neck and neck with current LEDs but at a fraction of the initial outlay. One pro-LED piece of marketing we came across claims that, due to LED’s lifespan, the 10-year cost of ownership for a commercial LED fitting is just over half that of the fluorescent alternative. Crucially, though, it admits that the initial outlay of the “average” fitting is nearly $300 for LED but under $100 for fluorescent.

Peter Soares of Philips Lighting argues that the “very economical” pricing of fluorescents combined with good performance and relatively long-life (now up to 40,000 hours, according to Soares) creates a “tough hurdle” for LEDs to overcome in office lighting. Still, he predicts that LEDs will “eventually supplant linear fluorescent fixtures due to the promise of greater energy savings and even longer life”.

In the home, too, fluorescent lighting is the initial winner in the efficiency drive—usually the “compact” fluorescent format that replaces traditional light bulbs in lamps and overhead fixtures. A 2011 report by the Clinton Foundation showed production of CFLs in the US has exploded from 20 million lamps in 2003-04 to 255 million in 2009-10, spurred by demand for energy-efficient home lighting.

But without a serious technological breakthrough, fluorescent lighting is merely holding out against the inevitable. All else being equal, if VantagePoint’s prediction that the cost of LED lighting will tumble 90 percent by 2015 proves accurate, the dominance of LED lighting both at home and at work would seem assured. But all is not equal. In the workplace, at least, the LED’s ascendancy is far from certain because its solid-state cousins—the OLEDs—are on the march.

Photograph by Philips Lighting

The good new is that in Abu Dhabi 300 of the 2500 mosques have been fitted with water filters to reduce the flow an this has cut the amount of water used for 12 litres a minute to roughly 3 litres.

Every little bit helps

I have just read the article “Quest for Balance”. Having that ability to be sustainable means that across the board everyone from government, educationalist industrialists and the man, woman and child on the street have to be working towards the end result of being environmentally proactive. It is hard to make the shift to sustainability when so many of the processes and products to be thus are considerably more expensive than the more common item say for example the use of incandescent bulbs compared to LED energy saving bulbs. So when budgets are critical  it is to pick the cheaper option.

If governments could put in place policies and grants toward energy saving incentives this would of course go a long way to supporting the all important reduction in energy consumption and carbon foot print. Getting the balance right is all important and we want to be able to ensure that the land that we live in is able to support the needs of our future generations. So looking to sustainable development and sustainable policies are a must to get the desired result.

THINK GREEN

THINK SUSTAINABLE LIGHTING

RWN are please to be promoting a fully integrated Energy Management Lighting System which will allow the user to reduce the wattage without impacting quality and also reduce wastage. The lighting solution and our leading product is ZITY, Smart Home Automation.

This month we are focusing in getting our message across to MEP. Facilities and Procurement Managers, those decision makers who can pass on the latest technology information to their clients.  It is all about thinking SMARTLY and THINKING GREEN

Smart home automation is the latest ‘Green technology’ for residential complexes, hotels and commercial buildings. Explained in ‘lay mans’ terms, Zity wifi system communicates with all lights, temperature control, room access and even curtains giving the hotel guest  or home owner ease of use to turn on  or off any facility from any point.

No extra cabling or extra equipment is needed, so new buildings and re-furbishment projects can make good use of Zity. Energy management is key to any Zity installation. Everyone need to make a step to saving the climate and this green technology is a perfect step in the right direction.  Managing Climate Change with RWN -

So for Smart Thinking – Think Smart Solutions with RWN Trading www.rwntrading.com or   call +971 04 310 8000 or email info@rwntrading.com

At present the draw back to switching to LED has been the initial cost but the efficiency and cost effectiveness of LED lighting systems will drive demand for more affordable LED lights. Irrespective of cost there are still tremendous financial and energy savings to be achieved.

The operational life of LED lamps is 50,000 hours. This is 10 + years of continuous operation, or 20 years of 50% operation. The long operational life of an LED lamp is a stark contrast to the average life of an incandescent bulb, which is approximately 5000 hours. The long life span of the LED has naturally a direct impact on maintenance requirement.
The key to switching to LED lighting is reduced power consumption. With correct design, an LED circuit will realise approximately 80% efficiency, in a nutshell this means 80% of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. The remaining 20% is lost through heat energy. When you compare this with incandescent lamps which operate at about 20% efficiency with a staggering 80% of the electrical energy being lost as heat.  Furthermore, LED do not cause heat build-up, producing only 3.4btu’s per hour, compared to up to 88btu’s for incandescent.

The range of LED, direct LED replacement we offer are certified CE RoSH PSE FCC and come with a minimum 2 year guarantee.

We work with out clients to provide the best product at the best prices our suppliers are all  certified and are from UK, China Korea and Europe.

Everyone need to make a step to saving the climate and this green technology is a good way to make a difference in the New Year – 2012

Smart home automation is the latest technology for residential complexes, hotels and commercial buildings.

Explained in ‘lay mans’ terms, Zity wifi system communicates with all lights, temperature control, room access and even curtains giving the hotel guest  or home owner ease of use to turn on  or off any facility from any point.

No extra cabling or extra equipment is needed, so new buildings and re-furbishment projects can make good use of Zity.

Energy management is key to any Zity installation

So for Smart thinking think Smart solutions with RWN Trading

Lighting is essential for any property and there is skill in selecting the correct design and effect. Subtle, emergency, mood enhancing or basic lighting each type of element requires a unique solution.

Clever structural use of white or coloured beams on the outside of a building structure help to produce a statement, an image or a branding. Light should not be considered solely for illuminating.

RWN work with a number of designers who can help you active your dreams and aspirations when designing your home, office or property enterprise.

For an elaborate, period ambience lighting may need to be more flamboyant. A dramatic chandelier in a large traditional hall or reception area will help to create an instant feeling of opulence. However, simple wall sconces can create a similar effect of lavishness. Floor level lighting shining on tiling or simple wall lights can help to create a subtly lit atmosphere perfect for creating the feeling of a sanctuary.

Bright halogen down lighters will flood a room with white light creating a feeling of space. However, if you want a relaxing bath you may want something a little more refined. And don’t forget the mirror, Down lights can cast awkward shadows on the face when you look at your reflection, wall lights mounted either side of a mirror create the ideal light for shaving or applying makeup. A three staged lighting scheme will help increase the versatility of your room.

All in all, lighting is an important aspect of the overall design for any development. For more information on our services RWN Trading are Agents for Cube, Zity Smart Automation, wireless lighting solutions and Bastable Consultancy, all experts in the field of illumination, please contact info@rwntrading.com

THE BIG  5

By ROB WAUGH

Last updated at 10:16 AM on 23rd November 2011

• Bulbs last for 40 times normal electric bulbs
• Paper-thin ‘flat’ lightbulbs in development
• Bulbs cost $20 to $70 each

Samsung’s new bulbs range in price from $19 to $70 – but promise 40,000 hours of use per bulb, which works out at around 36 years

Along with taking out the rubbish, one of the traditional ‘men’s jobs’ around the home has always been standing on a chair and unscrewing old lightbulbs and replacing them with fresh ones.

But new technology from Samsung might make the chore a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Samsung’s new range of LED bulbs have a lifespan of 40,000 hours – 40 times a standard incandescent bulb.

The company calculates that with normal use, the bulbs should last for 36 years.

‘Samsung is now using it’s expertise in digital electronics to revolutionize the lighting industry,’ says the company.

Samsung is a world leader in ‘LED’ TVs – actually LCD panels which are lit by a panel of LEDs behind the screen.

LED lights are becoming increasingly common, and generally offer a fairly long lifespan, but even so, 36 years is something of an eye-opener.

‘A light bulb is no longer just a light bulb. It’s a digital technology made up of LED chips, drivers and electronics – familiar turf for Samsung,’ says Kevin Dexter, Samsung’s senior VP of home appliances.

Traditional ‘incandescent’ bulbs only last for around 1,000 hours of use before going ‘phut’ – and the figure used to be far worse

‘Samsung’s LED lamps turn on instantly, are virtually UV and infrared free and produce an extremely uniform and crisp light making you and your home look better while saving you money and helping the environment.’

The downside is that the bulbs aren’t cheap. A basic model will set you back $19 – the bulbs are US-only at present – and larger, brighter models are priced up to $70.

But even LED bulbs could soon seem old hat.

The ‘incandescent’ bulb creates light by heating a metal filament – but wastes energy through heat. LED bulbs lose far less energy this way – and don’t have a filament to burn out

An American company, Eden Park, is researching an entirely new, ‘plasma lighting’ technology, which creates light from a paper thin layer of plasma between two sheets of aluminium foil.

It raises the possibility of lighting on walls as if it was wallpaper – and consumes microscopic amounts of power.

‘Microplasma is a unique, proprietary, energy-efficient, ultra thin lighting technology,’ says the company, ‘It can be flexible, formed and produces white or colored light.’

Eden Park has set no date as to when the first ‘microplasma’ lights might be on the market.

Samsung’s new low-power LED bulbs are on sale.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2065082/Samsung-unveils-lightbulbs-36-years.html#ixzz1eWhT3x1Q

SO LETS LOOK AT THE UPDATES TO THIS ISSUE:

FACT: The are many companies in Hong Kong and China supplying excellent quality LED and  replacement LED at reasonable prices.

FACT: RWN TRADING HAVE SOURCED GOOD QUALITY LED AT COMPETITIVE PRICES – available in the Middle East, Indian and Sri Lanka

FACT: Quality comes at a price, there are excellent LED products on the market that are yes, more expensive than incandescent but with the long life and excellent lumen should be considered when making the switch to energy saving lighting.

You can feel and see good quality so look around your suppliers and ask questions about pay back and expected length of life of the LED. They should last from approx 35,000 hours to some up to 50,000 hours and have 2 – 5 year warranty

Think smart

Think LED

Think environmentally savvy.

Sustainable procurement: consider using locally available building materials there by cutting your carbon footprint.

Planning in advance: work on the logistic to ensure that fewer transportation of equipment journeys and made.

Recycle packaging materials where possible.

Enrol your staff in the need to be green and explain they whys and wherefores. Working as a team is a great incentive to reading the send goal.

Unfortunately, we’ve now reached a stage where progression is met with skepticism and indifference. With incandescent and CFL bulbs producing inefficient light at low costs, we have become content to settle for less. The ugliness of flickering lights and the unnecessary heat they give out has become a burden we shoulder with resignation over the course of our lives.

The problem is we think we are being environmentally friendly merely by switching the lights off when they aren’t required, but consider this; when your CFL bulb stops working and you go to dispose of it, you are effectively dumping mercury into the environment.  Incandescent is even worse in this aspect.

So the question is; what do we do instead?

 Well, there’s LED lighting of course. Low wattage, minimal heat production and long lasting, LED lighting not only sounds good but it looks good too. When LEDs are lighting up your phones and TVs, why not let them light up your rooms and offices. Gone will be the hassles of regularly maintaining the light bulbs, as LED lasts for approximately 50,000 hours.

So maybe it’s time for the marketing genius to alter his phrase slightly…

“Let there be LED light”