LEDs already deliver four times the efficiency of traditional incandescent and halogen light sources, while rapidly gaining ground on fluorescent and offering numerous benefits above and beyond all three, says the company.
"With millions of lights burning nearly 24x7 in office buildings, hospitals, shopping malls, hotels and public places, it's no wonder that commercial buildings account for 51% of total energy consumption for lighting in the US vs. 27% for residential," said Bill Sims, president and CEO, Color Kinetics. "This presents us with an enormous opportunity to leverage smart technologies, like LED lighting, to put a real dent in energy inefficiencies and in turn reduce the amount of emissions being pumped into our atmosphere."
Color Kinetics says it sees LED technology as the future of energy-efficient lighting, first for commercial spaces and eventually for residential applications as well. Performance trends suggest that LEDs have the ability to ultimately leapfrog other efficient light sources, such as fluorescent, given their longer source life, durability, non-toxic materials, lack of radiated heat and UV, higher quality of light output and flexibility to accommodate wide-ranging fixtures and form factors. Moreover, as inherently digital devices, LEDs produce light that can be intelligently controlled to dynamically customise environments, from restaurants and casinos to retail shops, homes and even automobiles.
"The notion that LEDs are still relegated to flash lights, tail lights and electronic gadgets is a misconception. We can point to major landmarks, towers, bridges - even the world's largest spherical building - that are illuminated by our LED systems today," said Sims. "Color Kinetics was established for the very purpose of supplanting less efficient light sources with a new form of intelligent lighting based on LEDs. We're not simply responding to a timely trend. We've spent ten years solely focused on making LED sources viable as the right long-term solution."
Color Kinetics participates in several government and industry initiatives related to energy conservation. As a member of the Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance, the company is helping to develop a technology roadmap for the US Department of Energy (DoE), as well as Energy Star criteria for LED lighting. In 2006 the company was awarded a $1.7 million grant by the DoE to develop LED-based replacement lamps for 60-watt incandescent light sources that, with a fourfold increase in efficacy to 80-lumens per watt, would meet or exceed the efficacy of nearly all conventional light sources.
Reflecting the company's leadership role, Color Kinetics' VP of Innovation Kevin Dowling will make his 6th appearance as a featured presenter at the DoE's Solid-State Lighting Workshop in California on 23 April. At this meeting of technical, legislative and academic minds, energy efficiency and speeding the pervasive use of LEDs for illumination will be a major topic of discussion.
"We applaud any initiative, whether public or private sector, that brings attention to the need for energy-efficient lighting. Though adoption may be aided by government regulations, business consortiums, financial incentives, grass roots movements or other influencers, we believe that LEDs will ultimately win in the market based on their merits as a superior technology, as has been the case with so many disruptive technological innovations in the past," Sims concluded.
(Jim Evans)
