Light becomes an experience - Interview with Dirk Pietz

Are LEDs able to keep up with standard lighting solutions in terms of luminous efficiency?

It is no longer a matter of ‘just keeping up’, because LED as a technology has now become standard. The latest efficiency levels and high quality of light were the triggers for us to transform more than 50 % of the portfolio towards LED. The luminous efficiency of today’s LEDs has mainly left all traditional lamps far behind. A good example here is the current E-Line LED continuous line, which sets standards in terms of efficiency and with a luminous efficiency of >130 lm/W features an almost perfect combination of LEDs and optics. It’s this interaction, together with sophisticated thermal management, that achieves an optimum with regard to light output and quality.

What importance or weighting does thermal management have in this sense?

The right thermal management, meaning the optimal dissipation of heat generated by an LED module, has a major influence on the service life. This has high relevance with product lines used in industrial applications and focussing on high luminous flux packages. The challenges in such situations are extreme temperature ranges as well as high- effort maintenance processes. That is why we have now got specialists within the company-owned Innovation and Technology Centre who deal with this topic exclusively. This is the only way to ensure maximum reliability and quality to the customers, seen perfectly with the Mirona and Nextrema product lines.

In the past, the advantages of LED were obvious in terms of long service life and insensitivity to cold temperatures and vibration. Industry and outdoor applications were mainly focused on. Now though many other benefits have come to the fore that make the life of conventional lamps much more difficult. Let’s take office applications as an example. Here the key factors efficiency, intelligence and quality of light play an important role, and because of the significant increase in efficiency levels just in the past two years, T5 fluorescent lamps in the future will be pushed more and more to the wayside.

Added to this is the intelligent blending of LEDs as a light source with innovative optical systems to create an almost unbeatable combination of efficiency and light output ratio. This all means that today’s ‘still’ higher investment costs are topped by rapid amortisation periods. Another factor is that electronics now offer almost unlimited options in terms of operation and individual modification – light is transformed into an experience and is more efficient and economic than ever before.

And what does that mean specifically? In which areas are LEDs advantageous compared to standard luminaires?

When do you recommend LED solutions?

This question is no longer valid for us. We now know that LED represents the best solution for all types of application. In the industrial environment the factors of reliability and robustness are highly important, whereas with office applications efficiency and intelligence are also very significant. And if we now look at other applications such as shop and retail or the health sector, enormous possibilities and potential are created when working with LED technology.

We can steplessly modify colour temperatures for example by switching LEDs with minimal dimensions featuring highly differing colour spectra on a single chip and with the products developed for this. Generating spectra ranging from extremely warm white to daylight white light is no problem, and these types of lighting concepts are able to adapt to a wide range of needs within specific applications. For example accenting light and stimulating purchase behavior with products and goods on the one hand, and increasing the sense of well-being (biological light) and the ability to concentrate on the other hand in the area of health, education and of course offices as well.