LED lighting design trends: energy saving and visual experience

Technology is a hard condition for development, while design penetrates into every corner of people's lives with soft power. With the upgrading of lighting technology and the increasing development of LED technology, the application of LED lighting in daily life has become more and more common. How to develop and design excellent LED lighting products, firmly attract customers' attention, and quickly seize the market opportunity has become the goal that every lighting designer wants to achieve.

At present, the application of LED lighting is still mainly in public facilities, and airports, stations, hotels, etc. are all major users of LED lighting. This article takes the lighting project of the new terminal of Chengdu Airport as an example to explore the current demand and development trend of airport lighting for LED lamp design and engineering design.

Energy saving is a constant pursuit

Under the premise of using LED light sources, how to further improve the energy-saving effect of lamps is a new issue before us.

In the 21st century of technological explosion, global politics and economy are changing rapidly. Energy and climate issues have become hot issues that countries focus on, and lighting is the intersection of these two issues. In the energy consumption rankings, lighting ranks first, accounting for about 25%. At present, major economies such as the United States, Russia, Japan, and South Korea have introduced policies to eliminate traditional light sources and popularize LED lighting. my country is no exception. This year, it has issued an announcement that incandescent bulbs will be gradually banned.

On this issue, the direction of the state and enterprises in choosing lamps is consistent. At the beginning of many large-scale lighting projects, it has been made clear that indoor lighting will use LED lighting lamps, so that the electricity cost in the operating cost can be greatly reduced. However, under the premise of using LED light sources, how to further improve the energy-saving effect of lamps? This is a new topic before us, and it is also a question worth deep consideration in the design and development of LED lighting lamps.

At present, in the design and development process of LED lamps, almost all designs are carried out around the main line of how to improve the light efficiency of the product. From the design, testing and analysis of the power supply, to the selection and arrangement of LED arrays, to the requirements for the haze of the light-transmitting plate, and even the color of the silk-screen fonts on the PCB, designers across the industry have been doing their best to improve the light efficiency.

The lighting project of the new terminal building of Chengdu Airport clearly put forward the requirements for the use of LED light sources with a light efficiency of ≥110lm/W and a total light efficiency of ≥65lm/W for downlight products. This is a very high indicator for indoor lighting and is also the technical level that LED light sources have only achieved in the last one or two years. In the end, the project selected circular embedded downlights with a total light efficiency of up to 73.26lm/W, which exceeded the requirements by more than 10%.

The stringent requirements for light efficiency are not difficult to understand, because LED lighting fixtures with higher light efficiency mean that energy consumption can be further reduced. Taking the circular embedded downlight as an example, the original power of Chengdu Airport was 21W, the rated luminous flux was 1170lm, the measured luminous flux was 1282.08lm, and the power was only 17.5W, which was 3.5W lower than the original 21W. Based on the total number of 10,000 sets of lamps in the entire airport, assuming that the lights are turned on for an average of 12 hours a day, the electricity saved is 153,300 kWh, which is equivalent to a local electricity bill of about 180,000 yuan per year. What is more important is the carbon emissions, environmental pollution and climate impact behind this 180,000 yuan per year, which has a more far-reaching significance for enterprises and the country.

Visual experience is a personal need

Visual experience includes not only the comfort of lighting, but also the appearance and installation details of the lamps.

The lighting level of airport buildings has clear requirements for illumination, glare and color rendering in the national standard "GB50043-2004 Building Lighting Design Standard". However, for customers, it is far from enough to just meet the requirements in the standard. The actual lighting design must be carried out in close combination with the nature of work in different areas of the building, the range of people, the building structure and other factors to give customers a good visual experience and gain recognition.

Good visual effects depend on the excellent design of the overall lighting project and the excellent performance of lighting fixtures. In the design of lighting solutions, detailed simulation analysis should be made for the lighting solutions of each functional area, that is, lighting simulation calculation software should be used to design the arrangement, type, luminous flux, and light distribution curve of the lamps in different areas. While meeting the functional requirements, details and humanization should also be taken into account. For example, in a spacious and open space, in order to avoid glare caused by a large number of lamps on the ceiling, hard light strips can be used for side-lighting; and resting places should use warm white, gentle, and low power and illumination to make the light more uniform and soft, and improve people's comfort.

In the Chengdu Airport lighting solution, LED is used as the light source, combined with the application of new optical materials such as high-reflection and high-transmittance masks, making the light efficiency of LED lamps much higher than that of traditional lamps. In addition, the intelligent control system can obtain the ambient light illumination through the photosensitive detector, and then adjust the brightness of the lamps in specific areas in combination with the control system, thereby achieving higher-level needs such as on-demand lighting and secondary energy saving.

Visual experience includes not only the comfort of lighting, but also the appearance and installation details of the lamp. Taking the installation of cylindrical surface-mounted downlights as an example, it is necessary to ensure that the lamp can be accurately adjusted within a certain range in length, width and height, and that the lamp is completely vertical to the ground after installation, and no installation parts or screws can be seen. These harsh conditions have brought more and more challenges to lamp design.

Therefore, in interior lighting design, it has become a new lighting design trend for lighting design, architectural design, on-site construction and other units to communicate, discuss, research and solve various problems with customers, collaborate with multiple parties, and tailor-make and design LED lamps for projects.