FUTURE DESIGN
TECHN LOGIES
LED LIGHTING
In today’s world of ever increasing electrical demands, it has become necessary to try to find a solution to the problem of overloading (lack of power).
With a massive demand on our already overloaded power grids it is, unfortunately, now commonplace to find power cuts, and load shedding, a part of everyday life.
In today’s world of ever increasing electrical demands, it has become necessary to try to find a solution to the problem of overloading (lack of power).
With a massive demand on our already overloaded power grids it is, unfortunately, now commonplace to find power cuts, and load shedding, a part of everyday life.
Most houses today will be allocated a 60A single phase supply for their power needs. Or, for houses with exceptional power needs, you might be allocated a 60A three phase supply.
No matter which you receive, the chances are good that you will have load control relays installed in your electrical system to help you cope. These LCR’s work in such a manner as to turn one piece of electrical equipment off when another is being used, so as to minimize the amount of power being used at any one time.
Usually this will mean that your geyser will be turned off while you are using the washing machine, or one of your underfloor heating circuits will be out of action while you are using the stove.
The other drawback of using a lot of electrical equipment is the cost to your pocket.
With the invention of low power LED lighting, technology has made a huge effort to solve both of these problems for us.
As a typical example :
An average large house may employ the use of 100 or more light bulbs. These can range from low voltage downlighters (50W) to energy saver lamps (28W) and the more everyday bayonet and ES light bulbs (60W).
Adding these all together, you will come to the total power consumption in Watts of all your lighting in your house.
The amount of power (watts) you use is the amount you see on your monthly electricity bill.
Firstly, let’s not confuse low voltage with low wattage. A lot of people thought that when low voltage downlighters came into force about 15 years ago, that they not only looked great compared to the older types of standard light bulb downlights, but also, being low voltage, they would save on electricity as well. Unfortunately, this is not true. They utilized only 12V of electricity, but the power draw was still 50W. And it is this power draw that you pay for from Eskom.
1 halogen downlighter bulb uses 50W of power as soon as you turn on the light switch. It also needs a transformer to run it, which converts the mains voltage of 220V into 12V. This transformer also uses a small amount of power.
The same brightness can now be achieved from a single LED lamp of 6W.
As you can see, the power savings are almost 90% from 1 single lamp!
I offer to my clients a detailed quotation for changing over to LED lighting.