LED Emergency Lighting

Greidy

Newly Enlightened
Joined
Sep 6, 2002
Messages
6
Location
Toronto Ontario
What is the current possibility of an LED driven emergency lighting remote head? For Example can the new Luxeon 5W Emitter have the same light output of a 12W quartz bi-pin lamp the standard in emergency lighting? And if not can it be made up by superior optical control of the source to have the same or better effect than these poorly designed fixtures?
 
Actually right now the 5w LED are just a little bit less efficient then halogen. So to get a LED as bright as a 12w halogen I would bet you would need about 14w. So the answer is no, a 5w will not be as bright as a 12w halogen.

Having said that you could probably come very close using 2 - 5 w units and the color temps is much better, and as the battery dies the light wouldn't yellow and would increase in efficiency rather then really decrease as the halogens would.
 
Thats too bad. What is the best commercial flashlight out there for lumens versus watts?
In the low end under 10W. Cost not an issue?
 
Alas the 5W emitters are not available yet.

However I believe that in this particular application the 5W emitters could be expected to be more efficient than the halogen lamps used in emergency lighting.

The reason is that filament lamps show substantial variation in efficiency and lamp life as the applied voltage changes. If you up the voltage, the efficiency goes way up, but the lamp life goes way down. In an emergency light, I bet they design for long life rather than for maximum efficiency. My guess (not confirmed by any data other than familiarity with LEDs and halogen lamps) is that the current 1W Luxeon LEDs will be more efficient than the halogens used in emergency lights.

Additionally, for an emergency light, you don't need _white_ light. You probably want at least some light in all parts of the spectrum so that you can get color cues, but you don't need an ideal white source. This means, for example, that you could use colored emitters like the amber high dome units or the cyan emitters, and get considerably more efficiency than the white Luxeons.

-Jon
 
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