Advances in light-emitting diode (LED) lighting technology are making the case that the time for facility managers to make the switch from fluorescent lighting to LED lighting has arrived. In fact, plenty of folks within the lighting and the facility management industries are saying that making the jump will save facilities both time and money.
Traditionally, facility managers have been hesitant to use LED lighting because doing so used to require the rewiring of electronic ballasts. However, now the benefits of going LED are so great that the cost of rewiring is no longer a strong enough justification to continue to using fluorescent tubes.
A spokesperson at Royal Philips says that its new line of instant fit LEDS, called TLEDS, are ultra energy efficient using 40 less energy than fluorescent tube lighting. Also requiring less maintenance and having longer lives, TLEDs pay for themselves in three years or less. One of the greatest features of this new LED lighting system is that it does not require any ballast rewiring.
Talking about how good of an idea it was to go with LED lighting, Mariano Herranz, maintenance technician at Gas Natural Fenosa, said, "Using the new LED tube does not need any special operation. You just substitute the old tube for a new LED one." Gas Natural Fenosa’s product manager, Ramon Silvero, added, “The savings made are spectacular."
It’s not just Philips that is making inroads into the facility management sector. Aleddra LED Lighting, a business unit of Lightel Technologies, Inc., has recently announced that facility managers have been so pleased with its LED EasiRetrofit tube that its sales jumped 50 percent in 2013. Talking about how key facility management is to its own growth, Mr. Patrick Yu, Aleddra LED Lighting GM, said, “The most increase came from the educational, commercial, and industrial sectors. However, such tremendous growth is not nearly as important to us as is the satisfaction of our customers."
Yu is correct. His company’s facility manager customers are satisfied. "We have loved the LED bulbs we have purchased from [Aleddra],” Jeff Ware, Utah State University Research Foundation. “They work better than I could have hoped. We love the wiring design and the ease of the changeover. We will definitely be ordering more… in the future…I love to show them [the bulbs] off to the people I know around here and will gladly continue to do this. It is a great product and we are extremely happy with the outcome."
LED lighting makes sense and cents, since it is cheaper to power and its longevity cuts down on the cost of buying new bulbs and the number of times light replacement orders have to be entered into a work order management software.