New Safety Benefits of LEDs and the Internet of Everything

The internet of everything is becoming increasingly discussed as the future of our society, in previous blogs we have explored how LEDs fits into this digital world but now it has been discovered that LEDs and the industrial internet can be used to benefit our safety.

 

Designs that combine LEDs with wireless sensors and data-transmitting technology have been successfully implemented for safety uses in cities in Brazil and Spain. 

The Brazilian city of Bauru, hometown of the famous football player Pelé, in the state of Sao Paolo is one of Brazil's most densely populated centres with extremely high volumes of traffic. These issues are cause for concern in the UN 'decade for Action for Road Safety 2011-20'. The purpose of this foundation is to reduce the ever increasing numbers of traffic fatalities and to save five million lives in the ten year period. 

Obviously good lighting is crucial in this so in 2013 Bauru partnered with lighting company GE to convert over 2,000 traffic lights to LED. These LED signals last ten times longer than the traditional lights used and reduce energy consumption by up to 80%. In terms of safety for road users, these LED traffic lights produce greater visibility and clearer colours, this reduces risk of drivers being distracted by the intense Brazilian sunlight. There are nearly 3,400 traffic accidents in the world every day but Bauru and GE's contribution is helping to bring that figure down, perhaps other cities in the world should follow their lead. 

Not only could LEDs reduce the amount of traffic accidents, the introduction of wireless sensored infrastructures is able to give advance warnings of natural disasters. Although this is a problem that doesn't really enter our day to day concerns in Britain, the reality is that in the last 25 years there has been a staggering 850,000 deaths in the world due to natural disasters. This amounts to $3,300 billion in economic damage, a figure that's pretty incomprehensible. 

The the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities initiative is a campaign created to help cities around the world become more resilient to the physical, social, and economic challenges that are a growing of our modern society. As part of this initiative the La Garrotxa region in Spain is devoting itself to reduce the death toll of natural disasters by developing a daily monitoring system that will provide early earthquake and flood warnings. La Garrotxa is located to the northeast of Barcelona and between the Mediterranean and the Pyranees and is known for its volcanic landscape. It has become one of the first test sites for this new kind of early warning system. This new technology uses Wifi and 40 different types of environmental sensors managed through a dashboard and enables local officials to monitor local river levels for early signs of flooding and can also measure temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels which could be used to detect forest fires which the area is prone to. These examples show the possible safety features of LEDs and wireless technologies that could be employed within fire and police departments in addition to government offices. Making our infrastructures more sophisticated will allow us to transmit crucial data at the speed of light, creating safer cities and a safer world. 




Blog post adapted from Illuminated minds article 'LEDs put safety first' July 14 2015

Sainsbury's Uses LEDs Nationwide.

Sainsbury's has been considering LED technology for about seven years, first for their refrigerator lighting and later on for feature lighting and car parks. Overtime as the LED technology has developed, the supermarket giant has been considering it for more and more applications. 

Last year was a huge advancement of this. Sainsbury's opened its first all LED store in a brand new hypermarket in Leek, Staffordshire. This store consumes about 60% less energy for lighting than comparable stores thanks to the GE 'Blade' fitting, Nonetheless, this is still only one store.

However as of this year, Sainsbury's has made LED lighting the norm and the store in Leek is no longer going to be an exception.

Paul Crewe, Sainsbury's sustainability boss says the energy-efficient lighting is 'one of the most important technologies that we have introduced over the last three years.' All the major supermarkets have been dabbling with LED lighting but the scale of Sainsbury's decision and the sheer amount of attention that they are paying to lighting, makes it a cut above the rest. 

Simon Waldron, who joined Sainsbury’s last year as electrical engineering manager, says: ‘My role is to make it 100 per cent LED. But the real challenge is to go LED while maintaining look and feel. Customers are used to walking into a Sainsbury’s store and recognising the brand, and a change in lighting is a big visual element that could impact that.’

Sainsbury's  has already built five new stores that are using 100% LED lighting, and replaced traditional lighting in over 100 more. By the end of the year a total of 100,000 LED fittings will have been installed across the Sainsbury’s chain, reducing electrical load by 56 per cent (so far). The new lights are expected to pay for themselves in less than five years. 

As a result of the project, Sainsbury’s has made its way on to the Lux Awards shortlist in three categories: retail lighting, recycling, and client of the year.

The company’s lighting team has picked LED equipment from a range of manufacturers to come up with systems for new stores, old stores, big stores, little stores and everything in between. The project covers not just sales floors but also cafes, car parks, petrol stations, offices, back-of-house storage areas and distribution centres.

And to make sure each solution was exactly right for its needs, Sainsbury’s has in many cases developed products in tandem with its lighting suppliers, or requested custom versions of existing products. Dextra supplied a bespoke flat panel, GE developed its original 'Blade' product specifically for Sainsburys in addition to a semi-recessed version.In addition to this, JCC supplied its SkyTile LED panel in a previously unavailable colour temperature. ‘We don’t just take the first product we look at in a catalogue,’ says Waldron, ‘we work with manufacturers to come up with the ideal solution for each area in the estate. Generally we don’t take no for an answer. That’s not being arrogant, but we can always push manufacturers to come up with non-standard solutions that work for us.’
Sainsbury's massive LED lighting upgrade is part of a £1 billion energy-saving project known as Project Graphite – a reference to the carbon emissions that it aims to prevent.

The supermarket industry is more than competitive ever due to the rapid rise of cheaper stores such as Aldi and Lidl. Sainsbury's is hoping that a more sustainable approach and all the benefits that are attached to it. The team have calculated the total cost of owning the LED fittings for their whole lifetime, not just how many years it will take for the lamps to have paid for themselves.
Sainsbury’s aim is to achieve a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, compared with a 2005 baseline. And because it’s building more supermarkets at the same time, the reductions at each site will have to be significantly higher than that.

The new Sainsbury’s that opened in the centre of Wolverhampton in July is a prime example of what’s being done. The £60 million, 6,700m2 store contains LED luminaires from Dextra, GE, Holophane, JCC, Nualight, Philips, Thorlux and Zumtobel (as well as plentiful daylight through the skylights). It uses about 60% less energy for lighting than a comparable store with traditional lighting.

Its a long while since LED light fittings were recognisable by the grid of glary blueish dots. When choosing manufacturers for this project, Sainsbury’s insisted on four key elements, the first of which was that there be no compromise on the current look and feel of the fittings. The other things suppliers had to offer were energy efficiency, no component replacements for 10 years, and proper recycling of old luminaires.

One area where Sainsbury’s has been particularly clever is the attention is warranties, working with each manufacturer to get the correct warranty to make sure that minimal maintenance would be required for the life of the fittings. Sainsbury’s writes its own warranties with manufacturers, usually asking for five-years’, covering both labour and parts.

Sainsbury's worked with the recycling scheme Recolight, which our sister company, Lightsave Fuller Read, also works with. By the end of this year Sainsbury's will have recycled over 220 tonnes of old lamps and louvres.Whilst recycling their old lamps they are also refurbishing over 60,000 luminaire carcasses that would have otherwise been sent to the scrap yard. 

If you want to follow in the footsteps of Sainsbury's and replace your lighting with energy saving LEDs, please go to our website, www.theledspecialist.co.uk. We stock GE and Philips lamps, two of the companies that were involved in this vast energy saving project as well as many others.

Start your own energy saving project now with the Led Specialist!