14 DAY TRIAL // Scientists at the Fremont, CA-based Redwood Systems announce that they will begin commercializing a new type of LED (light-emitting diode) lighting system beginning this summer. The thing that sets the new approach apart from the rest of its competition is the fact that the light sources will not be hooked up to conventional electrical wiring grids, but rather to network cables. It will also feature a central hub that will calculate the lighting demands of a building, and will sense and control the amount of light that is needed throughout an office building or a home, Technology Review reports.
Though, in terms of cost, the system is on par with other existing approaches to lighting, it could see that each building it's outfitted in reduces its power consumption by anything from 50 to 80 percent. One of the things that allow the innovative system to be capable of such performances is the method it employs in switching between currents. That is to say, regular LED lights tend to run on low-voltage direct current, but require transformers on each individual source to convert the standard, higher-voltage alternating current, into the type they need.
This makes for inefficient conversion, and for higher costs, Redwood Systems experts say. The new system they developed works differently. While still powered on by a low-voltage direct power, it transforms the standard current into the one it needs at the central hub, thus eliminating the need for individual transformers on each light source. The company's vice president for marketing, Jeremy Stieglitz, vice president of marketing, says that this feature alone cuts power consumption by 10 to 20 percent. The additional improvements in energy savings come from the central hub, and the light management system that controls all the LED sources in the building.
What is also remarkable about this system is the fact that it can operate “locally,” in certain areas of the room. Other lighting systems can only control the amount of light they provide over the whole room, but the innovation can give, for example, more light in an area that is farther from the windows, and less light in the cubicles that are closer to the light, in an office space. This is possible due to the sensors each LED source contains, which detect both motion and ambient lighting.