Electrical Contracting News (ECN) October 2016 | Page 46

SPECIAL FEATURE

WORK IT OUT
Andy Douglas of Timeguard offers advice on making sure that the latest LED technology works for you.

O

nce the preserve
of top end
specifiers, LED
lighting is now
bread and butter
business for all
installers, but how
did choosing LED
lighting get so complicated?
The revolution all started so easily: all
you had to do was look at the ‘equivalent

Wattage’ output, check the price and
buy. Then we started to see different
designs to choose from, so the cosmetics
became important. Then the market
started to see a few failures and realised
that, despite the low power consumption,
these devices still needed to be built with
guaranteed quality.
Then, as LED lighting extended its
reach and was being offered for virtually
any use, indoors and out, automatic on/

off timing became an issue. So then we
could all see the importance of rating
switches and drivers to withstand the
repeated, surprisingly high, power surges
that frequent switching implies. On top of
that, people quite rightly started getting
pickier about the quality of the light, the
field of illumination and the ambience it
created: so the design of the LED array,
the lenses and the back plate reflectors
all assumed greater importance.

So was it that a simple choice
became a lot more complicated? The
short answer is, of course, to go with
a trusted brand name but, even then to
check the specification to make sure
any integral PIR switches are actually
rated for LED, and check the small
print to see if they are good enough
for at least a three year warranty,
which should surely be the industry
benchmark by now?

46

46-48 Lighting – Timeguard.indd 46

12/09/2016 12:39