Sparks Electrical News June 2019

LIGHTING

19

EFFICIENT LED LIGHTING FOR ERMELO TOYOTA

BEKA Schréder stands by its high-quality per- forming product. BEKA Schréder, through its senior technical sales consultant, Heinrick le Roux, is proud to re- port that the client is very satisfied with this instal- lation, so much so it has placed an order for its other showroom at Pongola Toyota. BEKA Schréder locally develops and manu- factures energy-efficient LED lighting products, designed and suitable for local conditions. The company is proud to be associated with Ermelo Toyota in providing a successful lighting solution.

BEKA Schréder was recently approached by the Managing Director of Ermelo Toyota to discuss the possibility of LED luminaires for the compa- ny's showroom. After assessing and measuring all areas of relevance, BEKA Schréder’s applications department created lighting designs to determine which luminaire would best comply with the re- quired lux levels, and be the most cost-efficient lighting solution. Owing to a previous bad experience with low quality LED luminaires, the client was initially sceptical of another LED solution, and how long it would last. The warranty of the product, and the fact that BEKA Schréder has been in business for over 40 years, were deciding factors considering their first experience. The product of choice was the LEDbay, a lo- cally designed and manufactured LED highbay luminaire. It is highly efficient and energy saving, and can be used for lowbay or highbay appli- cations. The various optical solutions available make it suitable for a range of applications, such as factories, warehouses, retail areas, and ser- vice stations, to name a few. The added advan- tages of LED technology include a long product lifetime, low maintenance requirements, and flicker-free lighting. Another important benefit is the product’s standard five-year warranty, as A fter nearly a decade of mainstream use, LED lamps are still only a fraction of the discards in Europe, so they appear to live up to lon- gevity claims. Recycling them could be a different matter. If the waste stream is any indication, then LED lamps would appear to be living up to manu- facturers’ claims for longevity: In Europe they are still accounting for less than 2% of the discards, reports LEDs Magazine. That number comes from Eucolight, a group of organisations that oversees collection and recycling of lamps and lighting products across Europe. Be- tween them, they claim to handle 79% of the lamps collected in the 18 countries in which they operate. “LED lamps currently represent less than 2% of the waste stream, with their long life,” Eucolight re- ported after its annual conference, which took place recently in Sassenheim, the Netherlands. The bet- ter part of a decade has passed since LEDs started entering the mainstream – long enough for them to turn up in much greater proportion than 2% if they were failing prematurely. Manufacturers informally bandy about claims of 20-year-and-longer lifetimes (although it is hard to find a warranty over five years, and many are shorter). Product labelling typically purports ranges of 15 000-30 000 hours, which at three hours a day translates loosely to between 14 and 28 years. So while consumers still have not used enough LED lamps for long enough to outright prove the long-life claims, the waste stream provides solid circumstantial evidence that LED products are gen- erally holding up pretty well so far. That’s the good news. It is believed that LEDs will comprise about 30- 40% of the waste within the next 10 years, and as that happens, the industry will have a bigger job to do in recycling them than what it has faced in the past with simpler designs, noted Nigel Harvey, CEO of UK lamp recycler and Eucolight member, Recolight. “One of the benefits of LED technology is there’s been an explosion in the range of materials that are used, the designs that are used, the shapes, the sizes, everything,” Harvey says. “But that heterogeneity of product comes at a cost when it comes to recycling. We have a problem that’s going to come back and bite us.” LED LAMP WASTE: THERE’S GOOD NEWS AND BAD

Enquiries: +27 (0)11 238 0056

Enquiries: www.eucolight.org

SPARKS ELECTRICAL NEWS

JUNE 2019