Inside the Watt Controlled LED Driver

Assistant Marketing Manager for Deco Lighting Amanda Keen wrote a great post on her company's Blog recently on how our Commerce, California-based partners have come up with a watt-controlled driver for their lighting products that is outperforming the competition in this ever changing marketplace. 

Keen wrote that most LED Drivers are only capable of operating in mild environments, rated for operation up to 75° or 80° Celsius (167°F or 176°F) and remarked that temperatures inside a lighting fixture are often higher than this.

"Small fixture compartments and poor air circulation can generate extreme heat, often coming close to temperatures that boil water," wrote Keen.  "The heat results in damage to the driver’s battery-like electrolytic capacitors. The electrolyte, which is typically a gel, evaporates over the life of the capacitor’s components. Higher operating temperatures speed up this evaporation, shortening the life of the capacitor and leading to premature driver failure."

It appears that Deco Lighting has solved the dilemma of premature power supply failure by utilizing watt-controlled drivers designed to stand up to extreme heat. Unlike other LED drivers, Deco LED watt-controlled drivers are rated for operation up to 90° Celsius (194 °F).

"Our process focuses on making the driver operate cooler and longer than the competition," wrote Keen.

Deco Lighting's  driver components are positioned on the circuit board in a manner that prevents the build-up of heat. Also, their circuit boards are arranged in a way that allows Deco Lighting driver components to touch the metal housing so the driver components can be used as a heat sink. Also, Deco insulates key heat-sensitive components inside the driver.

Interesting to note, Deco Lighting ensures quality in every component that comprises their LED lighting fixtures, from high-quality Nichia LEDs to finely-engineered heat transfer castings to state-of-the-art drivers. GET,LLC has these on Guam and would be happy to arrange a presentation.

It is for these reasons why we are so bullish about Deco Lighting. Yes. Deco Lighting offers a ten-year, one hundred thousand hour warranty, which includes labor. Deco’s warranty backs up the confidence they have in their products-we stand ready here and across Micronesia to support them.

For more information about Deco's LED drivers or other products please check out our website at www.get-guam.com or call us at 671-483-0789 to discuss solutions for your important lighting needs-All Made in America!!!

Surplus Furniture-What to do?

What happens to Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment (FF&E) when a commercial space is vacated? The Pasadena, California-based non-profit ANEW says that when facility owners leave a space, most often FF&E are left behind-a facilities management team is now responsible to liquidate surplus.

Until recently the standard practice was for old FF&E to be labeled as waste, picked up by a demolition crew, and hauled to a landfill. This is such a costly option considering a company’s investment in infrastructure has great value. It is the smart choice to think proactively about moving FF&E's out your door. The end result is a decision that properly leverages your respective companies’ investment, and saves time and money in the process.

Construction waste accounts for about 40% of landfill content in the United States. Though disposing of surplus in a landfill is an easy option, it comes at a high environmental price. According to U.S. EPA estimates, methane produced by rotting matter in landfills is the second largest factor affecting global climate change.

What can be done to fix this situation? In most instances, old FF&E still have a lot of life remaining; there are many organizations that can benefit by receiving used (but eminently usable) furnishings. Simply put, the effects of climate change are reduced through mitigation of methane production when surplus is creatively diverted from landfills.

One solution is for facilities managers to view FF&E that has reached its end of useful life not as waste but as something of value—and then to divert it from a landfill and implement a sustainable alternative for repurposing the materials. Facilities Managers can collaborate with their furniture dealers, architects, or other project stakeholders to steward their surplus to new homes.

A company’s surplus can benefit a recipient organization such as a non-profit, charity, or public agency, for instance. Meanwhile, gifting the FF&E benefits the donor company with a tax-deductible donation. Meanwhile, depending on who the facilities manager works with to carry out the process, they may receive a complete summary of relevant metrics including the amount diverted and carbon footprint reduction.

Related to that, a donor organization might earn points toward LEED accreditation for the overall facility project (if it is a renovation, for instance). Categories related to LEED might include material reuse, landfill diversion, and innovation.

Re-purposing surplus FF&E that still has some life in it is a win-win situation for all involved. The donor organization can empty its decommissioned space at a cost comparable to or lower than that of hauling to a landfill, while the group’s corporate social responsibility gets a boost.

And the recipient organizations benefit with enhanced working environments and maximized resources. This allows the people who work at those organizations to focus on the vital services they provide to their communities. Meanwhile, the environment is spared the toxic effects of adding waste to landfills.

For more on how GET, LLC through our friends at Savoy Contract Furniture and teaming partner American Hotel Register can assist you with your specific furniture needs- please check out our website at www.get-guam.com or give us a call at 671-483-0789 to discuss the best solution for your facility.  All the solutions are Made in America!!!

LED Spec Assistance-Use of External Drivers

In an attempt to provide assistance to specification writers that are tasked with identifying the most cost-effective energy efficient lighting for their commercial, industrial and federal government properties GET, LLC through our friends at Independence LED Lighting offer up advice to help those writers and readers of this blog to identify key specification areas of focus in the use of LED lighting technology. 

Our focus: external drivers.

External drivers, a key selling point of LED lighting, have multiple efficiency, smart control, operation, and life safety advantages over Internal Drivers.  It is suggested that by separating the heat created by the drivers from the LEDs on the linear “Tube” modules, the combined system runs more efficiency, maintains its color more consistently, and lasts longer. Heat is simply the enemy of the LED. 

Also external drivers provide increased flexibility over internal drivers, when it comes to maximizing future connectivity for dimming, occupancy sensors, light harvesting, alert signals, and WIFI control. Many end users are focused, in the short term, on the energy savings with LEDs but the modular advantage of an external system is the ability to improve the technology as it evolves by connecting into other smart controls.

Since the external driver is a separate module, it can be easily replaced in the same way that a fluorescent ballast is replaced upon failure without throwing out the whole tube. This is the simple model of “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”, since the LEDs and the tube component are more valuable than the driver component. Modularity creates operating as well as energy efficiency. Think of the driver as the starter on a car or the power supply on a computer. It is best to specify Non-Proprietary Drivers for maximum flexibility over time to purchase if necessary additional drivers.  For failure diagnostics, if a tube goes dark completely then the failure is most likely in the driver versus any of the diodes on the tube, but personnel can always easily cross check by simply connecting a failed tube to a nearby fixture. Given that the drivers are the weakest link in the LED system, request a nominal extra inventory of drivers (e.g. 1 per 100 Tube sets) to have at hand in the event of failure. This is not unlike stocking extra ballasts in a project.

Finally, fluorescent tube fixtures to date have been typically designed to bring alternating current (AC) line voltage typically at 120V to 240V into the fixture and then step it down to safer lower voltage via the fluorescent ballast to Direct Current (DC). The danger of using internal driver LED tubes is that the step down to the lower voltage occurs inside the tube. So the installer of internal drivers bypass the ballast and run the higher voltage directly into the socket “tombstones” of the fixture. This means that the dangerous line voltage is right at hand in the fixture. If personnel touch the sockets, they WILL RECEIVE A SHOCK, and they are at risk of falling back off a ladder at the 120V level breaking an arm, hitting their heads, or worse.  There is an increased likelihood of  fatality for fixtures that are powered with higher 240V with the internal drivers. By contrast, external driver LED technology mirrors the model of the original fixture design by replacing the fluorescent ballast with the external driver and stepping down the voltage as it is fed into the tubes for increased safety.  LED tube solutions should include options for external drivers that are non-proprietary  to a sole source, so that the drivers can be replaced if necessary either during or after warranty periods. 

Need an LED solution for your facility? Check out our website at www.get-guam.com or give GET, LLC a call at 671-797-0789.  We are a provider of Independence LED Lighting and Deco Lighting Inc. products-Made in America!!!