Existing dimming systems & LED retrofits

Posted by Web Master on Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Your Customer’s Building As Fallujah

By Joe Salimando

What’s all this about LEDs and dimmers? I’ve attended two sessions on this – one at Lightfair (Philadelphia, 5/11) and one at an SSL conference (D.C., 12/11). I am not an expert.

Here’s what I think I heard:

• You’ve got an existing electrical installation in place.
• There are dimmers or a dimming system, which work just swell for incandescents, say.
• Out go the dinosaurs! Screw in LEDs in their place, save energy – and be extra-hip!
• …but the dimming system that you left in place no longer works so doggone well.

Where does this lead you?

1. Rip out the existing dimming system. Period. OR:

2. Leave the system there, but don’t ever dim the LEDs (they save enough energy – you’ll just have to do without light levels that humans can adjust and vary). OR:

3. Put in new technology, an LED-friendly dimming system (adding to the already significant cost of retrofitting LEDs).

During the Lightfair event, attendees heard that there was a difference between “dimmable” and “designed to dim.”

Huh?

SNAFU

Consider this post (from September) on the Philips Lighting Community by “LEDappsguy” – a company employee:

“My team here at Philips has assembled a facility to expedite dimmer-testing with just about any of the Philips USA-market LED lamps.”

From one perspective (mine), several blooming items flow into a looming potential disaster:

A. Many LED geniuses aren’t lighting people or electrical folks. They are experts in superconductors. I especially liked an item I read a while ago, about lighting folks calling the LED folks “chipheads.”

Remember this: The computer business traditionally doesn’t have Customers. It has “users.” There is a Grand Canyon of mindsets in how one treats “users” vs. “customers.”

B. Marketing LEDs right now is THE story. The attempt to put standards in place on testing & LED lifetimes is about reducing the number of undocumented claims for these things.

Many, many companies are selling LEDs to the marketplace. They all must get feet in the door before the ultimate consolidation happens. How do you do that? Sell replacement bulbs that fit in the billions of sockets that are out there.  

Yes, many of those sockets are controlled by dimmers or dimming systems. Will the dimmers work well, from Day One, with that LED product? Even if the answer is “NO”…that might not be important to a few of the LED marketers as getting the dang bulb sold!

C. As a believer in LEDs (and even OLEDs), my thinking is that there will be a different world of lighting at some point. Lighting will be creatively used. The new technology won’t be all about screwing replacement bulbs into sockets that once held the original Edison bulb.

But no one is waiting on that day. In the interim, if some customers are made unhappy by the performance of dimming systems that remain in place...it’s just collateral damage.