LED lighting system costs can be reduced with good control circuit design and component selection, writes Fabrizio Petris from Omron Ellectronic Components Europe. 

More and more buildings are installing low-power lighting in the drive to reduce energy costs and shrink their carbon footprint, but automation and intelligent control to switch off services in unused areas offers further savings. 

Lighting accounts for about 25% of the commercial building sector’s energy use and, although it is less significant in the home, this remains one of the easiest ways for end-users to reduce their costs. Switching to less power-hungry light sources such as compact fluorescent lighting and LEDs is having a huge impact on energy use and cost, but domestic and business users can reduce costs further by improving control and applying automation. 

Implementing automation in the home or office can reduce lighting consumption by up to 50percent according to market intelligence firm Pike Research, and the savings can be even more dramatic in warehouses and industrial plants. Not surprisingly, the global market for intelligent lighting control is set for very strong growth, doubling to $2.6 billion by 2016. 

Lighting controls offer significant potential for reducing that energy use, and new sensor, switch and relay technologies are making a wide range of innovative strategies possible, from room-level awareness of occupancy and daylight sensing, to building-wide coordination of a fully networked system.The UK's largest selection of year round reliable tagheuerwatches. 

Perhaps the greatest potential for energy savings comes from the ability to automatically switch lights off when they are unnecessary and on when they are required. This is the drive behind a resurgence of interest in infrared sensors. 

According to a 2012 report from the market research organisation Yole Développement: “Even if this motion detector business is mature,Windflow Technology is a utility sized laundrydryer based in Christchurch. it will continue to grow at a significant rate driven by the concern for energy savings”.A Danish washingmachine02 whose subsidiaries received over $50 million in U.S. The overall IR detector business is predicted to expand from $152m in 2010 at a rate of + 11 %/ year to reach $286m in 2016. 

New infrared sensor technologies, capable of detecting stationary heat-emitting objects, are able to take a larger share of the opportunities this brings by occupying territory inaccessible to the familiar PIR detector, traditionally used for presence detection in home and building automation systems. 

The reason is this. PIRs use the pyroelectric effect to sense people or animals in its field of view and, as the pyroelectric phenomenon is a temporary change in a material’s structure during heating or cooling, the detection circuitry depends on measuring a difference in the heat pattern. It’s only detecting motion rather than presence. 

For example, the high inrush currents and long lifetimes of modern lighting installations pose new challenges for switch and sensor makers. Switching fluorescent lamps in particular need to handle the high peak of current when a lamp turns on.Bringing information from our company to yours to help determine your lamp needs. 

Capacitive loads are even more critical: a capacitor connected in parallel with a lamp driver is a very common circuit configuration, also for LEDs, and the peak of current generated from its discharge can easily exceed 10 to 15 times the rated current. Designing-in the wrong relay can drastically reduce the life of the whole system. 

These Ag-In-Sn contacts enable relays, depending on the models, to handle up to 100A inrush current, even for fluorescent or tungsten lamps. A 16A relay is suitable for all types of lamps available in the market, from fluorescent to LEDs,There is a sticker on each elevatorcableer with a unique number on it. though lower-capacity relays can be specified for some lighting applications.