Lamp or luminaire? New product class targets upgrades
An emerging product class in lighting is targeting fluorescent-to-LED upgrades in the commercial sector.
The tubular LED fixtures are designed to replace T5 and T8 fluorescent lamps while addressing the problems normally associated with LED tubes.
Technically, they are luminaires tested to luminaire standards and featuring double electrical insulation but they are designed for in-situ upgrades of fluorescent lights.
Coco Lighting and Light Projects are two early innovators in the class, with more brands set to follow suit.
Remanufacturing specialist Coco Lighting teamed up with luminaire design house F Mark to develop Resus, which they describe as ‘a luminaire design upgrade solution’ that’s agnostic to the control protocol in place in the installation.
‘Resus is not a LED tube’, says the team behind it. Instead, the driver is sited remote of the product and occupies the space where the fluorescent ballast would have been situated in most luminaires. ‘This mitigates all the risks and limited life associated with LED tubes’.
In the standard Resus product, the end caps have lamp pins that mimic linear fluorescent lamps. However, these are for mechanical purposes only, used to retain it in the luminaire and no electrical feed is supplied to the lampholder. This ensures that if a product fails, it fails in a safe mode.
As the driver is remote, the light can either align to the existing control protocol, or adopt a new wireless control solution as part of the project upgrade. Emergency lighting can be accommodated.
Coco says that the materials used are from high percentage post-consumer recyclate. The end caps are rapid manufactured using 3D printing technology which not only eliminates tooling cost and material waste, but enables rapid deployment of alternative end caps designs to integrate to specific luminaires.
Using Resus, which has an ‘’excellent’ TM66 circularity score of 3.1, will result in carbon avoidance, compared with replacement, of around 63 per cent and a typical energy reduction of up to 51 per cent. It comes with a five year warranty as standard.
Light Projects’ retrofit offering Revolve is based on its existing LEDbar range, and is therefore fully tested to luminaire standards.
‘Inserting this unit inside any other luminaire is fully compliant, just as it would be if it was installed on the ceiling by itself,’ says Light Projects director Brendon Airey.
He says that the fluorescent lamp ban is driving facilities teams to upgrade their lighting to LED, but that want to avoid compliance issues.
The Revolve is rated at 10W with the equivalent light output as a 36W T8 fluorescent lamp and has a colour rendering of CRI 92. It can also be embedded with intelligence, such as LEDiMESH.
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