LED Lighting for a brighter future!

Professor Wilkins says it's 'plain enough' that bad flicker from magnetic ballasts in schools can impair learning. A switch to high frequency gear, or LED luminaires, would fix the problem. Four fifths of British school children are having their learning impaired and are at risk from anxiety, migraines, headaches and even dyslexia from flickering lighting, an expert scientist has warned. Because of the way magnetic ballasts manipulate the 50 Hz sinusoidal waveform of the input voltage, they deliver a light output that flickers at 100 Hz. This frequency is in the danger zone of harmful flicker, which could impair learning. Arnold Wilkins, emeritus professor at the University of Essex and a leading expert in photosensitivity and physiology, says distracting flicker in the UK’s schools needs to be addressed.  ‘Unfortunately 80 per cent of our schools are still lit with lighting that flickers at 100 hertz’, he told a Lux conference on lighting fixture design...

An experimental human centric lighting scheme has been installed at Lindeborgskolan school in Malmo, Sweden, aimed at improving pupil performance. The human centric system replaced a fluorescent lighting scheme, a change which pupils claim has improved their concentration, making them feel more alert throughout the school day. The automatically changing light variation includes a period of intense rather blue light in the morning, to wake the pupils up, and a warmer light during other parts of the day. Teachers are able to change the colour intensity of the lighting to create a calming or a stimulating atmosphere when necessary. The human centric scheme has also eradicated flicker. The new lighting was funded by the Department of Internal Services in the hope of bringing Swedish schools firmly into the twenty first century. You can find out more about the Malmo project by watching the video above. You can also learn more about the debate surrounding human centric li...

Lighting at the Kongsgardmoen School in Kongberg, Norway, uses tunable-white lighting throughout the school day image: The Midnight Sun, Anda Berczky, 2005 Here’s a quick check list for your tunable-white specifications. * First, do you actually need a tunable white system? What colour temperature range do you need for your project? Does your preferred product maintain a consistently high level of colour rendition throughout its range? Do you have a control strategy for the changes in colour temperature  and output? Does the product interface with the control strategy for what you want to achieve? Tunable-white lighting is one of the biggest trends in commercial lighting. LED developers have taken a serious grip on the photo-biological research being produced by university departments and other groups. We know more about the way that humans function than ever before and you might say that it’s fortunate for the LED c...

Education is no longer about teaching; it is about creating a stimulating learning environment. Or to put it another way the quantity of information given out by a teacher is less important than the amount of information taken in by a student. This shift in emphasis has impacted the design of education buildings. Previously they were designed around the needs of the teacher whereas they are increasingly designed around the needs of the student. This requires more flexible spaces suitable for formal teacher led sessions and also for less formal group discussions and breakout sessions. Building design has also developed as the importance of daylight to learning rates and attendance levels has begun to be understood. Therefore modern learning spaces tend to receive significant levels of daylight which in turn leads to significant energy savings in well-designed lighting installations. Best practice The European Standard EN 12464-1:2011 Light and lighting – Lighting of work ...

Parrs for the course:  Parrs Wood HIgh School has demonstrated significant energy savings from Salix funding. Other schools now stand to gain even more under an enhanced programme. Lux reports: The UK government entity that provides free loans for green projects has broadened its support for schools, offering an all-in-one programme that funds not just the equipment and installation, but also everything from an initial energy evaluation through training students and teachers how best to conserve energy. The initiative, from Salix , covers a wide scope of energy-related technologies including LED lighting, computer cooling equipment, hand dryers, boiler replacement and insulation. Salix will spread £2 million across 40 schools in three tranches. It has already selected the first 13 and hopes to select the next two groups after the summer holidays, a Salix spokesperson told  Lux . 'We are looking for a wide variety of schools including building type ...

Lux Magazine,  12 JUNE 2014 Increasing LED light levels boosted pupils’ cortisol levels by the same amount as fluorescent light, and slightly faster, in a study conducted by Fagerhult’s lighting academy. Measuring the hormone levels of students at a university in Sweden, researchers found that the students’ level of cortisol, the hormone that keeps us awake, increased in LED-lit environments with luminance levels of 100cd/m2. The work was based on a previous study from 2009, conducted with fluorescent T5 luminaires, which showed that the cortisol in students’ blood level increased   when they were exposed to boosts of a high luminance in the morning and early afternoon. Henrik Clausen, director of the Fagerhult Lighting Academy, said: ‘People started asking whether LED would have the same effect as T5, so we had to repeat our research. We did that at a school in Sweden where we found the same hormone release results.’ Clausen added, ‘Actually the pupils’ cortiso...