Incredible as it may seem, Americans, on average, spend 90% of their time indoors, according to US EPA research. No doubt, we could use more time in the fresh air and sunlight. But, for better or worse, that’s a huge chunk of time living and working under artificial lights, and it argues for developing and promoting lighting products that help people feel and perform their best.
In January, the DesignLights Consortium (DLC) launched a new draft policy aimed at meeting that goal by providing transparency into the quality of light produced by products included on our Qualified Products List (QPL), a tool used by scores of utility companies across the US and Canada in designing incentive programs for commercial and industrial lighting customers.
Since the inception of our QPL in 2009, the DLC has raised the efficiency bar for LEDs three times, aiming to shrink the portion of electricity devoted to lighting in the commercial and industrial sector, and thereby lowering overall energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The newly-unveiled policy, dubbed Solid-State Lighting Technical Requirements V5.0, still prioritizes greater efficiency, but also focuses on “quality of light”– defined as aspects of light that impact people’s productivity, performance, comfort, mood, safety, health, wellbeing and more. Once the policy is final next year, determining a product’s eligibility for the QPL will hinge increasingly on non-energy factors such as color and spectral quality, glare, flicker, and the ease with which lights can be dimmed and otherwise controlled to complement various settings and applications.
The policy will provide greater transparency into the performance of various lighting products in an effort to produce better informed choices about efficient lighting. This change in emphasis will give utilities and other lighting decision-makers the tools they need to identify high performing products for applications where quality of light is important.
It also reflects rapid technology advances and market shifts experienced since LEDs burst onto the general lighting scene nearly a decade ago. Since then, mounting competition has fueled a drive for manufacturers to lower production costs, which has tended put inadequate attention on quality aspects such as glare control, optical distribution, color quality, and reduced flicker. By favoring efficient lighting products that also provide an array of non-energy benefits, from improving workplace performance and safety to reducing eye strain and headaches and boosting mood, the DLC is now moving to alter that course.
Everyone has experienced bad lighting at some time or another.You know it when you see it – glaring lights that feel like an assault on your senses, or lights that are dim and force you to strain to do your job. There has been much recent attention, in particular, on lighting that conflicts with the normal human circadian rhythm – a process synchronized with the natural day-night cycle and largely cued by light. The WELL Building Institute cites research linking disruption of the circadian rhythm with ailments ranging from diabetes and depression to obesity and sleep disorders, and notes that paying better attention to the quality of light “can contribute to improvement of the overall mood and increase the productivity of employees.”
Additional research backs this up. A study on employee health in the workplace, conducted by the University of Twente, VU Amsterdam and CBRE, showed that switching to circadian lighting (tuned to warm yellow in the morning and bright blue in the afternoon, and dimmed to soft yellow toward evening), combined with controlling glare, resulted in a wealth of benefits: 71% of employees felt more energized, 78% felt happier and healthier, and there were 12% and 10% increases, respectively, in accuracy and productivity.
The new specification will also point the LED market in a more controls-friendly direction. Creating a foundation for “smart” buildings in which individual fixtures or zones are easily adjusted for changing conditions and space usage, networked lighting controls can facilitate huge savings in building energy use. According to a recent DLC report, networked lighting controls can cut energy use by an average of 47% compared with savings from LEDs alone and provide additional savings from peak load reductions. Since LEDs installed now may run for a decade or more, ignoring controls at the time of installation could strand potential energy and cost savings for years to come.
As the DLC takes its first steps with this exciting quality-centric path, we are eager for stakeholder input. Comments on the first draft of V5.0 are due by March 12.
As research improves our understanding of how light affects human health, wellness, and productivity, the time has come to support development and installation of products whose virtues go beyond saving energy. The DLC’s goal with this new policy is to balance a push for ever-increasing energy efficiency with assurance that illumination of offices, hospitals, schools and other C&I spaces supports human comfort and well-being.
By Christina Halfpenny, Executive Director of the DesignLights Consortium.
