Lumens per Watt Electrical Grid Energy Impact:

The majority of solid-state lighting products are powered by power supplies with Power Factors
of between .50 and .90. That means that an SSL product advertised to consume 20 Watts, may
actually be placing a demand of anywhere from 22 to 40 VA on the grid, even if this is not
realized as a power cost at the local level. If the THD of a product is high, a similar effect will
exist. Since the real goal of energy efficient lighting is to reduce demand on the power grid, it is
critical to consider both PF and THD in selection of large lighting loads, and products making up
the largest part of a lighting system. While we use energy saving ROI to convince customers to
install efficient products, the real imperative is to cut our national grid energy demand as a
whole, a far greater issue than saving building owners a few dollars on their power bill.

For this reason, simplistic lm/W metrics do not fully describe the impact the lighting system will
have on the goals of reducing power system demand. For example, if an existing lighting system
compiled presents a load of 12kW @ 18lm/W, at a PF of 100 (halogen) at 120V, or 100A, is
replaced by a new system with a load of 4.8kW (40A) at 45lm/W (savings of 60% at the power
level) but has a total lighting system PF of .45 due to a lack of consideration of THD, the
resulting gains at the local level in power grid load is 51A, for a savings of just 49%. This
reduces the reduction of impact on the grid, so effectively reduces the realized gain in efficiency
by 22%, so cuts the realized efficacy from 45lm/W to 35lm/VA. Further, the reduction in energy
saved as measured in watts is also reduced by roughly 6% over system PF of 85%, so even at
the watts load level, efficacy is reduced from 45lm/W to 42 lm/W at the local level.

These are certainly overly simplistic examples intended to illustrate the point that overall system
PF and THD are important factors in understanding what energy savings is actually realized,
both at the local and grid level, from applying SSL products. Calculating the finite impact of all
these effects as it relates to grid loading of a lighting system is almost impossible to do with
complete accuracy, so the best approach is to be cognizant of the issues and select the highest
performing products appropriate to the application and assume the downstream impact is positive
as a result.

The Problem with Lighting and SSL Loads Harmonic Distortion, THD and dimming
effects:

While motor loads can generally be PF corrected using capacitors, including applying PF
correction strategies to building power systems upstream of individual loads, power factor issues
caused by lighting loads using electronic switching cycle power supplies can create high
harmonic distortion power factor losses not as easily resolved. For this reason and others, Total
Harmonic Distortion (THD) may be as important, or more important than the resulting PF. The
relationship between PF and THD are roughly tied together as such: THD = 1-PF. So, the
demand for low THD and low PF are actually addressing the same issue. For example, in the
previous example, a .50PF product will have a THD of roughly THD of 75%, while a .90PF
product will have an estimated THD of 19%. This translates to load on the system in a similar
manner that PF does.

While the impact is the same on the power generation end, due to the wide range of individual
product characteristics involved, correction of THD losses can only be effectively accomplished
at the individual load. THD also has other implications on other systems within the building, so
there are other reasons to control this specification as well. However, as it is with PF, the impact
of THD on the building and its power system is proportional to the loads involved.
Further, THD is a trickier issue than PF, as there are so many variables in frequency, distortion
shape, etc.. that interaction between products can create compound issues on a circuit and
building system as a whole, if not fully resolved. For this reason, THD must be corrected at each
individual load, to avoid expanding its impact beyond.

What's a Lumen?
Lumens measure how much light you are getting from a bulb. More lumens means it's a brighter
light; fewer lumens means it's a dimmer light.

Lumens are to light what

Pounds are to bananas

Gallons are to milk

Lumens let you buy the amount of light you want. So when buying your new bulbs, think
lumens, not watts.