Macy’s will double LED installation this year

Macy’s will double LED installation this year
How many lightbulbs does it take for a national retailer to save many kilowatt-hours of electricity? Close to 400,000, apparently.

In 2010, as part of a broad program to reduce energy consumption, retailer Macy’s replaced more than 130,000 60-watt halogen bulbs with LED ones from MSI. This year, the company plans to more than doubled that installation with another 280,000 LED lights planned in more than 200 store locations.

According to a press release describing the installation, one of the most dramatic benefits of the LED bulbs is the fact that they can last for almost a decade. That compares with an average replacement cycle of about six months for a typical 60-watt halogen bulb burning 12 hour per day. Macy’s is using the MSI iPAR series for its replacement project.

Over the past two years, Macy’s has cut its electricity consumption by 10 percent. That’s after a 9 percent reduction in the five years prior to that. Over the next three years, the retailer hopes to cut energy consumption on a kilowatt-hour-per-square-foot basis by another 8 percent to 10 percent over 2009 levels. Obviously, the LED project is just part of that. But it is a big part.
NXP Semiconductors recently announced the GreenChip smart lighting solutions to connect lighting networks to the Internet. According to NXP, the market for LED light bulbs will take off in 2017 and become the mainstream. NXP also plans to authorize its JenNet-IP software which allows 500 nodes to be supported simultaneously.

According to NXP, GreenChip smart lighting solution can decrease the number of components used but still maintain the same quality of light needed. In addition, the solution integrates lighting with wireless IP, energy-efficient lighting and standby power consumption all in one to provide a new way to management light and energy consumption. Currently there are two versions, GreenChip iCFL for compact fluorescent lamps and GreenChip iSSL for LED lightings.

According to NXP, the global production of LED light bulb is around 50-60 million units, but it only accounts for 2% of the total production of light bulbs. The scale of the economy is smaller, hence the cost to produce remains high. NXP expects by 2017, the economy of scale of the LED lighting market will reach 20 billion units, close to 30% of penetration.

NXP added that the current cost for IC driver is around US$2-3 and this cost will increase 2-3 times if smart lighting system is incepted. But to measure cost using the entire lighting module, the inception of the smart lighting system will only increase the cost by US$2-3. Also, by using smartphones, tablet and desktop PCs, or television switches to control every light bulb and adjust brightness can reduce the amount of energy consumption.