Sep 15 2009
Enfis Group Plc. (LSE:ENF), an innovator of LED lighting systems and technologies, today announced a development that further narrows the gap between LEDs and traditional light sources. The company has introduced its next generation of fully-controllable white LED lighting products for myriad high-quality general illumination applications. Enfis will be making these systems available immediately through its North American distributors and specialist partners.
Last year, Enfis achieved a major breakthrough with an LED-based white light technology that produces high quality white light which can be controlled over a range of color temperatures from warm to cool shades of light. This proprietary technology couples advances in white LEDs with Enfis’ patented Sentinel® SMART control technology, achieving a high-quality white light solution for the general illumination market.
Recognized by design professionals and industry experts alike as a revolutionary development - both technically and aesthetically - Sentinel uses microprocessor-controlled multiple LEDs to generate billions of colors and a variety of dynamic lighting effects. In addition to its Sentinel patents, Enfis holds several intellectual property filings covering the use of multiple LEDs to generate fully controllable white light. Enfis refers to these technologies as "smart-efficient-lighting."
Over the last few years, researchers and analysts have referred to LEDs as the "long awaited game-changer" of the lighting industry, noting their ruggedness, extremely long source life, energy efficiency, low heat generation and lack of destructive UV emissions as the keys to completely replacing today’s conventional incandescent, fluorescent and halogen light sources. While it is true that LEDs offer benefits that surpass many of the challenges of traditional light sources, until recently, LEDs have been limited in their ability to produce stable white light. Over the last year, however, vast improvements in intensity, cost and stability have been seen, enabling LEDs to meet the requirements of general illumination sources.
"LED manufacturers have made significant progress in solving the technical issues surrounding the use of white LEDs for general illumination applications. As LED technology has improved, Enfis has been able to make great strides in our own smart and efficient white light developments," said Dan Polito, president of Enfis Lighting North America. "We are thrilled to be leading this industry initiative and first to market with smart and efficient white lighting systems and especially excited to have these products readily available to our customers here in North America."
Enfis’ smart and efficient white light technology leverages the advanced control capabilities of Sentinel to give users an entirely new level of white light flexibility. It is unique in that it can produce a high color rendering index (CRI), resulting in high-quality light across the entire spectrum of white. For example, users would have the ability to select any shade (color temperature) of white light they desire, whether it is warmer tones for more comfortable hospitality or home lighting, or cooler tones that make the most of certain retail displays. What's more, smart and efficient white light can be programmed for a variety of effects, including gradually changing shades of white over time (ideal for day into evening lighting) or turning on and off based on motion sensing (a great energy saver for corporate or public space applications). Polito went on to say that, “Currently, the binning process does little to address the supply chain risk and produces tremendous waste, the cost of which must be absorbed by the market. Now lighting fixture manufacturers no longer need to be experts in LED binning and temperature specifications. Instead they can now focus on desired lighting designs, bringing products to market more quickly and efficiently.”
Enfis’ smart and efficient lighting solutions simplify white lighting designs by giving users the ability to choose white light temperature points on a gamut displayed in the Sentinel 2.2 software. Enfis’ LED array specifications and temperature characteristics have been integrated into the Sentinel v2.2 software content library, which supports Enfis’ LED controllers.