By Eric Gibson, Director – Outdoor Products, Acuity Brands Lighting
Electrical contractors and lighting designers use lighting in outdoor spaces to achieve lighting quality and efficiency. However, there are other benefits to using high-quality outdoor lighting products as they can help reduce lighting pollution in outdoor environments. There will also be a renewed emphasis on occupant experiences in outdoor spaces, as many visitors, occupants and residents seek opportunities to safely reconnect in exterior areas as an opportunity for social distancing and gathering. This will mean that designing with outdoor lighting products will focus on solutions that are functional, offer visual comfort and illuminate spaces for safe use and, in doing so, create lighting solutions that also maximize energy efficiency and reduce light pollution.
The benefits of LED technology are greater efficacy, longer product life, improved optical control, light quality, and greater dimming capabilities. Newly designed outdoor LED lighting products typically provide energy reductions of 70% over the products replaced, making them attractive solutions both financially and environmentally. Not only are LEDs significantly more efficient, but their smaller size makes them more controllable, allowing the use of advanced optical designs to provide superior illumination where it is needed while minimizing light trespass outside the target area.
Traditional high intensity discharge (HID) luminaires resulted in over-lighting of areas directly underneath the luminaire and had significant stray light behind the pole. With the optical control of LEDs, this stray light can be minimized while providing uniform lighting that not only requires less light output to achieve the desired results but also improves the visual acuity of the occupants. Since LEDs are solid-state devices, they can be easily dimmed using advanced controls, enabling even more energy savings during periods of non-occupancy and minimizing light pollution in outdoor environments.
What is light pollution and why should it matter to electrical contractors?
“Light pollution” is a broad term with many facets. Well-designed LED lighting greatly reduces light pollution in that sky glow can be significantly reduced by designing luminaires that use less light to achieve the desired illumination, and by incorporating advanced controls to dim the luminaires during the late-night hours when there is low occupancy. LEDs can also greatly reduce light trespass, another form of light pollution. The result is that LED lighting solutions are more effective at targeting light to the areas where it is needed, instead of casting stray light in other areas. Acuity Brands products are designed so that less light is reflected upwards, reducing sky glow and minimizing stray light that can come from light trespass or misdirected uplighting.
Most of Acuity Brands area lighting luminaires do not have any uplight as indicated in their B-U-G ratings. These standard and specialty luminaires available through Acuity Brands are optimized to reduce light trespass and to address backlight with patented optical systems that sharply cut off light behind the luminaires, allowing customers to help meet stringent light trespass requirements, such as LEED and California Title 24.
Research has been conducted about the potential health effects of blue light from electronic devices and outdoor lighting during nighttime periods and many cities and states are following up with their own regulations and enforcements to ensure too much blue lighting doesn’t impact their local environments. The good news is that outdoor LED lighting technology has evolved, and highly efficient LEDs are now available with warmer CCTs that have significantly less blue light, providing customers with a choice. Acuity Brands offers these lower CCT (3000K) light sources on all our best-selling outdoor product families and has amber-colored LED luminaires that can be used in many specialty applications. These solutions also meet the recommendations of the International Dark Skies Alliance.
Lithonia Lighting® outdoor products reduce light pollution through a series of performance features:
- offering superior optical control, requiring fewer initial lumens while achieving superior visual acuity;
- using that same optical control to minimize light going outside the target area (light trespass);
- using advance controls such as our wireless nLight® AIR platform to allow the luminaires to be trimmed to meet the specific needs of the site while remaining dimmed during periods of non-occupancy; and
- providing low CCT (3000K) options for blue light reduction if required.
As in all cases, for lighting engineers and contractors, picking the right tool for the job is critical to success. Lighting engineers and electrical contractors should specify outdoor products that offer superior uniformity with minimal trespass and low power density, which can be achieved by selecting luminaires with exceptional photometric control. Energy savings can be further increased by over 50% by selecting a luminaire with wireless embedded controls, as these cost-effective controls allow the luminaires to be trimmed to meet the specific needs of the site and dimmed during the extended periods of non-occupancy which is typical of outdoor lighting.
For the past 75 years, Lithonia Lighting, an Acuity Brands company has been providing the Best Value in Lighting™ by offering our customers products known for their quality, reliability, and solid performance. To learn more about Lithonia Lighting outdoor lighting solutions, visit LithoniaLighting.com.
Eric Gibson is the Director for Commercial Outdoor Products at Acuity Brands Lighting and has been in the lighting industry for 32 years and first started at Lithonia Lighting in 2000.
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