Environmental impact and economic aspect investigation of incremental, decremented, and no constant lumen output strategies for LED luminaires in indoor applications

Abstract

Climate change is a hot topic because of its detrimental effects and is a consequence of CO2 emissions. The waste as another harmful factor is of interest. Besides the abovementioned environmental concerns, an interesting aspect of choosing production for the owners is decreasing the expenses related to procurement, installation, and operation. Regarding reducing ecological effects, LEDs as high-efficacy light sources were introduced to the market. LED usage itself has considerations. Two essentials are minimizing excess consumed energy to compensate for luminous flux depreciation and the optimum number of LED luminaires in a lighting system. The energy usage and the number of LED luminaires are directly related to CO2 emission, and the number of LED luminaires is proportional to the amount of waste to the environment. The excess energy usage for compensation of lumen maintenance depreciation is controlled by the constant lumen outputs (CLOs). CLOs are the solution for maintaining a constant luminous flux for the whole lifetime of the LEDs. This research introduces and discusses strategies for using and not using CLOs to find the best strategy for reducing CO2 emission, waste, owner costs for LEDs in indoor lighting systems.