Our proposition is that providing an affordable, white-tunable, automated (motion/daylight sensing), and wirelessly programmable LED lighting system is of paramount value vs. lighting systems that are deficient in any of these aspects. Below, I attempt to define how our products add value to the end user beyond energy savings.
It is important to acknowledge that every individual is different and that every task that individuals undertake is different. We are all humans that share many more similarities than differences, but when it comes to the experience of visual comfort we may differ dramatically. “More than 50 percent of the cortex, the surface of the brain, is devoted to processing visual information” 1. Our sensory organs that perceive the environment around us through light energy can be young and healthy, old and diminished, more sensitive to color and energy or less sensitive, may vary by physical health and stress, may vary day by day or hour by hour. Suffice it to say that our visual system is extremely complex and varied and has evolved for as long as we have lived on this planet.
It is logical to believe that our health and productive capacity must be affected by the quality of our lighting systems… as applied to the individual. Imagine your ability to achieve any task in complete darkness vs. visual utopia. I expect there is a performance curve that would be expressed from zero visual quality to perfect visual quality where the adjustments to color and brightness will taper off to diminishing effect.
As a thought experiment, consider that you must perform a visual task in complete darkness where you are completely ineffective. Gradually, light brightness is increased at a regular rate. Your ability to execute the task will be extremely poor in very low brightness until you reach a threshold where you can carry out the task with less errors. There will be a dramatic increase from this first threshold to the point at which errors become infrequent at which another threshold is crossed. From the second threshold added brightness yields diminishing gains. I would see it something like the fictional graph below. Also consider this being applied to you at different stages of your life, different times of day, the day after a poor sleep, high stress, low stress, after coffee consumption, empty stomach, full stomach, etc… Further consider that your work environment has varied visual task difficulty. I would expect the graph to shift based on all these factors.
Now, let’s consider another factor in our value proposition – light color. Consider that the brightness experiment above is done at 2700K. I don’t think it would be unusual to think that adjusting from 2700K through to 6500K would yield a shift in the curve. Since our visual organs have evolved in the natural sun lit environment, it is a fact that daylight waxes and wanes from sunrise (reddish) to noon (blueish) back to sunset (reddish). Biological clocks and all the complex hormones, proteins, enzymes, etc… respond to color as well as brightness. Think about reading a book late at night under warm incandescent-like 2700K vs. cold blue 6500K. A change in color alone will solicit different responses from the visual cortex. Further, color of light can yield different emotional responses. Warm dim light makes us feel relaxed and warm and cold bright light makes us feel alert and cool. As well, depending on our varied human factors, a color may yield visual comfort for one and discomfort for another.
Imagine how this may affect different applications. The schoolteacher, trying to get kids to relax at reading time, or be alert and focused during exams. The furniture retailer trying to show products under light colors that match the customer’s home lighting or the grocer offering special shopping times for light sensitive customers. The convalescing patient in a windowless room. The coder who looks at her monitor all day. The night shift worker. There are endless examples, each with different health or productivity outcomes that can be significantly impacted by the lighting systems chosen.
If we can agree that the thought experiments above make sense, then we should think about how this may apply economically, since every purchasing decision is made with respect to economic value. The energy savings return on investment case presents a clearer picture as watts can be easily measured, but what of brightness and color adjustments tailored to the task or individual. Perhaps we can use GDP per person employed as a starting point. This means, how much does the average employee add to Gross Domestic Product (product and service) per year. In 2020, this value was slightly higher than $94,000.00 in Canada.
Let’s think about that. Take the total value of products and services created each year and divide by total number of employed people. $94,000.00 is an average. Depending on the application, this number may go up or down. Consider Lawyers vs. Receptionists. To be very conservative, let’s take 50% and use $47,000.00 as our value. Assume that we are offering a tailored white-tunable and adjustable brightness lighting system vs. a mono-color static output. Taken to an absurd extreme, let’s propose that we only increase productivity by 0.1%. This would yield an annual return of $47,000.00 x 0.001 = $47.00 per year. This would be above and beyond power and maintenance savings. This also does not consider that a tailored lighting system may also increase employee attraction, retention, and reduce absenteeism. In December 2021, The Financial Post reported that “35% of larger companies with 100+ employees say it (turnover) costs them > $50,000.00 per year,” and has most likely gotten worse post Covid. It is my assertion that energy savings alone paints a very incomplete picture of the economic impacts of lighting choice in the workplace.
On January 25, 2023, theDesignLights Consortium® published “Evaluating the Non-Energy Benefits of Advanced Networked Lighting Controls”. Following is a summary of their findings:
For decision makers that participated in utility energy efficiency programs: Including the net
value of NEBs in cost-benefit analyses produced a return on investment (ROI) 2.3 times
higher than when only considering energy savings.
For building operations staff: Net energy savings from NEBs were valued at approximately
11% of a full-time maintenance staff member’s time to provide similar impacts.
For building occupants: A net increase in self-reported productivity of almost 8% was
estimated for each employee in workplaces where NLCs were operating.
Network lighting controls (NLCs) are out of reach for most types of properties due to complexity and cost. Expertise is held by few in the industry and the process to achieve successful installations requires significant coordination between the manufacturer, sales rep, electrical consultant, installation contractor, and the owner’s maintenance people left in charge of the system. So many hands intimately involved in deploying NLCs requires a lot of capital and makes it accessible to only the most sophisticated and well funded clients. Furthermore, any changes needed post installation often requires more dollars spent on experts to re-program.
Today, we offer a solution that makes NLCs accessible through the simple, affordable, and effective, BLU Ecosystem™ wireless lighting controls platform based around the free SMART BLU™ CLOUD app.
- David Williams, the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics. https://www.rochester.edu/pr/Review/V74N4/0402_brainscience.html
https://financialpost.com/globe-newswire/employee-turnover-an-expensive-problem-for-canadian-companies
