An energy-efficient low voltage DC grid powered smart LED lighting system

Inefficiency of the common lightings like incandescent, fluorescent and halogen lamps presents an ample opportunity to retrofit high efficacy, long life-time and low maintenance LED solid-state lighting, which has significantly reduced in cost on an annual basis. LED lights and many electronic loads used within in-built environment are DC in nature. As such, in this paper, an energy-efficient low voltage DC (LVDC) grid powered LED lighting system with automated energy saving control is simulated, designed and implemented. An energy saving mechanism is introduced into the LED lighting system to tune its illuminance level accordingly to the users' preferences and to further achieve energy conservation. Experimental results show that the proposed LED lighting system with an energy saving mechanism incorporated is able to achieve similar lighting performance as the conventional lighting condition, while at the same time, able to attain about 44.2% energy saving as compared to the original AC fluorescent system. The LED lighting system test-bed has also demonstrated that the users have the flexibility to choose their own lighting preferences for their desks.