A new generation of outdoor lighting promises to provide greater illumination at lower voltages and energy usage: LED landscape lighting is gradually taking over from more traditional bulb technologies because of its flexibility and the savings it can provide. We’ll take a look at the technology behind this approach before looking at specific Kichler landscape lighting kits with LEDs.
The main LED Landscape Lighting Problem.
The problem in the past has been that led landscape lighting has just not been able to put out a comparable amount of light to normal incandescent bulbs and that what little light it produced was distinctly blue in color. The output color of the bulb is known as its color temperature, the blue end of the scale being known as cool colors and the yellow end as warm colors.
Engineers have been working for some years in the led landscape lighting space to bring the output back into a range that is more pleasing to the eye and are starting to see results that make an LED based landscape lighting solution more feasible.
LED Landscape Lighting output.
The problem with light output from LED lighting is another matter. Light output is measured in something called Lumens and is very hard to compare directly between different lighting types, mainly because LED manufacturers have been quite cautious of publishing directly comparable figures until recently.
We are finally starting to see comparable LED lumen output to that given out by standard bulbs and so this is a problem that will ease over time. Some manufacturers are getting round the problem in the meantime by producing multi-element bulbs where the combined output of several LED elements add up to give the right output light. Where newer units are involved, the power consumption for a similar lumen output to an incandescent bulb is significantly reduced in comparison. So for example, a 60W bulb equivalent can use as little as 10W in the new LED format.
The Kichler landscape lighting line-up includes several LED lighting offerings. The Kichler Design Pro LED range covers pretty much every lighting situation in a series of 12V low-voltage lighting packages. In the range are fittings for accent lighting, deck and patio lighting and also fittings for patch and spread lighting use. These have a slightly wider angle of spread for the lighting situation requirements. Also in this range is the Design Pro Water Accent kit for lighting your water features. Kichler warn that these are not for use in pools or spas.
When buying these LED landscape lighting kits, you need to be aware that they also require a separate LED driver module. The Kichler Design Pro range supports a wide range of voltages from 9V-15V which makes it easier to get a working voltage at each of the lights on your cable without having to provide separate wiring to each one. In normal usage, each bulb along a cable will “see” less and less voltage as a result of all those before it on the cable. This is known as voltage-drop and it can make it very hard to get an operating light at the end of a long run. The Kichler LED landscape lighting solution allows you to set a slightly higher voltage at the driver and still have enough left at the far end to make the 9V needed to fire the last bulb.
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