I have always known LED lighting can save energy, I had never realized just how much energy it can save in some applications. WPEC-TV, the CBS affiliate station in West Palm Beach, Florida, has recently converted its news studio to HD, expanding it in the process to accommodate the wider sets needed for 16:9 television. As part of the process, it equipped the studio with an all-LED lighting system, provided by Litepanels (North Hollywood, CA; www.litepanels.com), which has recently been acquired by Vitec Group PLC (Kingston upon Thames, England; www.vitecgroup.com). A total of 64 1×1 5600ºK Litepanels fixtures were used to light the studio. This installation is believed to be the first all-LED studio lighting installation in the world. Litepanels with 3200ºK are available too, but none with adjustable color temperature, which would be a nice feature.

Matt Brennesholtz
Insight Media Analyst

The main goal of lighting a news studio is, of course, to make the talent look good. The HDTV camera is unforgiving and poor lighting can make almost anyone look bad. The normal way to light a studio is with high-powered incandescent lamps. If this was done for the WPEC studio, the power consumption would have been about 52kW but with the LED lighting the total consumption was about 3kW. According to LitePanels, this is typical and LED studio illumination takes about 5% of the power of incandescent lighting.

This reduced power for camera lighting has advantages for mobile and location applications as well. The reduced power consumption enables battery-powered lighting in some cases. For example, the LED light on the HDV camera in the photo, is powered by 4 AA batteries. If AC power is still required on location, it can simplify the job of the electrician, in many cases reducing it to finding an active AC outlet.

Station Director of Engineering Paul Russell commented on the energy and other cost savings that accrue from using Litepanels. ""It hits you in two ways, because you don’t have the power consumption associated with the lights themselves drawing all that
power, and number two, you don’t have the air conditioning costs associated with supporting the kind of heat developed by tungsten lights."

Another advantage of LED lighting is normal studio lighting is notoriously hot for the talent. In the White House briefing room, another recent installation by Litepanels, this will allow the President and his minions to more easily keep their cool under questioning from the press.

The energy savings for other applications are not likely to be as high as they are for a studio. That’s because very few other professional applications still use incandescent lamps at only 15 — 20 lumens/watt. For example, most projectors use ultra-high pressure mercury lamps at 60 lumen/watt and LCD backlights use CCFLs that can be even more efficient than that. Movie projectors with 25 lumen/watt xenon lamps require outputs far beyond what LEDs can achieve, but we can expect to see energy-efficient lasers in them in the coming years. Even modest power savings can enable battery-powered projectors, or extend the life of laptops on battery power. The upcoming Insight Media ultraportable projector report will take a close look at these battery powered projection systems.