What Is a Dedicated LED, Anyway?
Back in 2010, Patrick Harders and I, Damien Sanchez, decided to start a lighting manufacturing company and eventually found ourselves inventing a term to describe what we created. This is the story of the Dedicated LED Luminaire.
It all began with the first iteration of the company. We initially wanted to do a co-op where like-minded guys could go in together, buy direct from overseas and "save money." What a disaster and a bad idea. It turned out you can't just get a container and get a great product that's turnkey; we actually needed someone doing quality control. In the end, we ended up with poor-quality products and became the warranty guys on that initial product, because nobody wanted a co-op.
After that initial failure, we knew there was still a need for field-serviceable luminaires designed for lighting professionals experiencing the same problems we experienced in the field. We love a challenge, so we set out to start an actual business to deliver solutions, and in 2011 Patrick Harders, Josh Palmer and I founded Sterling Lighting. The initial thought was "how hard can it be?" Amusingly, it was a lot harder than we ever could have anticipated.
Learning the hard way with LED bulbs
We had to learn by trial and error. At the time, LEDs were new to landscape lighting, and at first we thought lamp changeouts as a service would be a thing of the past because LEDs promised tens of thousands of hours of life.
It took us about 14 months to figure out that we were not going to make better MR16s, because they were actually designed for open-air interior fixtures. In my opinion, about 95% of LED bulbs installed in landscape lights today are not designed for an enclosed fixture. The lamps had undersized drivers built to fit in a tiny space, and the heat compounded on itself because the driver sat right next to the LED, sealed into a lamp that was sealed into a solid brass fixture. Heat is the enemy of an LED and a driver, and we'd put it in a fixture with an air gap that acted as an insulator to keep the heat in. To top it off, the fixtures weren't completely sealed, so water and moisture could enter from the bottom and sides.
All of this led to the slow death of one diode at a time. Our MR16s at the time used four diodes with several hundred degrees Kelvin of variation between them. We had installations that didn't have lights out, per se, but the color temperature shifted either way of 3000K, changing the look of the design while lumen output dropped about 25% per diode lost. The lamps would also fail suddenly from manufacturing inconsistency coupled with heat. Throughout 2011 we tried many fixes: attachments to connect the lamp better to the fixture and pull heat away, and better seals to keep water and moisture out. All of them were inadequate, and you could not expect an LED MR16 to last any longer than a halogen.
Our original goal was to match the lumen output, color temperature and reach of a halogen PAR36 lamp, which we thought was the ideal to aspire to. Beyond the LED problems, the optics were all wrong too. MR stands for multifaceted reflector, which isn't ideal, in our opinion, for organizing and directing light. At that point, we decided lamps were too limited to be a reliable option for an outdoor lighting business. Our goal was always to come up with solutions that help outdoor lighting designers and installers be more efficient and more profitable.
Why not integrated?
We started toying with integrated luminaires in 2008, and I recall putting in jobs with some awesome-looking American-made integrated luminaires, but they never lasted. We had garbage bags of luminaires that couldn't be field repaired, and we never got very far getting them covered under warranty, so all you could do was recycle the brass. To fix one in the field you had to go through an elaborate, time-consuming process: removing small screws, running a thin wire down a small hole, reconnecting a tiny connector and then splicing a watertight connection for the driver. Needless to say, the integrated luminaires we used weren't field serviceable, and it was hard to get parts from the manufacturer anyway. (Pat shares more in Why I Dislike Integrated Luminaires.)
The dedicated LED is born
That brought Patrick to an idea in 2012: design a driver that stood separate from the LED but was still housed inside the luminaire, with the LED making good contact with the brass body to pull heat away through conduction. The LED and optic would fit perfectly together but be easy to change, and the driver would be sized to support the LED. We also moved away from LED arrays to a single-source LED for high CRI and better color temperature consistency, all while adding adjustable lumen output that matches across luminaires.
That R&D effort resulted in the SL01 and SL07 in 2013. Because there was no name for this type of luminaire, Sterling Lighting coined the term Dedicated LED: field serviceable, but optimized for long-lasting results. We still have systems in service with luminaires from 2013.
Quick tip: You'll know a Sterling Lighting driver from the fakes because every Sterling driver has a batch number with our logo.
Since 2013 we've kept improving our drivers and LEDs, making incremental improvements each year. We carry some integrated LED luminaires and many Dedicated LED luminaires designed to last to their L70 rating, with high color rendering (the SL01 is rated CRI 98+) and easy field service. Ultimately, the goal of a dedicated LED is to give our customers what they need to complete a service call quickly, or even better, not have to make the service call at all.
I hope you enjoyed the story of how the dedicated LED came into being. For more, read our comparison of single-source vs. multi-source LEDs.
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About the author: Damien Sanchez is co-founder and COO of Sterling Lighting and an experienced lighting designer, trained under Patrick Harders, LC, since 2006. He's also an entrepreneur who owns a service-based business.
