The opportunities to replace conventional lighting with LED lighting for general illumination are growing, fueled in part by the continual advancements in LEDs and the global need for energy-efficient lighting alternatives. Performance is an important metric for assessing the viability of replacement by LED sources. These devices that once merely lit calculators and cell phone displays can now illuminate an airport terminal or a 100 foot building façade. They increasingly match or exceed the efficacy of conventional lighting sources, particularly with the advent of today's power LEDs. In fact, the efficacy of LED sources, measured in lumens per watt, is eclipsing that of incandescent and halogen sources.

As a result, Acu Light systems are displacing conventional lighting methods in a number of applications where LEDs were previously thought impractical. And this exciting trend continues. Performance is improving rapidly in the intensely competitive LED supplier field where current data from these manufacturers shows LED performance ahead of forecasted levels, and the cross over point
 

for matching the efficacy of fluorescent sources outpacing the predictions made just a few years ago. Yet performance is only one metric.

Matching the cost of conventional lighting is another critical element for replacement to occur. The true measure of cost goes beyond just the initial cost of the lighting system and incorporates lifetime and operational costs as well. For example, an incandescent source may only have an initial cost of fifty cents, yet its energy consumption will cost more than ten times that over its relatively short life, when a new source must be purchased and the cycle starts again. The metric that accounts for all of these factors is called the Cost of Light. This is the measure that sophisticated customers, such as those managing large buildings, use to compare the true cost of illumination. Intelligent LED lighting systems are intersecting the Cost of Light of incandescent and halogen sources and are rapidly approaching the economic cross over point for fluorescent sources.