| 摘要 |
<p>Signs are very common in society including billboards and highway signs, as well as signs at places of business. Of course, at night these signs need to be lighted in order to be seen. Conventional lighting for signs and billboards is most commonly done within high intensity discharge or HID lights such as the SignVue or PanelVue lamps sold by Holophane, a part of Acuity Brands, Inc. In fact, there is a very extensive installed base of such sign lighters throughout the United States, providing illumination to a great many signs. While HID lighting was a substantial advance over incandescent lighting, it is no longer an optimum light source for many applications, including sign lighting. Nowadays light emitting diodes (LEDs) have progressed to the point where they can output enough light of a desired color temperature to be useable for many uses such as signed lighting. LEDs are preferred because of their long life and low power consumption in comparison with HID lamps. Owners of signs could achieve substantial savings over time by replacing their HID lamps with LED lamps due to the vastly reduced operating costs and longer lifetimes for LEDs. However, the change-over cost is substantial, so that the payout time often can be too long to warrant the change. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a way to further reduce the cost of changing over HID lamps for signs to provide for high efficiency and low cost LED lighting.</p> |
