With the latest ship designs demanding increasingly sophisticated lighting arrangements, reducing on-board energy consumption can be challenging for today’s operators. Paolo de Vecchi, lighting engineer at Ensto Italia, discusses the efficacy of LED as an effective solution to aesthetic and environmental concerns.
Can you introduce yourself as a company?
Paolo de Vecchi: Ensto is an international technology company of Finnish origin. As a marine business, our key strength is the reputation we have built as a reliable supplier of marine luminaires, customised products and service, flexible deliveries and our smooth cooperation with local partners.
We are committed to lasting sustainable development; our goal is to be the world’s leading green energy efficiency and distribution firm. Ensto’s products, manufactured in seven different countries, are eco-friendly, energy efficient and leave the smallest possible carbon footprint.
Could you give us some insight into the trends in lighting use on cruise vessels?
The increasing gross tonnage and average number of berths on cruise ships are impacting the natural, social and cultural environment. As a result, lowering emissions is the greatest challenge currently facing shipowners.
Effective lighting sources, such as solid-state lighting (SSL), significantly reduce a vessel’s overall resource consumption. The average power consumption of an LED fixture is currently 12.5W, around 20% less than a CFL bulb and less than a third of an incandescent one.
Moreover, the average efficacy of an LED fixture is 70lm/W. The total lifetime light output of an LED fixture is also 20.3Mlm/hr, while it is just 6.63Mlm/hr for CFL and only 1.35Mlm/hr for incandescent bulbs.
Is the type of bulb used the only important factor in light fixture energy efficiency?
Light management is also an important task. That’s why Ensto recently started a development programme to integrate its offer of lighting fixtures and luminaires with a complete set of controllers and a light-management system able to deliver energy cost savings, reduced cable complexity and lighting performance optimisation that is linked to state-of-the-art building automation technology.
What sort of light fixtures do you offer?
Ensto offers a huge variety of products; from technical lighting fixtures to indoor and outdoor luminaires for residential lighting and decorative applications. We offer a full set, capable of covering most on-board lighting applications. Our products have been used on the Royal Princess (delivered June 2013), Regal Princess (under construction) and Costa Diadema (under construction).
Moreover, Ensto has successfully married world-renowned Italian style and creativity with more north European accuracy. Our customers can rely on the product quality and commitment to reliability of a typical corporate firm combined with the flexibility and problem-solving approach of a medium-sized Italian company.
What separates your products from the competition?
Our products and services are designed to ensure our customers have the right lighting fixture for them. In order to achieve that goal, we offer our standard products as customised goods. If it exists on our customer’s paper, we can provide it on time and within budget.
Do you see customised lighting fixtures becoming more popular on cruise ships?
Cruise ship designers and architects are trying to create astonishing lighting scenarios to meet the demands of ship passengers. In order to fulfil that desire, each new cruise project is demanding increasingly customised, tailor-made lighting solutions.
How do you see LED use evolving in the cruise sector over the years to come?
Ensto Group and, in particular, the Italian daughter company Ensto Italia, has become the go-to lighting company for new cruise ship designs.
Our EN X16BG ‘all-in-one LED engine’, for example, shares the same COB LED fitting for different uses; indoor or outdoor, recessed or surface mounted. This is achieved by using accessories and an interchangeable secondary optic.
We are also developing a new concept – a 20W compact LED projector with a sophisticated colour-mixing device for RGBW or dynamic-white engines, suitable to fulfil the most stringent requirements of homogeneity and colour rendering for paintings, sculptures and fine arts in general.