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FeATUre – Bever INNOvATIONs 16 From caves to canopies – LED Remko Delfgaauw talking with Nick Needs at the recent Petroforum event in Singapore Lighting applications for the retail petroleum industry have been revolutionised over the last few years, with the arrival of Led technology. In the process several new specialist suppliers have been pushed to the forefront of their marketplace, almost overnight. One such company is Bever Innovations from the Netherlands, working out of a back garden shed in 1996, but now dealing day to day with some of the largest oil companies in the business. Bever claims to be the only organisation working 100 percent in the petrol world, which they say is reflected in the unique features of their products, such as the Luci series Led under canopy Illumination and I-Catcher Led displays which are now used on petrol stations in over 40 countries. In 2009, the european Union recognised Bever as an official ‘Green Light endorser’ for their efforts in energy efficient lighting. At the recent PetroForum in Singapore, CEO Remko Delfgaauw, spoke about the need for companies working in the energy market like his, to share the responsibility for producing more environmentally friendly products. As if he does not have enough to do at the moment with the rapid growth of Bever, he is currently discussing the idea of dealers having leasing agreements with energy suppliers, where they pay nothing for the technology, but what they save each month in energy, is what they would pay each month for the lease. The idea certainly has a great deal of merit and for any company wishing to discuss the matter further, I’m sure Remko will be happy to talk at length about this and the many other new concepts he has. For someone working in the energy market, Remko has his own self-generating energy source, which relentlessly drives the company LATesT News, eveNTs, jOBs ONLINe – www.PeTrOLPLAzA.COM forward. I caught up with him for an hour in Singapore, to find out what makes him tick and to talk about the subject of his presentation at the event ‘Understanding the LED Revolution’. This certainly seemed to be a good place to start as to be honest I had no idea! Remko explained. “LED is in fact the fourth generation of lighting technology. After the caveman had pioneered fire, incandescent lighting
lighting followed in 1870, invented by Thomas Edison. Gas discharge arrived in 1920 i.e. fluorescent tubes and neon lighting and another 40 years later in 1960, General Electric discovered Light Emitting Diode technology, LED. An electrical reaction occurring when a negative electron particle enters a positive one. This releases a photon that in turn gives off instantaneous light. To be exact, the strict definition of LED is a diode/semi-conductor converting electrical current into light or sometimes more simply put, a digital light”. I asked Remko why he opted for this ‘almost introductory’ approach. He countered “My presentation attempted to answer a few very simple questions which I think many customers still have. LED is taking over the world at a very rapid rate and its fairly difficult for people to get a grasp on what exactly the LED market is all about. So for my talk I first worked out five basic questions. What’s LED? How much light does an LED give? Where can the biggest savings be found? What makes or breaks an LED luminaire? What will the future bring?” For the uneducated amongst us I had to ask Remko what a luminaire was and he pointed out that it is a big flood light, like those used on forecourt canopies or for perimeter lighting. The simplistic angle to his presentation surely paid off when several delegates I spoke to said that these questions were exactly the type they were becoming too embarrassed to ask, proving his point totally. I asked Remko to talk freely about the benefits of LED from his perspective and to illustrate the varying factors applicable to LED in different parts of the world. Having travelled most of it during the last few years, he digressed “The main quality of this lighting type is its durability. A diode or a semi-conductor is very small and light so when it gets shaken around, nothing happens. Because of this it is virtually shock proof. Semi-conductors also have a very long life span. Being turned on and off very quickly is also a feature of LED, which does not harm it in any way, whereas a normal lamp would break much faster in these circumstances. In the life of a retail petroleum site, say in Asia where the power supply is unreliable, especially in the rainy season, surges of power are not conducive to a An interview with Remko Delfgaauw, CEO Bever Innovations by Nick Needs continuous lighting solution. When I was in India recently I did not see one petrol station with all its lights in operation at any time. I believe that LED technology is a great fit for this part of the world, just because it is so robust”. In Europe and the western world generally, where power grids are far more reliable, it is the cost of electricity that makes LED so attractive, particularly when prices are predicted to rise fast in the coming years. Remko told me that in Australia and South Africa, the dealers that he speaks to are coping with increased electricity costs of over 30 percent per year. I asked him how much of a saving a petrol station with LED lighting would make bearing in mind the initial investment required. He commented “The older metal halide lamps typically the 400 watt units used widely on petrol stations today, use 75 percent more electricity than LED lamps. On a site which has 18 – 20 such units, the energy savings would be extremely impressive. There is also the life span of a bulb to consider with the normal metalhalide variety lasting typically only 20 000 hours. The LED equivalent will last up to 5 times longer.” As mentioned earlier in this article, Bever operates only in the petrol station market. I asked Remko why this was so important to him. He says “It’s still the cornerstone of our company. You can’t compare us in size with the big lighting organisations which turn over billions of euros each year, but because we work only in the retail petroleum sector we know exactly what our customers want. For example our new remote control device like the one you might use with your television set, can manage and program our lamps individually just by pointing and clicking. The remote can even change the wattage of each lamp if there is a light imbalance of any sort to make sure that each part of the forecourt is illuminated evenly. This device has been developed purely with the petrol station in mind. The focus we have in the retail petroleum business allows us to constantly look for specialised solutions, not standard ones”. After studying all the Bever product listings, the one product feature which caught my eye was the facility with the Luci series for it to respond to traffic arriving on the forecourt. A sensor latest news, events, jobs online – www.PetrolPlaza.com FeATUre – Bever INNOvATIONs automatically ‘sees’ customers at the pumps and then switches lights from dimmed to full power, making direct energy and cost savings. Simple but extremely effective. Luci series intelligent lighting A remote control to easily change light settings from ground level I suggested to Remko that the colour of light produced by LED lamps has been an issue in the marketplace, being maybe too white and not yellow enough as supposedly wanted by some people. Is there any truth in this I asked? He said “These days, contrary to what people might think, we can produce LED light in any colour you want, whether it is for the shop, where a warmer yellow light might work better, or for outside on the forecourt, where a white bright LED lamp promotes a clean modern environment”. Looking in the Bever corporate brochure, a photograph of a huge Shell site in Luxembourg showed clearly the light differences between the inside and the outside of a petrol station. Remko told me that this was an exceptional project for them on one of the largest petrol sites in Europe, selling over 300 million litres of tax advantaged fuel per annum. Over 180 17
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