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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
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