A decision support system for techno-economic evaluation of indoor lighting systems with LED luminaires

The necessity for energy saving in lighting leads to installation of new energy efficient light sources, especially LED luminaires. Although solid state lighting is considered the dominant lighting technology for the future there exist no concrete methods to evaluate LED luminaires and decide the optimal one for each lighting application. Multicriteria decision methods are utilized in various decision problems so as to evaluate alternatives through complex and conflicting criteria. This paper introduces a decision support system for a complete techno-economic evaluation of LED luminaires through multicriteria analysis. Seven criteria are proposed so as to assess the technical and economic characteristics of LED luminaires and ensure their compliance with European Norms regarding office lighting. Laboratory measurements and lighting calculations in 8 indoor types of LED luminaires are performed so as to define their technical characteristics and evaluate their performance concerning the lighting of an office. Finally, the PROMETHEE II multicriteria method is applied, which ranks the 8 types of luminaires and determines the optimal one. The proposed decision support system can be applied to any type of luminaire and can be used by professionals who want to evaluate different luminaire suppliers and determine the optimal luminaire tender for the lighting of any indoor space.