Paris, France – Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG) today announced that it will light the world’s first office entirely with LED solutions. The office, owned by Generali and located at 100 Champs-Elysees Avenue, Paris, marks a milestone in lighting history. For the first time, functional office lighting, powered entirely by LEDs, goes hand in hand with scene and atmosphere effects that are also LED based.

The project came together with architect Anthony Bechu who had been commissioned by Generali to design ‘an innovative window in the world of LEDs’. LED lighting solutions improve people’s well-being and give designers more flexibility in the layout of open spaces and the ceiling design, in order to be freed of the lighting orientation too often given by fluorescents tubular lamps. Because of the extreme long lifetime of LEDs, the maintenance costs are kept to a minimum.

Throughout the office spaces, the functional office lighting is realized through 422 luminaires integrated in a false ceiling with 600 x 600 grids. Each luminaire is powered by 16 or 12 high power LEDs of 2.6 W depending on their location in the office space. This provides an average of 300 lux everywhere and 500 lux on the working planes. Philips has given special care to the development of optics. In addition, recessed SpotLed 3 K2 luminaires each with 3 LUXEON high-power LEDs are applied in the corridors. The solution complies with lighting norms and standards on energy consumption, illumination levels and visual comfort.

For the LED ambiance creator solutions, Generali chose a scenario of color changing light effects based on LEDs. The glass facade of the top two floors are lit, communicating the image of the building towards the outside world like a beacon in the night.

“We have been leading the world by unlocking the potential of LED for scene setting, creating atmospheres and lighting up landmark projects with dynamic colorful LED solutions”, says Thierry Braunecker-Becker, General Manager, Philips Lighting France. “We recently announced a broad range of applications for general lighting, and today is the day that the LED enters into general lighting for offices. This marks a moment of truth and is proof that LEDs are making inroads into the heart of the lighting industry. This is exciting and it will accelerate the growth of solid state lighting.”

We expect the world market for LED Luminaires to grow rapidly by more than 30% per year driven by the entrance of LEDs in general lighting, from about EUR 700 mln last year to EUR 1.5 bn in 2010.

In the past few years, Philips has acquired a number of companies to strengthen its position in solid state lighting. It acquired Lumileds, then TIR and Color Kinetics as well as Partners and Lighting and Genlyte. Together with these acquisitions, Philips is covering the entire solid state lighting value chain and is at the forefront of this new technology, setting the pace in the industry.