Feature Bolis Ibrahim and Anjanaa Santhanam
When Power Becomes Design
Rethinking power infrastructure in the age of LED lighting
In the mid-20th century, electrical codes treated power as a modest and largely static need. Buildings were designed around assumptions that reflected how people lived and worked at the time, and for decades those assumptions held. They did not fail because they were wrong, but because the world evolved.
As lighting systems have grown more sophisticated, power demands have multiplied and codes have evolved to allow flexibility that earlier standards never anticipated. The infrastructure itself had to adapt, not because designers lacked foresight, but because buildings tend to outlive the assumptions embedded within them. Today, power infrastructure is no longer a background condition but an active design variable that shapes performance, adaptability, and long-term design integrity.
Over the past two decades, the industry has advanced rapidly. Human-centric lighting principles such as circadian strategies and increasingly complex control systems have reshaped how designers think about light and its impact on occupants. LED technology has enabled fixtures that are smaller, more efficient, and more precisely controlled than anything that came before. Wireless lighting controls are increasingly popular due to their flexibility and granularity of control, while also decreasing installation costs. Lighting systems are more distributed, more integrated, and more digitally coordinated across spaces.
Beneath these advances, how power reaches lighting has changed far less. In most commercial projects, power distribution remains optimized for the line-voltage AC requirements of earlier luminaire technologies, not the native-DC reality of modern LED systems. As fixtures shrink toward micro-aperture dimensions, a growing mismatch emerges between the sleek trim below and the bulky hardware required to power it above. Low-voltage DC (Class 2) distribution begins to resolve that tension by relocating the AC-to-DC conversion away from the fixture entirely.
LEDs are inherently DC devices, yet conventional electrical systems that rely on fixture-integrated AC-DC conversion require point-of-load conversion at the ceiling, increasing points of failure, heat, and spatial coordination requirements. Emerging DC ecosystems rethink this relationship by consolidating power conversion upstream and delivering power in a form that LEDs naturally use: direct current.
If power is acknowledged as part of the design problem, the question becomes not just where do fixtures go, but where do drivers live. This is where low-voltage DC systems begin to meaningfully alter the design conversation.
Class 2 distribution, typically 60-V-DC or less, offers power-limited safety. Since low-voltage DC power distribution systems are power-limited, the load centers, often referred to as hubs, can be centralized into accessible locations. In many implementations, these DC power hubs can be mounted at eye-level, outside occupied spaces and serviced without ladders, lifts, or ceiling access.
For lighting designers, the key advantage is maintenance. Centralizing the drivers in low-voltage hubs moves routine service out of the ceiling and into accessible locations, which reduces lift time, shortens outages, and limits disruption to occupied spaces. Fault isolation and replacement are faster because technicians work at the hub rather than opening tiles, tracing circuits, or disassembling fixtures. Hot-swappable modules further reduce downtime by allowing single-channel replacements without de-energizing large zones. In practice, these maintenance efficiencies help preserve the lighting layout and scenes as designed, because fewer interventions occur at the fixture and within the finished ceiling.
A key point to note is the difference between a low-voltage power hub and simply placing LED drivers in an electrical enclosure. The latter is sometimes referred to as “drivers in a box,” so if the driver is the problem, this can become a box of problems. The easier it is to maintain a lighting system, the more likely it is to remain as designed years after handover.
Class 4 Fault-Managed Power, introduced in NEC 2023 Article 726, actively limits energy into a fault in real time. This permits long run lengths and high-power levels while maintaining a safety profile comparable to power-limited methods such as Class 2.
Voltages up to 450-V-DC serve larger lighting loads across distances that exceed conventional AC limits. For lighting designers, Class 4 uniquely enables unprecedented reach for outdoor site lighting and streetscapes, high-power density for industrial high bays beyond Class 2 limits, and active fault mitigation that replaces the passive breakers of traditional AC systems.
Treating power as a fundamental design variable moves essential decisions into schematic design, where lighting and electrical coordination can support each other rather than compete with the design intent. When these discussions happen early, they clarify responsibilities and protect the integrity of the luminous environment.
Service access planning: Decide early whether driver modules will be serviced at the fixture or in the centralized hubs. This choice determines how disruptive maintenance will be, how outages are isolated, and whether the ceiling remains undisturbed during the life of the LED.
Code-aligned routing: Establish cabling types, separations, and pathways using the applicable NEC framework, such as Article 725 for Class 2 or Article 726 for Class 4, as summarized in Table 1.
Centralized emergency compliance: Ensure egress lighting can re-energize within the mandatory 10-second window during power loss in full compliance with UL 924 Emergency Lighting standards.
From the perspective of circular design, the choice of voltage level and power-conversion architecture plays a critical role in whether a building’s electrical infrastructure remains a static liability or becomes a recoverable asset. Traditional AC branch circuits often create a “locked-in” infrastructure, where rigid conduit and heavy-gauge copper are frequently demolished and discarded during renovations because they are too difficult to reconfigure. By utilizing power-limited DC (NEC Article 725) and fault-managed power distribution (NEC Article 726), designers can shift away from entrenched, fixed construction toward more modular, recoverable assembly approaches that support design for disassembly (DfD), reduce material intensity, and lower embodied carbon.
This inefficiency is not limited to the rough-in materials; it directly affects the sustainability of the luminaires themselves. As highlighted in the February 2026 IES webinar “The LED Dilemma: Rethinking LED Sustainability,” the first generation of integrated LED luminaires is reaching end-of-life, revealing a systemic failure in repairability. Without changes to the underlying infrastructure, this cycle is likely to repeat. A remote driver-based power architecture enables a more maintainable approach, ensuring the next generation of lighting systems are designed for serviceability.
The intent of this discussion is not to advocate for a single solution or prescribe a universal approach. Lighting projects vary widely in scale, risk tolerance, and regulatory context, and no single model will be appropriate everywhere. The most resilient designs often employ a hybrid topology, utilizing specific power architectures where they deliver the highest value (even including traditional line-voltage power).
What this shift invites, instead, is earlier dialogue. When power infrastructure is acknowledged as a design variable alongside optics and controls, lighting designers gain an opportunity to influence decisions that shape long-term adaptability and system resilience holistically, before those decisions harden into constraints. As lighting continues to evolve, so do the assumptions embedded in how power is delivered.
If infrastructure inevitably shapes lighting outcomes, the real question is not whether power will influence design but whether that influence happens early, intentionally, and in collaboration with those shaping the luminous environment.
THE AUTHORS
Bolis Ibrahim is the president of Cence Power and a leading advocate for safe, energy-efficient DC power distribution.
Anjanaa Santhanam, Member IES, is the technical growth marketing manager at Cence Power, where she focuses on growth strategy for emerging clean tech solutions in low-voltage power systems.