 |
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||
Fun Electronics, Inc. to Manufacture LED-based Residential Lighting Under Emerson Brand |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
Skating Rink Gets a New Sustainable Light for the Holidays
SSLighting Design News Staff
December 31, 2009...As part of the holiday display in New York City the recently launched Jewel- Light™ Luminaire is lighting up The Pond at Bryant Park and, at the same time, doing its part towards "greening" the Big Apple.
Renowned lighting designer Leni Schwendinger created the Jewel-Light Luminaire using energy saving LED technology, from Lighting Science Group Corporation.
Schwendinger says that the Jewel-Light Luminaire offers an artistic signature to enhance architecture and infrastructure while reducing costs. Exceptionally versatile and unique, the luminaire is robust enough to be used in rugged environments such as bridge lighting, post-top sidewalk lighting and other architectural exterior applications. The Jewel-Light product line is available in cool white diamond, vivid ruby red, royal amethyst purple, deep sapphire blue and lush emerald green. The Jewel-Light contains 24 LEDs that use only 28 watts of energy and has a rated life of 50,000 hours. The Jewel-Light is available from Lighting Science Group. Lighting Science Group News Release,
SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Paradisio Belgium Retrofits their TL and Halogen with LEDs
SSLighting Design News Staff
December 31, 2009...Paradisio, a retailer of seasonal products in Hofstade AALST Belgium, retrofitted 254 T8 Fluor-tl with LED-TL from PAS-NGL. Special color temperature was needed for some parts of the shop, which is the first of four shops that are converting to LEDs. The LED lighting uses of well placed movement detectors saves more than 90% on energy in some parts of their storage. Additionally, all of Paradisio's 50-watt halogen MR16 spots were also replaced with LED MR16 from CRS. No visual difference is noticed compared with older halogen spots. PAS-NGL expects that Paradisio's return on investment is less than 22 months, and in 5 years the LED lights are expected to save more than 263,000 KWH and reduce CO? emissions by an estimated 121 tons. PAS-NGL News Release
enLux LED Track Lighting Units Announced
SSLighting Design News Staff
December 31, 2009...enLux Lighting’s R30 Series LED PAR lamp is now available with a gimbal ring, mini-swivel or gooseneck track lighting fixture. Either of the new options can be used indoors or outdoors to illuminate areas requiring long-term lighting without the excessive heat and high energy cost of other lighting products. enLux says that the R30 LED track lights are fast and easy to install, and they do not require an additional transformer unit or power supply.
According to the company, the R30 PAR LED light can save more than 85 percent in energy use compared to incandescent lighting, and it exceeds industry performance standards. It uses just 14 watts of power, and has a 50,000 hour life.
“We introduced the new concept of integrating the enLux R30 with the off-the-shelf track fixture to provide the lighting designer with a premium product that frees-up creativity,” stated DJ Chou, director of engineering for enLux Lighting. “The units are sleek and stylish, plus the R30 LED lamp is available to provide a 40, 80 or 160 degree beam spread, and color temperatures in a warm 2700°K, neutral 3500°K or a cool 4500°K, and with either a black or white fin.”
The R30 LED PAR lamp is available with custom correlated color temperature (CCT) and fin colors. enLux says its R30 Series lamp is compatible with any dimmer on the market today.
enLux points out that back in 2004, its R30 PAR lamp LED drop-in replacement for incandescent and halogen flood lights in 2004 and was Popular Science® magazine’s ‘Best Of What’s New’ Grand Award winner in the Home Tech Category for that year. The R30 Series is UL listed, CE certified and Energy Star compliant.
Furthermore enLux says that the lamp is 100 percent recyclable and does not contain any toxic gases or hazardous materials, meeting compliance with California Title 22 Hazardous Waste Requirements, unlike incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs.
The enLux R30 Series LED PAR lamp is available from authorized enLux distributors.
enLux News Release
Cree Study Shows LED Lighting is Best
SSLighting Design News Staff
December 28, 2009...Cree released its own report about the life-cycle energy usage of LED lighting. Cree says its study shows that its LED lighting products are now more efficient than traditional lighting in high volume applications including recessed downlighting and display spotlighting. According to Cree's white paper, Cree's LED light fixtures provide clear advantages in terms of energy costs, and environmental impact compared to more conventional light sources such as incandescent, halogen and compact fluorescent bulbs. The Cree report does not cover LED retrofit solutions. It covers the LED-based fixtures designed specifically for LEDs.
The Cree “Energy-Efficient Lifecycle White Paper” concludes that LEDs are the most efficient light source available today for the examined applications, and they are also a greener solution when compared to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), as LEDs contain no toxic mercury.
SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Lunera Lighting Partners with the Non-Profit, One Million Lights to help Illuminate Developing-World Countries
SSLighting Design News Staff
December 17, 2009...Lunera Lighting, a maker of digital LED lighting based in Redwood City, California USA, is partnering with One Million Lights. Lunera engineers are working closely with OML to design and distribute LED lights for its philanthropic program to distribute low cost electric lighting to the estimated 1.6 billion people or about 25% of the world's population who live without it. They must often get by with inadequate illumination that is provided by an unhealthy, polluting, and costly kerosene lamp.
The World Health Organization states that 300 lux of lighting allows reading without eyestrain, however, a kerosen lamps typically produce only about 10 lux. This is what many in third-world countries have to deal each night. One Million Lights, a part of the non-profit World of Color, has set out to improve the lives of both children and adults in poor rural areas by distributing solar-powered LED lights to schools and homes around the globe.
As its name implies, One Million Lights hopes to distributing 1,000,000 lights to underdeveloped areas around the world total improve the opportunity for children in rural communities to study and learn. Lunera News Release,
SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Our news features are reported
by the SSL Design staff writers.
For submissions or content suggestions, you can contact us using
editor -at - solidstatelightingdesign.com
For more information and to reserve promotion space contact
Info7 -at - solidstatelightingdesign.com
or call +1 (512) 257-9888
|
Commentary & Perspectives...
Happy LED Lighting New Year! (Updated 1/5)
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
December 31, 2009...(Also see the critical Energy Star standards call to action at the bottom of this editorial)... 2009 has been an interesting year, starting out in the midst of a serious recession, the solid state lighting industry kept things on a pretty even keel, with the main effect being a "push out" for general adoption progress. It serves as a decent business planning lesson, to remember that you need to plan not only for your and the industry's growth, but also for the circumstances around you. The arena that might best punctuate this "circumstances beyond our control" happenstance is the credit crunch that has rolled through the economy like a bowling ball hitting the pins. Only a few are struck by the direct impact, the rest tumble as a result of chaos the direct hit caused. Credit was free and easy for the last decade or more, driven both by government policy and the seemingly eternal "up is the only direction that exists" mentality that the dot-com and real-estate bubbles appear to have created. How short our memories are... what goes up does come down, back to, and often below, the inherent value of the asset in question. The thing is, we humans are really good at forgetting the bad parts and remembering the good. No problem with that, as long as the lesson is learned. I don't remember the second to last time I burned myself on something hot, and the last time is only in my memory because it was this morning... oh yeah, that part of the waffle iron is hot. I do remember that scorching hot things generally hurt, and that long-learned lesson took hold quickly as the hand went from the iron, to the water, and then to the ice in very short order. It doesn't hurt now, and apparently the damage was forestalled, but a lesson without attachment to the original disaster that taught me the lesson. So it goes with markets, bubbles, recessions and depressions. We remember the glory days and expect that the current run is going to be better than that one, then zap... that "something unexpected" happens.
Times are tough... what a great time to save on operating expenses! LED lighting should have been a shoe-in during a downturn, as the quality companies really can deliver on energy savings and maintenance payback with the technology class of 2009. But... no new buildings are happening. Hmmm. How about retrofits (which cost a bit more up-front, since you have to tear out as well as install the new stuff)? Well sure, if you want to invest some of the stored away cash that you might need to keep the doors open if business stays down for a while. How about borrowing the amounts for the needed capital outlay, since they operating savings should more than cover the cost of borrowing the funds? Great, if someone will make the loan on what many would consider "unproven" technology. Education can take them past the "unproven" part, but why should "the lender" take time to get educated when there is little enough credit availability around that "lenders" can pick and choose from lots of opportunities that they already understand.
All of this conspired to simply slow things down a bit. Opportunities slid a bit further out than predicted, with expected revenues delayed. With 500-1000 luminaire manufacturers out there claiming to offer solid state lighting products, there are a lot of mouths to feed, and the slowdown is taking its toll. Perhaps even more so when one considers that a reasonable number of them are already involved in the lighting market, and were already getting hammered by the commercial building slowdown. They are hanging on, but plenty of them will be biting the dust in 2010. Count on it. Round 1 of the industry shakeout it here. From one aspect, that is totally natural with any growing market; lots of entries and good ideas, but too many to all survive. Something triggers consolidation, and in this case, it was the great credit-driven recession of 2008-2009 (likely to be reinforced by the great government deficit spending credit and interest rate crisis of 2010... 2011...).
So where does that take the LED-based lighting industry for 2010? To the edge of the precipice, or towards the land of milk and honey? As a manufacturer, it depends on what you're bringing to the table, whether you've capitalized on building brand and revenues, and have the financial backing or resources to keep it together until you do. If you're short on any of those, fix it quick. 2010 will be unforgiving to the unprepared or unqualified. If you have those checklist items on your side, then get ready, because the decision makers are going to begin really seeing through the shenanigans of mediocre product and if you've got quality on your side, and can back it up with the test results, things will probably go really well for you. This will be a year of decent industry growth overall, but my suspicion is that it will be created not by everyone going up, but by many going down and a few going up quite spectacularly. We're assembling the cadre of who we feel will be among those winners with the 2010 SSL Summit series, kicking off with the LA/Long Beach SSL Summit Jan 20-21. It's going to generally be a select group (a stack of key decision makers are already confirmed), and while everyone is welcome to attend, there are plenty of companies, even ones with good quality, that figure they know it all and don't need the dialog with the decision makers that we're setting up (yes, I'm looking at you over there...). There will also be those that know they need to take the quality up a notch to catch up with their marketing and branding success so far, who will probably have the most to gain by being there (you know who you are too).
So this really will be a Happy New Year as we look towards 2010. Industry growth adds up to more opportunity for everyone, and while people and IP may not be ending 2010 with the same companies that they started the year with, it really will be good. Let's keep making a difference, and we'll see the winners in Long Beach.
Critical call to action: The US EPA and DOE sent out two documents in early December regarding the realignment of roles for the two agencies with regard to Energy Star. Both have a ridiculously short feedback/comment period of one month, which ends January 8th. One is an overall Energy Star enhancement plan, which looks like its main objective is to further increase the scope of the existing government program, as well as to kick off a new building-level program designed to replace the great work the Green Building Council has done with their LEED certifications, with a new bureaucracy that will add confusion and delay success (of course, that's just my opinion, but what can you expect when the overall plan includes new categories of specs to include battery chargers and game consoles?). The second document is an Energy Star Qualified Lighting - Integration Proposal, which looks as though it will push for more "technology neutrality" and will change a definition to allow the cruddy EPA-created RLF 4.2 "LED Light Engine" specification to continue to live, but limit it to "decorative light fixtures" (so seriously, what's the point of a lumen-per-watt metric of the "light engine" inside a decorative fixture which has no requirements to let those lumens out? Simply to allow manufacturers to fool the consumer by claiming an energy efficiency that doesn't exist. Why not change the EPA automobile gas mileage rating to read "this car's engine only uses 2 gallons per hour... and top speed is 2 miles per hour". Idiot approach... oops, did I write that down?). The technology neutrality is likely just as stupid when given thought. If it is real, it will either relatively quickly set the standard so high that no other technology besides LEDs will meet it, or you protect the interests of the incumbent luminaire/fixture constituency and keep the standard low enough to allow them to play. How about the integrated Energy Star standards also including a 0 mercury content and 90% recyclable content requirements? They are the Environmental Protection Agency aren't they... not just the "took energy savings initiatives away from the Department of Energy, or did I miss something?... (Plan for the gutless approach that appeases friends outside the SSL industry... at least they are claiming they are going to be transparently gutless this time around). Overall, it looks like it sets in place a great framework for the death of a useful Energy Star program for everyone.
Download the plans, and I am confident a quick scan will reveal at least a few items your company will want to comment on, either as an LED lighting stakeholder or a taxpayer. If 500 companies involved with SSL all send in just one specific, useful comment, we will have sent the message that they either will need to listen to the solid state lighting industry, or they will automatically have set themselves against the very industry that can deliver on real lighting efficiency. Again, we'll see the winners in Long Beach.
Current PageTwo members may access extended content by logging in here
or Sign up for a SSL Design PageTwo membership now
Copyright 2007 by Veriphos Communications. LLC
Content under license