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PG&E Approves Sunovia's LED Cobra Head Street Light for Rebate Program
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 11, 2010...Sunovia Energy Technologies of Sarasota, Florida
announced that its EvoLucia-brand 75W LED cobra head has been sanctioned by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for inclusion in PG&E's LED Street Light Rebate Program.
PG&E Street Light Rebate Program will now qualify customers who install EvoLucia LED cobra head fixtures or replace existing fixtures with an EvoLucia LED cobra head fixture for both a lower monthly billing rate and a substantial rebate.
Sunovia says PG&E's Street Light Rebate Program allows customers to significantly accelerate their payback period of the EvoLucia cobra head LED fixture (LED lighting payback periods refer to the time required to recover the costs of the new fixture through the improved energy efficiency and extended lifetimes of the LED fixture.) Sunovia notes that the rebate program combines with the savings from EvoLucia's extended product life times and warranties. Sunovia Energy Technologies News Release
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Valdez, Alaska to Convert All Street Lights to LEDs
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 9, 2010...Valdez, Alaska, a small town of fewer than 5,000 that was made infamous for an Exxon oil spill, is taking steps to change its image into a green and environmentally-friendly place. Cree, Inc. reports that the city has chosen to switch its street lights to LEDs.
The city will reportedly be installing 343 new LED streetlight luminaires produced by BetaLED. The BetaLED luminaires are powered by Cree LEDs.
The BetaLED fixtures, which can be operated at three light levels, will initially be operated at a higher setting for maximum light output during the winter months, when snow removal activities require high light levels.
City officials can later choose to switch the lights to a lower operating level, depending on actual light-level requirements, which can potentially increase energy savings to 60 percent.
“We project we can achieve 45-percent or higher energy savings with the new BetaLED fixtures we are installing, compared with the high-pressure sodium lights we are replacing,” said Mayor Bert Cottle. “As we look ahead and anticipate rising energy costs, investing in LED technology becomes even more attractive. Community feedback on the initial lights has been overwhelmingly positive. Valdez citizens like the quality and color of the new LED lights and they are happy about the projected energy and maintenance cost savings.”
Valdez initially installed two trial street lights outside City Hall in January 2009 and solicited feedback from the community. The city began replacing the first one-third of its streetlights in December 2009 and expects to complete the full conversion by 2011. The new LED lights are expected to last ten times longer than the high-pressure sodium lights currently in use.
Cree News Release
Cooper Lighting Introduces Extensive Offering of LED Outdoor Solutions
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 9, 2010...Cooper Lighting of Peachtree City, Georgia USA, has introduced an extensive variety of LED luminaires for outdoor lighting. Among the new product offering are solutions for streetlighting, area/site, wall mount, parking garage, canopy, and pathway applications.
The initial rollout includes 16 new energy-efficient luminaires featuring Cooper Lighting’s patent pending modular LightBAR technology and AccuLED Optics. The company contends that LightBar technology and AccuLED optics provide unmatched optical performance and superior light quality.
The company says that the new outdoor luminaires can provide up to 75% in energy savings over traditional High Intensity Discharge (H.I.D.) outdoor sources. They are represented across four of Cooper Lighting’s company brands including Invue, McGraw-Edison, Lumark, and Streetworks.
“Cooper Lighting is committed to providing industry-leading lighting solutions with traditional lamps, LED systems, and controls to deliver operating cost savings and environmental benefits for the end-user customers and our channel partners,” said Neil Schrimsher, President, Cooper Lighting. “Cooper continues to invest heavily in each of these areas with strategic acquisitions, internal product development and best-in-class infrastructure. The acquisition of Illumination Management Solutions in 2009 added leading technology and IP to Cooper Lighting’s already vast application, luminaire and channel expertise. We are excited to launch this industry-leading LED outdoor product offering highlighted by superior scalability, performance and reliability.” Cooper Lighting News Release,
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Traxon XB Luminaries Light the West Kowloon Waterfront
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 9, 2010... “The Stage”, designed by actor Daniel Wu and Edward Huang from Drib-design, is an outdoor exhibit which intends to re-contextualize and re-explore the bamboo construction. It has the goal of creating newfound appreciation, understanding, and respect towards the unique traditions of Hong Kong.
Company News Release
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Hong Kong-based, Traxon Technologies announced that it is sposoring the 2009/10 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture. “The Biennale” is a world class cultural event of international scale that is taking place in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District from 4 December 2009 to 27 February 2010. Traxon worked in collaboration with the LEDartist to bring the exhibit “The Stage” into reality as an official lighting support of the Biennale,
LEDtronics Introduces Recessed Ceiling Luminaire
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 9, 2010... The company says its LED luminaires offer up to 300% longer lifespan compared to fluorescent lamps and use up to 50% less energy than standard fluorescent 2'x 2' panels. The CLL2X2-400-TPW-001W offers a bright beam of 1,840 lumens, with an efficient power factor of 1.0. The CLL2X2-800-TPW-001W offers an impressive 2,753 lumens and a power factor of 0.99. Both have a color rendering index of 75. Company News Release,
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LEDtronics, Inc. has introduced LED replacements for recessed T-bar fluorescent ceiling luminaires: CLL2X2-400-TPW-001W. It uses only 24W power and replaces 2ftx2ft standard fluorescent 64W units, while CLL2X2-800-TPW-001W consumes less than 36W and replaces 80W fluorescent fixtures. They operate on a voltage range of 100-277VAC with a correlated color temperature of 5000K.
Acclaim Lighting Part of Upgrade and Revamp of the Hard Rock Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 4, 2010...The Cherokee Indian-operated casino teamed up with one of the premier names in rock-n-roll themed entertainment to form the Hard Rock Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A $155 million upgrade and expansion of the former Cherokee Casino Resort was required to transform the gaming/hotel/nightclub complex into a Hard Rock franchise.
The casino, still owned and operated by Cherokee Nation despite its new name, was looking to get a facelift, when the branding and renovation opportunity with Hard Rock arose. Along with the obvious advantages of aligning itself with the world-famous pop culture icon came the challenge of assimilating $2 million worth of rock music memorabilia and other Hard Rock design parameters into the casino’s Native American roots.
The design required a blending of the old and new. This blending played out most dramatically on a large plastic light sculpture that hangs over 7 banks of slot machines in the casino’s 125,000 sq. ft. gaming area. The massive sculpture designed in a Native American motif with 7 elongated feather-like points, was comprised of a black metal frame containing pieces of different colored plastic. These were lit by fluorescent tubes from inside. However, the sculpture was much too bright and prominent for Hard Rock’s decor requirements, said Hard Rock designer Warwick Stone “the (Cherokee) chief liked it,” so the sculpture had to stay.
Thanks to some help from David Brecheen of Production Essentials LLC (Edmond, Oklahoma) and Acclaim Lighting LEDs, Stone was able to transform the light sculpture into a more subtle color-changing piece that blended in with Hard Rock’s design elements, while preserving the fixture’s Cherokee-inspired heritage.
Acclaim News Release
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Orange County Convention Center’s Green Initiatives Include Albeo LED Lighting
SSLighting Design News Staff
February 4, 2010...As part of the Orange County Convention Center's range of green initiatives, Albeo Technologies Inc. is supplying its C-Series low bay LED lights to the convention center for a number of retrofit projects.
The Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) offers a seven-million-square-foot facility, with 2.1 million square feet of exhibition space, making it the second largest convention center in the U.S. Each year, the OCCC brings more than 250 events to the Central Florida area. As a result, roughly 1.4 million attendees contribute approximately $1.9 billion to the area’s economic impact annually.
The first project utilized Albeo’s 75W C-Series Low Bay to replace aging 400W Metal Halide fixtures. They provide a savings of 325 Watts per fixture. Albeo says that the combined energy and maintenance savings achieved with its solution resulted in a payback of less than one year. The installation is estimated to eliminate over 1,400,000 lbs of carbon over its lifetime.
“Albeo is proud to be part of Orange County Convention Center’s Green initiatives and sustainability projects. In commercial spaces like OCCC lighting is often one of the major electrical loads and with paybacks of less than one year, why install anything other than LED lighting?” said Paul Winker, Director of Business Development at Albeo. “Orange County’s commitment to deploy green technologies and educate the public through its Climate-Change Education Center is exemplary.”
Albeo Technologies News Release
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Commentary & Perspectives...
The Challenge of the 'Tween' LED Lights
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
February 2, 2010...Kermit the Frog's famous one-liner was, "It isn't easy being green..." inspires us to suggest that, "It isn't easy being tween" here in the solid state lighting world. By 'tween' we mean sitting in the nether-world of purpose-built lighting that is conveniently enabled by LED lighting. A big opportunity for the LED lighting world is to put light, or particular kinds of light, in places and form factors where it didn't work (easily or cost-effectively) before. Examples could include the world of color changing, as well as "flat" lights, glowing panels, multi-directional and semi-omnidirectional bulbs and luminaires.
Color changing, and even fixed color RGB sources, are very understandable in what they do and why they work well. If you can generate a 'native' light color, instead of filtering a wider spectrum source, you'd expect to get a lot more efficient solution. Present a source with a full or nearly full spectrum (think halogen or metal-halide) and then throw a blue colored lens in front of it, and I've been told that you're effectively disposing of 90% of the lumens that you started with. Feed a current to a blue LED, and you get 100% blue photons from start to finish, and at efficiencies that are as good or better than the full spectrum source was for generating all its light. It's a no-brainer to understand why Hollywood, theater and entertainment lighting leaped onto LED-based sources from early on. We all know red-green-blue generates what our eyes perceive as "white" since true white is simply a real healthy mix of the full spectrum. The funny thing is that an RGB solution is still a little "peaky", and while our eyes appreciate the rich color it returns, the instruments do not. That shows up as a penalty when you compare RGB-generated white-lumens to incandescent, or in the case of fluorescents, phosphor-generated lumens. This isn't about the "CRI" thing (an important ongoing discussion on its own), but about the "white energy" in my layman's terms.
A good example of this comes to mind in the projector applications. About a year and half ago, we reported on our subjective experience with a Samsung pocket-projector powered by one of Luminus Devices PhlatLight LEDs. In case you're not familiar with it, the Luminus chips are around half a business card sized monsters that contain big red, green and blue LED die that are about a quarter of an inch square. They scale up and down from there, and also have phosphor converted white solutions as well, but the RGB family made it's mark in the DLP television wave as the source that provided much richer colors, and a 50,000 to 100,000 hour life, instead of the optimistic 5000 that your standard metal-halide through a color wheel solution did. What my eyes saw from this 200-ish lumen RGB LED projector was overall brightness perception that came a good way towards matching our 2000 lumen conference projector. When it came to color quality, there was no contest at all. The movie on the LED projector didn't have that washed out color look, and it just 'felt' better. Mark McClear of Cree, in a talk at last summer's DOE meet in Chicago, posed the question, "Why can't the standards acknowledge what we see with our eyes?" Namely that LED light can provide a higher quality that currently isn't reflected in the numbers.
There are other interesting "tweens" that we're having to come to grips with now. Most recently, we've seen several new Edison-based A-lamp designs hit the market. When we think A-lamp, we picture our very familiar 60, 75 or 100w incandescents, with the visible addition of the heat sink there between the base and 'globe' in the designs of most LED challengers. With the virtual completion of the DOE-generated "Integral LED Lamp" Energy Star specification, there is finally a reference point on what a "replacement" for a number of standard incandescent Edison-based bulbs should do. The spec is pretty comprehensive, and places the emphasis in the right places. For PAR/R replacements, generally recognized as the easiest 'replacement bulb' challenge for LEDs to tackle, the standards are about smoothness in the distribution, the width of the beam angle, and the brightness (center beam candle power) on the target. The MR specs follow the same approach, and since you can measure those characteristics for the 'average' incandescent solution, the bar was set to meet the distribution and output, and do it at X number of lumens per watt or better. PAR/R/MR lamps need to beat 40-45 lm/watt (the lower number for the smaller lamps), decorative/candelabra base need to beat 40 lm/watt, and A-lamps need to beat 50 lm/watt for less 10w of LED power, or 55 lm/watt for those greater than 10w. (You can see PDF slide copies of the presentation that Marc Ledbetter of the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory gave at the January 2010 LA SSL Summit here).
Then there's the tweens. They have the same efficacy requirements as the A-lamps, but drop the requirement for a particular distribution which allows things like A-lamp shaped directional lamps, as a very specific 'for instance'. Why would you want one of those? For one big reason, to replace standard incandescent A-lamps, and CFLs in the zillions of pendants and cans that they have found themselves in. Would R's work as well? Seems like they would, but for whatever reason, whether for looks or cost, or because the fixture had an attractive way to leak some of the light out in other directions, omnidirectional lamps are in there, and mostly being asked to send light in one direction. What an ideal fit for LEDs, since they really do like to send light out directionally, and those sockets are being served by 10-40lm/watt omnidirectional solutions right now (I'm guessing the light loss is likely on the order of 25-50%, so consider the range to be 5-30lm/watt out of the fixture). Here's the part that's not easy when being tween... describing it.
Humans seem to have gotten really used to the whole "Watt" thing, and the Energy Star specs acknowledge that by setting guidelines for what you can claim as an equivalent to incandescents of different wattages. And they have clearly set them with the intention that a consumer is not disappointed by the amount of brightness that they observe from the equivalent. Challenge number one comes in the form of potentially more perceived brightness coming from the higher quality LED solutions. There's already anecdotal evidence of people needing to "step down" in what they thought would be an equivalent in order to get the same overall impression of light and color. Challenge number two comes when you're a tween, such as the A-lamp form factor that is tailored to downlights. Or similarly, the one that will result from "a bulb really optimized for use in a table lamp" as Marc Ledbetter put it. (That would be one which cast the majority of its light downward towards the floor or book reader, with correct doses of side lighting to illuminate the shade and up lighting to give a nice ambiance to the room... in other words, "smart design"). But how do you describe the equivalence. If you say, "equivalent to a 75w incandescent in downlight applications" you an expect a knock at the door from the Energy Star police (not yet elevated to czar status) because you don't have a PAR/R or A-omnidirectional type of distribution. "Don't make the comparisons if you're 'other'," says the spec. Oh my. Do you not worry about being Energy Star, or not make the comparison? Tough choice. As an industry, let's keep giving it deep thought for ways to both draw the comparisons, as well as educate the coming masses that it's not about the watts anymore. Lumens and efficacy... lumens and efficacy... lumens and efficacy. Once we get that, hopefully we'll be ready to re-flash their programming to cover the whole "perceived brightness" thing. (Sigh).
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