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July 3, 2012...The U.S. Department of Energy will put into effect efficiency standards for certain general service fluorescent lamps and certain reflector lamps pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) . The act which was passed in 2009, will put the new standards into effect July 14, 2012.
The standards effectively eliminate the majority of F40T12 and F34T12 ES 4-ft. lamps, the majority of FB40 T12 and FB34T12 ES 2-ft. U-lamps, all 75w F96T12 Slimline 8-ft. lamps, the majority of 60w F96T12 Slimline 8-ft. ES lamps, all 110w F96T12HO 8-ft. lamps, and the majority of 95w F96T12 HO 8-ft. ES lamps.
The DOE study on the matter in 2009 found that alternative light sources would cost up to 13 times as much as the conventional fluorescent lights that they replace. However, this would reportedly be more than offset by the energy and maintenance savings over the expected lifetime of the alternative devices such as LED-based replacements.
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July 3, 2012...Dialight plc announced that its wholly owned subsidiary Dialight Europe Ltd has acquired a five-year lease for a manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia. According to the company, the acquisition supports its growth strategy for Asia, improving speed to market, and reducing inventory requirements.
Initially, the 40,000 square foot facility will supply Dialight’s status indication components for the region’s largest Electronic OEMs. Shortly thereafter, the facility will expand production to include Dialight’s industry leading LED lighting fixtures for industrial and hazardous applications. The lease for the new facility commenced yesterday, 1 July 2012, and Dialight Penang Sdn. Bhd. is expected to start trading on 1 September 2012 when production begins. A local management team with extensive experience running similar electronic manufacturing facilities has been recruited.
Roy Burton, Group Chief Executive, said, “The addition of a manufacturing presence in Penang is in line with Dialight’s strategy for global expansion. It brings us closer to our growing customer base in Asia, while strengthening our value position.”
July 3, 2012...Cooper Lighting of Peachtree City, Georgia USA has expanded its popular Lumark Crosstour™ line to include the industry’s first patent pending floodlighting kit that converts its energy-efficient LED wall pack luminaires to floodlights. According to Cooper, the Crosstour luminaires offer superior optical performance including high lumen output, a low-profile aesthetic design and easy installation while providing solutions for wall, surface, post (bollard), low-level, inverted and now floodlighting applications.
The Lumark Crosstour luminaires offer what the company claims is the industry’s first universal back box that easily adapts to all standard junction boxes (no additional hardware or loose plates needed). The Lumark Crosstour also has an interface door hinge that makes electrical connections easy; and a single point captive door screw.
The new floodlight kit, which allows wall- and ground-mount installation, comes with a choice of either a knuckle or trunnion base, top visors and impact shields.
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June 28, 2012...The central government of Taiwan will be investing NT$2.8 billion (about US$ 93.5 million) in LED street lights, according to a China Post article. Within three years the government reportedly plans to replace some 326,000 mercury street lights with LEDs. The Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) estimates that the investment in will generate NT$4.5 billion production value for the LED lighting industry and save power consumption by 143 million kilowatt-hours per year.
Ou Chia-jui, director general of the Bureau of Energy, said in the article that the investment is to promote energy conservation, carbon abatement and industrial development.
The Bureau of Energy divides the LED streetlight installation into three sub projects. Taiwan Power Company will offer NT$588 million to subsidize Keelung City, Hsinchu City, and Chiayi City for the replacement of 53,000 mercury streetlights with LEDs, with the replacement job slated to be completed by the end of 2014.
In the two other subprojects, a total of 273,000 LED streetlights will replace mercury street lights for a total cost of NT$2.18 (about US$ 72.8 million).
These projects include 23,000 LED streetlights in remote areas and offshore islands, plus 250,000 in five municipalities and 11 local counties and cities. Public bidding for the 273,000 LED streetlight project will be completed by the end of this year, so that the installation can be finished in mid-2013. The batch of 326,000 LED streetlights is reportedly less than 20% of Taiwan's 1.57 million total streetlights.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
June 19, 2012...We tend to talk a lot about the "yet to be envisioned" applications that LED lighting will enable. In a fashion similar to how the internet, optical communications (lots of bandwidth), plus the normal "evolutionary" innovations in cell phones brought us to the mobile connectivity revolution, LEDs will bring several cool revolutions that smart people have thought of, and the rest of us probably don't see yet. But what about non-lighting "revolutions" that LED lighting will enable? I can imagine several areas of interest that we'll all want to keep an eye on, including industrial applications and light-based health, but one of the big ones will be something called "solar power".
Alright, we can grant that the solar industry already exists, and it keeps getting bigger and better, but time and again we hear about the importance of those future "economies of scale" that will make it truly affordable, and presumable prevalent. Despite the failings of a Solyndra, or the collapse of the Spanish PV market, we do know those economies work. One of the more recent examples being the flat panel display industry. It gradually moved from a novelty to an expensive option, to suddenly fully competitive with incumbent technologies, and full of advantages pretty much making it the only sensible kind of display or TV to buy. It took a long time for "suddenly" to come about, but when it did, it really was an impressive wave.
Similarly, solar power, photo-voltaics, PV, off-the-grid technologies have been around for a long time, with somewhat recent promises for massive price decreases that would make it a very cost-effective choice. But there is always that tricky tipping point that has to show up, and it doesn't always show up where we might expect it to. While government subsidies have done some to spur the large scale installations (solar farms) in a few countries, what we're really looking for is to see solar panels on top of commercial and residential properties across the globe. A big reason that may not have happened yet, is simply that most buildings use too much power to make it worthwhile. Even if we look at nice, temperate places like California, where the term "season" is pretty much limited to whether your trip to the mountains will include skiing or mountain biking, a typical commercial property uses a lot of juice, with a lot of the lot being lighting. In less temperate places, and in typical residences, heating and/or air-conditioning become the primary factor, although heating is often less about electric thanks to our friends the fossil fuel family. At our house, the computers and fish tanks are also notable contributors, but there hasn't been much incentive to do much about them, since the lights and AC make up the vast majority of the draw.
So what happens when the energy requirements for the lighting system fall by 80% or so, as can often be achieved with the combination of higher efficiency sources, and more intelligent management? If HVAC isn't the big deal, "suddenly" with a little more energy management in some of the auxiliary systems, the concept of moving off the grid starts to make sense. I've heard some HVAC breakthroughs are in the offing, and it's not unreasonable to expect those could be additionally spurred by the "opportunity" of and off-grid solution really being viable. Simple saving energy may not have been enough commercial incentive, but "enabling" a more dramatic revolution seems to have both an economic and "demand-momentum" effect that really make new things happen. A flat TV is fine, but a TV in every room, because the flatness lets it fit on the wall... now we have some incentive.
So it's coming. As lighting gets smarter (perhaps better is, "more cognitive" so that it can be making decisions based on awareness of the surrounding environment) it will move from just a more efficient source to a vastly more efficient "lighting system". Lighting-driven environments that are not heavily burdened by HVAC requirements, especially new installations, will "suddenly" see the opportunity to approach things from the off-grid perspective, and watch what happens from there. Streetlights where streetlights have not been before (in rapidly growing sunny environs from Africa to Asia, for instance), will be an obvious first adopter of non-utility scale solar power. From there, look both to those sunny, but not hot, climates where summers don't need AC and winters only need electricity for the circulation fan... lots of lighting needed on the long winter day-nights, and now it is hyper efficient thanks to LEDs... residential may even move more quickly than commercial in those zones. And then "suddenly" we'll be springing off the grid in droves as "suddenly" it became cheap enough to matter. Thanks in part to LED lighting.
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