A six-month installation of LED street lights began in early April in Scottsdale, Arizona. Scottsdale has been using red, yellow, and green LED traffic signals since 1997, but has decided to replace 25% of the city’s street lights in neighborhoods and major intersections with LED street lights. The city received funding for the project from The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which gives grants for energy-efficient projects.

The LED traffic signals Scottsdale has been using have already saved them a considerable amount of money in energy costs and maintenance. They realized they can save more by installing LED street lights! The LED street lights will last at least 15 years, and will not need to be maintained by crews during those years. The installation of the LED street lights will help the city save by reducing energy consumption by 42%. The new lighting will also eliminate 853 metric tons of greenhouse emissions. The LED street lights will provide a whiter, crisper, more uniform light for drivers and pedestrians. The lighting will also be focused downward, which will decrease light pollution. Previous fixtures gave off an orange-hue and a good portion of the light escaped upward. We need our lighting pointed where we need it!

We are pleased to hear about Scottsdale’s installation of LED lighting! We hope to see more cities make the switch!

OSRAM SYLVANIA, one of the leading lighting manufacturers, recently released the results of its fall 2010 Commercial Lighting Survey. The manufacturers conducted telephone interviews with 352 purchasing and facilities decision-makers and lighting designers and specifiers in the education, healthcare, hospitality, office, and retail sectors to find out the needs of these groups as far as commercial lighting and their thoughts on LEDs. Survey results revealed 81% of the interviewees are searching for energy-efficient lighting! We have more results for you below:

• 73% said they are using or planning to use LED lighting in their commercial space.
• 71% of facilities and lighting professionals have evaluated their commercial lighting this year.
• 53% have evaluated their lighting in the last six months.
• 84% said energy efficiency, operating costs, and maintenance are priorities when deciding on what lighting to use.
• 76% said it is more important to have lighting that will save them money over the lifetime of the lamp even if the initial costs are high.

The top reasons these commercial businesses are already using or are planning to use LEDs is because the lamps are energy efficient, long-lasting, less expensive in the long run, and need less maintenance compared to other lamps. Ninety of the 98 businesses already using LED lighting have had a positive or somewhat positive experience with the lamps. We hope the advertisement of commercial businesses using LED lighting will spark the interest of smaller businesses to make the switch. If they have had a positive experience with LED lighting, so can you!

It is exciting to see that more and more businesses and cities are replacing their old energy-wasting lighting fixtures with LED lamps. What is even more exciting is the support and funding that some projects are receiving from the government and other programs around the United States! In Menomonee Valley near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Potawatomi Bingo Casino is replacing 1,700 fixtures in its parking garage with BetaLED LED fixtures. The project is costing $918,000, but was made more affordable by a $500,000 grant from the United States Department of Energy and a financing package with Uihlein Electric and Godfrey & Kahn. The casino is hoping to save $120,000 annually on maintenance and $101,000 annually on energy, for a combined total of $221,000 savings. They are also looking into installing LED lighting inside of the casino and in slot machines.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Governor Edward Randall awarded an $816,105 grant to begin replacing all city lights with LEDs. During phase one of the retrofit, the city will replace 40,000 high pressure sodium fixtures with LEDs. They expect to save $110,000 on electricity and maintenance. The new lighting will save taxpayers over $2.5 million each year. Funding for this project is coming from the $6 million Duquesne Light Settlement from 2006 when the power rates increased, and from the governor, who gave $20.5 million in grants on September 1 to support clean energy projects indoors and outdoors. The city of Wilbur, Nebraska will be replacing 150 high pressure sodium fixtures with LEDs in November. They are receiving a $122,145 grant from the United States Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant and $30,536 in local matching funds for a combined total of $152,681. The city of Cary, North Carolina is replacing 34 high pressure sodium fixtures with LEDs in order to save $5,000 annually on energy. This project is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

We are happy to see government and other program involvement and support in these LED retrofits. The more funding they can give to cities looking into retrofits, the more motivated the cities will be to look into LED lighting and begin the LED revolution. Not only will it save cities money in the end, but the installation of LEDs will reduce carbon emissions and make this a safer, more sustainable planet.

This is part two of our feature of a segment produced by “16:9 – The Bigger Picture,” in which experts confirm the dangers of compact fluorescent lamps. We covered Part One in a separate Blog Post. Part one features experts confirming that some CFL lamps are giving off unusual amounts of UV rays and interviews with people who have had headaches, rashes, and other symptoms from the lamps.

Part two of the segment is entitled “Dirty Energy.” The segment begins with a woman who is measuring dirty electricity of the lamps, saying the lamps should read less than 50 while most of the lamps on camera were reading in the hundreds. What is dirty electricity, you may ask. Dirty electricity comes from televisions, dimmer switches, stereo equipment, computers, fluorescent and halogen lighting, and other energy-efficient products. These devices use power supplies and transformers to covert the common 60 Hz AC to a lower voltage to save energy. Instead of having a steady energy current to these devices, the transformers send power to the devices in short bursts. This “stop-and-start” of power causes electrical feedback and contaminates homes and buildings, which exposes people to “dirty electricity.”

Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is said to be caused from exposure to the magnetic fields caused by dirty electricity. Symptoms of exposure to the magnetic fields include headache, fatigue, insomnia, dizziness, emotional issues, nausea, rash, swelling, and more. A neurologist in the video said that although there is no scientific evidence the symptoms people are having are from the magnetic fields, he has had similar complaints from many patients about CFLs causing them to feel sick. If you think you have had any of the symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, the experts in the segment advise you turn the lamps off for a few days and see if the problems go away.

The video closes saying that LEDs may be the best for the future! We hope the expert opinions and interviews with people having health issues with these lamps will convince CFL users to toss out their lamps and choose LEDs.

For more on dirty electricity, click here or here.

We recently came across a two-part segment about the dangers of compact fluorescent lamps and interviews with people who have supposedly fallen ill from the lamps. The segment was produced by “16:9 – The Bigger Picture,” a Canadian investigative news television series.

As we have stated in previous blogs, even though CFLs are cheaper and consume less energy than incandescent lamps, they are hazardous to have around the home and office. In the first segment of the episode, 16:9 did some investigative research and interviewed experts who have confirmed that CFLs give off ultra-violet rays, similar to sunlight. Scientists in London revealed that one in five CFLs randomly tested were found to be emitting unusual levels of UV rays. The 16:9 reporters also tried contacting three of the more popular lighting manufacturers (Osram Sylvania, Philips, and General Electric) to ask them about their product’s UV rays. They only received a response from Philips, saying UV concerns were under investigation.

The video also features an interview with a woman diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes her to be sensitive to sunlight. She told reporters she broke out in a rash after sitting near a CFL for 20 minutes.

We hope you come back later during the week to catch our blog featuring part two of the segment about dirty electricity and electromagnetic hypersensitivity, which is said to be caused by CFLs.

In Lutron Electronics’ most recent edition of LEDitorial, Lutron’s featured product was its new Hi-lume A-Series LED Driver, which is the world’s first LED driver to feature smooth, constant dimming for any LED fixture. This is an important innovation in LED lighting because if an LED fixture is dimmable, it usually has to be matched up to a certain driver. According to the website, the Hi-lume dims continuously from 100% to 1% lighting levels and is rated for a 50,000 hour lifetime.

Lutron Electronics is a widely respected company among commercial lighting decision makers, and created the first solid state dimmers. Until the mid-20^th century, dimmers were made to control lighting on stages and in theaters, not for home use. In 1959, Joel Spira created the first solid state dimmer that could be installed in place of a light switch in the home. Spira, partnered with Ruth Spira, incorporated Lutron Electronics in 1961. Today, the company holds 2,700 patents worldwide and is the first company to mass-market dimmers and systems of linked dimmers successfully. It offers lighting controls for fluorescent, halogen incandescent, magnetic low-voltage, electronic low voltage, and most importantly, LED fixtures. The company has also led the way in using window shade technology to control daylight and electric light.

Using dimmers with lighting fixtures has many perks. According to Lutron’s website, dimmers have already cut down electricity use by 9.2 billion kWh and reduced electricity bills by $1 billion each year. Dimmers could make even more of an impact on the environment if they became more widely used. “Lutron estimates that by installing just two dimmers in place of two standard light switches in every home in the US, the potential annual savings could be $1.5 billion in electricity and close to 25 billion pounds of CO2 – the equivalent to taking more than 1 million cars off the road.” Dimmers also help increase the lifetime of the bulbs because they use much less energy when they are dimmed. Longer lifetime = less spent on new lamps! They are also useful for “setting the mood” for a dinner party or reducing light during the daytime.

We are excited to see Lutron Electronics raising the bar with its innovations in universal LED drivers in dimmers and hope to hear about their successes with the Hi-lume A-Series LED Driver in the future.

The New York Times “Green” blog recently posted an entry about Lights of America, a light bulb manufacturer based in California, that is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for printing misleading information on their LED lamp packages. The FTC found that while the lamps claimed to have a similar light output as a 40-watt incandescent bulb, which is about 400 lumens, the LED lamps produced only 74 lumens. The package also claimed the LEDs were expected to last 30,000 hours, but lost 80% of its light output after a mere 1,000 hours. Brian Halliwell, vice president or marking and sales of Lights of America, said they removed the comparison of performance to the incandescent bulb and fixed the lifetime claim. This is the first lawsuit brought against an LED manufacturer for false specifications by the FTC. It makes you wonder how many more companies are printing fictitious labels.

Lucky for consumers, there are a number of tests manufacturers can submit their LED products to for testing. The results and seals of approval from these tests are usually printed right on the package.

• Lighting Facts – This is a program sponsored by the United States Department of Energy that manufacturers submit their products to for unbiased testing. A “Lighting Facts label” is printed on the packages with the results from the tests.
• LM -79 – This is used to evaluate the number of lumens and number of lumens per watt the lamp is producing, intensity of light, color correlated temperature (CCT), and color rendering index (CRI).
• LM-80 – This test measures lumen maintenance. LED lamps don’t usually “burn out” like other light bulbs do at the end of their life. Its light slowly depreciates until it is unusable. The LM-80 doesn’t measures the depreciation rather than the lifetime of the lamp.
• Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) – The UL tests the safety of LED products under UL8750, which is the “Safety Standard for Light Emitting Diode (LED) Equipment for Use in Lighting Products.” UL examines the lamps to see if there is a risk of shock by using the lamp, if it will catch fire, and if any there are any biological hazards from using the product.

Relumination stresses the importance of buying LED products that have been tested and approved by one or more of these programs. We continue to offer our customers products with one or more of these ratings.

Out of all the different types of light bulbs available, not many bulbs come close in performance or efficiency to LEDs except compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). There are thousands of articles on the internet comparing the two lamps and advising consumers to buy one and or the other. You may be thinking, “Why is it even a question as to what lamp I’m going to pick up from the store? I know CFLs cost less than LEDs.” This is true, they do cost less initially, but we have a few reasons to steer consumers away from CFLs. Although the initial cost is less, the CFLs have to be replaced after a few years while LED lamps will need to be replaced every 10 years or so. We also do not support the fact that CFLs contain mercury, a harmful substance necessary for CFLs to produce light. LEDs produce a brighter, whiter light than CFLs without the use of this dangerous substance.

There are approximately five milligrams of mercury contained in each CFL. According to ENERGY STAR, some companies have lowered their mercury content to 1.4 – 2.5 milligrams per lamp. However, it doesn’t make the lamps any less dangerous. Here’s a scary thought: The incandescent lamp is going to be phased out over the next few years in the United States. When people go to shop for new light bulbs, more will choose CFLs. When the CFLs reach the end of their lifespan, most people will toss them in their trashcan instead of recycling them at a certified mercury disposal location. The CFL lamps are glass, and will break either during transport to a landfill or in the garbage truck. Garbage truck drivers and maintenance personnel will be exposed to the mercury, along with the soil and water at the landfill. If one billion CFLs have been disposed of in this year alone, think about how many will be disposed of in upcoming years and what that means for the future of the environment.

Even if we can’t make people stop buying compact fluorescent lamps, we hope they will dispose of them at facilities that specialize in mercury disposal. Paying a little more upfront for LED lamps will not only save you money in the long run, but it will also save the environment.

For those that are using CFL’s, here is an article about recycling them: 5 ways to dispose of old CFLs.

Resorts, hotels, and motels across the world are guilty culprits of wasting most of their electricity on lighting. Think about it. These places keep most, if not all of their lights burning 24 hours per day. That’s a lot of electricity being wasted on lighting hallways, elevators, lobbies, patio areas, and other gathering places in hotels that usually aren’t filled with people every hour of the day. With energy efficient lighting, resorts, hotels, and motels could save companies thousands on electricity while improving the quality of light for its customers.

The Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando, Florida replaced its halogen lamps with LEDs in February. They decided to remodel as part of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Green Lodging program. The program encourages hotels and motels statewide to become “greener” in their business practices by conserving energy, reducing water use and waste, and protecting air quality. The Hyatt replaced 800 halogen lamps in the hallways with 636 Cree LR6 LED lights. The new lamps save 90% percent of energy compared to the old lamps, consume 10.5 watts, and have a 50,000 hour lifetime. They also replaced 35 halogen lamps in the 10,000 square-foot lobby with Cree LRP-38 LED lamps. Hyatt is expecting to save $131,659 during the first year of use, and a return on investment in approximately nine months.

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians recently opened the Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa in Rancho Mirage, California, featuring LED lighting on 14 floors of the building. According to Nancy Conrad, press secretary, the tribe focuses on using “green technologies and building materials wherever possible,” and turned to LED lighting. Richard Milanovich, tribe chairman, frequently walks through the resort to ensure the hotel meets his expectations and the lighting is showing “the level of beauty and elegance he is after.” He was looking for an amber-like color for elevator and hallway areas and decided on Albeo Technologies’ Atmosphere LED cove lighting. They are very pleased with the LEDs because they last 10 times longer than other fixtures they considered installing, and the resort doesn’t have to hire a maintenance crew to replace the bulbs each year.

If a resort, hotel, motel, or any other business for that matter, has to keep its lights burning 24 hours per day, seven days per week, why not choose the most efficient and long-lasting lamps possible? We hope that more 24-hour businesses choose LED lighting and share the same environmental and monetary benefits as the Hyatt and Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa.