Commercial Lighting Tampa Florida

Incandescent Lightbulb Phase-Out Has People Hoarding High Watts

 

Only 4 In 10 Americans Are Aware Of The Incandescent Lightbulb Phase-Out

 
Incandescent Lightbulb Phase-Out

 

 

 

From Mother Nature Network's Matt Hickman:

Consumer lighting giant Osram Sylvania has just released the 2013 edition of its Socket Survey — considered “an industry benchmark” and “the only nationwide measure of public attitudes about energy-efficient lighting and awareness of lighting legislation — and, as usual, the results are fraught with excitement, optimism, fear, conflict, and all-around bewilderment.


In addition to the shocking discovery that Millennials don’t really think about light bulbs that much, the survey found that only four in 10 respondents are aware that on Jan. 1, 40W and 60W incandescent bulbs, the most popular light bulbs in America, will join energy-wasting compatriots, 75W and 100W incandescent bulbs, in A-shape heaven when their domestic manufacture and import completely ceases.


And what about those who are aware that 40W and 60W bulbs will slowly (or not-so-slowly) fade away from store shelves as part of the final phase-out stage of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007? What are a decent chunk of them planning on doing in the beginning of the New Year?


Heading out to IKEA to stock up on cheap CFLs (not for much longer!)? Investing in high-quality and affordable LED models from the likes of Philips, Cree, or Sylvania? Dedicating an entire weekend afternoon to a house-wide light bulb switch-out?


Nah, an estimated 30 percent of these informed consumers will be raiding the aisles of your local big box and hardware stores, sweaty and wild-eyed, grabbing all of the 40W and 60W bulbs that they can get carry. From there, they’ll take their loot home and unload it discreetly in the garage before transporting it to an oversized hunting case in the basement where a sizable cache of incandescent bulbs, even a few remaining 100-watters phased-out in 2012, are kept under lock and key.


A majority (46 percent) who don’t plan on stockpiling incandescents as a result of the final phase-out, “plan” to switch, not surprisingly, to CFLs. Twenty-four percent of those polled expressed an affinity toward more efficient but also more expensive LEDs; 13 percent are going the halogen route.


While less than half of consumers polled realize that the final phase-out will kick-in on the first of the year, 64 percent are “generally aware” that there an incandescent phase-out has been occuring for the past three years, which is something … better vaguely conscious than completely unconscious, I suppose. This is also a big leap from last year when 52 percent of Americans were “generally aware” of the situation. In 2008, that number was 21 percent.


Similar to last year, brightness (92 percent), life span (87 percent), energy consumption (82 percent), and price (82 percent) were among the chief concerns of those switching out incandescents for new bulbs. Respondents also strongly favored light bulbs that are manufactured domestically.


And this is interesting: for the small number (30 percent) of respondents who claimed to own LEDs, only 11 percent of them own stand-alone LED bulbs meant to replace standard incandescents — a majority of these LEDS (55 percent) are in Christmas light form. 


Click here to read Osram Sylvania's 2013 Socket Survey in its entirety.


And in other incandescent phase-out news, Home Depot, the world's largest seller of light bulbs, has created an intriguing map that combines 2010 U.S. Census data and a year of combined LED/CFL sales information to spotlight the 10 largest markets for energy-efficient light bulb consumption (per capita) in the country: Atlanta, Boston, Seattle, and Pittsburgh all top the list as do Washington D.C. and two major metro areas in Florida.

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Electromagnetic Table

Inspired by the work of Nikola Tesla, designer Florian Dussopt’s EM table produces a low-current electromagnetic field, allowing fluorescent bulbs placed on or near its surface to wirelessly illuminate.

 

http://vimeo.com/81710670

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Commercial-Lighting-Tampa/118269964866031?ref=hl#

 

 

REF: The Awesomer

Lighting Up the Lawn With 16 Million Colors

 

 

It starts with an innocent string of incandescent holiday lights around a porch window, maybe a plastic caroler or two on the front lawn.

 

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The Amazing Snowman, from Global Special Effects, blows fake snow from his cupped hands.

 

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Symphony of Lights comes in seven colors.

 

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The Lumenplay control panel works on tablets.

 

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Environmental lights.com has an LED light “curtain.”

 

 

Then it escalates: Twinkling lights are in the shrubs, Santa’s on the roof, an inflatable Frosty the Snowman is on the lawn, and next to him is one of those little white wire reindeer with a head that turns ever so slowly.

Nice work, holiday decorator. But do you have lights that can be controlled by tracing your finger over the face of a smartphone? A reindeer face with a mouth that moves with the music you’ve provided over an FM radio connection? Do you have 16 million colors available at the flick of a switch?

New holiday lighting systems and smartphone apps can make that inflatable Frosty look downright austere — from an exotic lighting system called Lumenplay to a shivering snowman from the outfit that created that classic of kitsch, the singing mounted fish, Big Mouth Billy Bass.

The secret of the 16 million colors is single light bulbs that hold three LEDs — red, blue and green. Those three can be dialed up and down in various combinations by a smartphone app, creating an unimaginable number of possibilities.

Controlled via any Bluetooth smart device, the app has a range of up to 150 feet, so you can control the colors and action from across the yard or from your couch, simply by moving your finger along a color wheel on the screen of your Apple or Android phone or tablet. And they can be synced to music, set to twinkle or made to dance in nearly any pattern you’d like.

Since the color range is so varied, the same lights can be used for Halloween, Easter, Fourth of July, just about anything. They can even be left up year round — the holy grail of exhausted, height-fearing homeowners.

Lumenplay won’t be widely available for shoppers this year. The company that designed it, Rigado L.L.C. of Salem, Ore., is shipping 10-foot and 20-foot light strands only to supporters who backed the company’s successful crowdfunding campaign onCrowd Supply.

But it hopes that by spring, those lights will be marketed as patio lights or advertised as perfect for weddings and other warm-weather occasions, said Amanda Besemer, marketing officer for the company.

Lumenplay lights do not come cheap. A 10-foot length costs $54, but the price per foot goes down as more strands are added. Should your budget allow for it, as many as 17 20-foot strands can be linked together.

For those who are willing to make do with fewer than 16 million color variations but still want a light show that can adapt to multiple holidays, there are less expensive choices.Brite Star Manufacturing, based in Philadelphia, sells Symphony of Lights. This lighting set comes in seven colors, has four different patterns and costs about $27 for each 15-foot length. Instead of an app, a controller is attached to the wires.

The addition of smartphone apps and R.G.B. (red, green and blue) units is the latest variation in a trend that has been going on since light-emitting diode holiday lights started popping up in stores over the last decade.

A San Diego company, Environmentallights.com, says it has close to 800 holiday lighting products, thanks to the possibilities created by LEDs. Among those products is a 10-by-10-foot LED light “curtain” that can be hung on a wall, indoors or out. A controller sets the speed of white lights that flow down the strands like water, at rates that range from “a trickle to a torrent.” Price: $125.50.

Another offering, light tubes that mimic snowflakes, is likewise not cheap, beginning at $26 for each footlong tube, $47 for the 36-inchers.

Of course, for some, money is no object. For aspiring Clark Griswolds (the patriarch in the National Lampoon “Vacation” movies), there is Christmas in a Box, a package available through Animated Lighting of Kansas City, Mo.

Christmas in a Box is a preprogrammed light controller that allows customers to animate their light displays — LED or incandescent — and synchronize them to music.

The package contains a “monster brain,” a player that is about twice the size of a smartphone with connections for 16 channels of lights. The lights sync via “show cards” with tunes like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Jingle Bells.”

The 16-channel version costs from $690 to $900, but there’s also a four-channel version, Christmas in a Box Junior, for about $500. For those who want to share the music with gawkers in their cars, Christmas in a Box — All In One includes a miniature FM transmitter with a 150-foot range. By tuning to FM 106.7, the show can be seen and heard in cozy comfort, said Paul Smith, Animated Lighting’s owner.

The All in One option runs from $1,000 to $1,200 and includes “classic” and “techno” music options. Lights are not included.

Technology has also made it possible to manipulate lights so that lighted characters, like reindeer and pumpkins, appear to be singing along. For another $795, a four- by six-foot two-dimensional reindeer face sings 20 minutes of eight specially programmed songs.

Despite the expense, some residential customers pay Animated Lighting to come out and design displays that can cost $10,000 and more, Mr. Smith said. “A lot of them say, ‘I want to just smoke people. I want people to say where in the hell did you buy that?’ ”

Inflatable snowmen and Santas are cheap by comparison, but there are a few new developments even in that department. Instead of just sitting on a lawn, the newest holiday icons have a little something extra.

The Amazing Snowman, for instance, blows fake snow from his cupped hands. Created byGlobal Special Effects of Lexington, Ala., it sells for $335 and comes with 15 ounces of biodegradable “snow” that melts within seconds of hitting the ground.

Texas-based Gemmy Industries, the people who 15 Christmases ago gave us Big Mouth Billy Bass, have since built on that success by creating a line of fabric figures that are inflated by an electric motor.

Jason McCann, Gemmy’s chief executive, said that his company “created the air-blown business” and is constantly improving on it. Last year it was illuminated polar bears, snowmen and Santas that arose Phoenix-like with the help of an air compressor.

This year, thanks to the inclusion of a secondary motor, they seem to shiver. A six-foot-tall snowman with the chills was recently selling for $63 at Walmart.

 

REF: The New York Times

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Turn signal gloves light up your lefts and rights

Let the world know you're planning to turn with Zackees Turn Signal Gloves, a bright idea in bike safety.

 

Turn Signal Gloves

 

These will give you a hand with turn signals.

(Credit: Zackees)

The art of using turn signals seems to be getting lost in the hustle for both cars and bicyclists alike. The Zackees Turn Signal Gloves project on Kickstarter wants to make turn signals cool again.

The gloves are typical bike-style fingerless gloves, but with light-up LED directional arrows built on top of each hand. Hold your hand up, trigger the contact pads, and traffic behind you can see which way you're planning to turn. This works equally well for bicyclists, runners, skateboarders, or what's left of the roller-blading crowd.

The gloves can be powered by either regular or rechargeable coin cell batteries. A $69 pledge gets you a set of gloves in classic black spandex. Upgrading to red, blue, or pink costs an extra $6. If recharging sounds good, then a $99 pledge comes with two sets of rechargeable batteries and a custom charger to juice them up.

It's easy to see the safety merits of the Turn Signal Gloves. Many drivers and bikers aren't familiar with the classic hand signals, and those hand signals can be hard to see at night. Slap some lights on your hands and everyone will take notice.

The most ingenious aspect of the gloves is that they look cool. Bike gloves, with their fingerless design, already channel the awesome hair-band rocker drummers of the 1980s. Add glowing lights and it's completely over the top. It may be enough to encourage a new era of turn signal use.

REF: CNET

LEDs Emerge as a Popular ‘Green’ Lighting

 


Karsten Moran for The New York Times

LED, or light-emitting diode, bulbs use less energy than incandescents.

 

By 
Published: January 21, 2013

 

The lighting industry has finally come up with an energy-efficient replacement for the standard incandescent bulb that people actually seem to like: the LED bulb.

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Karsten Moran for The New York Times

A selection of LED bulbs at Home Depot in Vauxhall, N.J. The life of LEDs is far longer than for conventional bulbs.

 

 

Although priced at around 20 times more than the old-fashioned incandescents, bulbs based on LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, last much longer and use far less electricity, a saving that homeowners are beginning to recognize. Prices for the bulbs are falling steadily as retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s sell them aggressively and manufacturers improve the technology.

And because the light in LED bulbs comes from chips, companies have been able to develop software applications that let users control the bulbs, even change the color of the light, with tablets and smartphones. Apple sells a three-pack of such bulbs, made by Philips, with the hardware to operate them for about $200.

“You’re seeing all of your growth in the LED category,” said Brad Paulsen, a Home Depot merchant. “We absolutely expect LED technology in four or five years to be the most popular lighting technology that’s out there.”

Last year, LED sales, though small at about 3 percent of the residential market by some estimates, grew faster than those of any other lighting technology, according to retailers and analysts.

Among A-type bulbs, the most common, LEDs will outsell incandescents in North America in 2014, according to projections by IMS Research, an electronics research firm that is now part of IHS Inc. And LEDs will become the most popular A-type technology by 2016, with North American shipments reaching almost 370 million, a more than tenfold increase from the roughly 33 million shipped last year, the firm estimates.

Already at Philips, LEDs were responsible for 20 percent of lighting sales last year, according to Ed Crawford, general manager of the lamps division.

Incandescent bulbs, while cheap, are very inefficient, wasting most of their energy as heat as they pump electricity into filaments to make them glow. The government has been pushing consumers to other technologies for several years, in part by phasing out the manufacture or import of the least efficient bulbs.

The first big alternative to emerge, compact fluorescent bulbs, has left many consumers dissatisfied. The light quality is seen as harsher, the bulbs can be slow to warm up and difficult to dim, and they contain toxic materials.

LEDs are more expensive, but offer better light quality and more flexibility. And thanks to heavy marketing by retailers, customers are beginning to discover their appeal.

“The LED you buy, even though you pay even $25 or $30, it’ll last like nine or 10 years,” said Tariq Syed, a machinist at an electrical utility who was eyeing LEDs at the Home Depot in Vauxhall, N.J., on Thursday. “And environmentally, it’s safe, too.”

Bulb manufacturers are rushing into the market, sending prices falling. Home Depot sells some 40-watt-equivalent bulbs for about $10.

“Most of the manufacturers are moving toward new designs in solid state lighting, as are we,” said Jim Crowcroft, vice president for market development at TCP, a company based outside Cleveland that manufactures energy-efficient lighting under its own brand as well as the house brands of several mass retailers.

Although the company still sells far more compact fluorescent lights, growth in that business has slowed, while demand for LEDs is skyrocketing, he said. “In the long run, solid-state lighting is going to make a whole lot of sense for almost every lighting application.”

For the manufacturers, LEDs pose a new challenge. They offer higher profit margins, but because they can last for decades, people will be buying fewer bulbs — of any sort. The Energy Information Administration estimates that total light bulb sales will fall by almost 40 percent by 2015, to just under a billion from 1.52 billion bulbs, and continue their decline to about 530 million by 2035, with LEDs making up a steadily increasing portion of the market.

As a result, many companies are competing to establish themselves as popular brands.

“The company that can dominate will make a lot of money,” said Philip Smallwood, senior lighting market analyst at IMS Research. “So it’s a big push to get into it early.”

With demand growing for LEDs in other uses — like backlighted phone and computer screens, automotive lights and street lamps — manufacturers have been able to develop their technologies and benefit from economies of scale to help bring the price down, said Thomas J. Pincince, the chief executive of Digital Lumens, which sells LED systems to businesses.

In the commercial and industrial sector, use of LEDs is more common than in homes, analysts say, because companies are more likely to do the long-term cost-benefit analysis of buying lighting than homeowners, who are still largely driven by the upfront price.

Goldman Sachs estimates that in the residential sector, penetration of LEDs will rise from 3 percent last year to 16 percent in 2015, still lagging the commercial and industrial sector as well as outdoor applications like parking lots and billboards.

But as the cost of an LED approaches $10 — a tipping point that would speed mass adoption, according to Mr. Smallwood — retailers have been stepping up their efforts to market the lights, often with proprietary brands like Home Depot’s EcoSmart jostling for shelf space with established names like Philips and General Electric.

“One day I randomly walked into a Home Depot and thought, ‘LED — when did that happen?’ ” said Clayton Morris, 36, a host of “Fox & Friends Weekend,” who was buying the bulbs in Vauxhall as part of his project to slowly replace the incandescents in his Maplewood home. “It’s a hefty investment upfront,” he said, “but it just seemed like a great savings.”

At the same time, in an effort to transform light bulbs from a cheap, disposable product into something that consumers might show off to their friends, manufacturers have been adding functions that could ultimately fit into a larger home automation system. Often Bluetooth- or Wi-Fi-enabled, a new generation of LED bulbs offers all manner of new remote controls and automatic responses. The Philips Hue, sold exclusively at Apple stores for the next month, can change colors along a broad spectrum and offers settings that can mimic sunrise in the morning or use a special “light recipe” intended to raise energy levels. The bulb has been a big hit, executives say, attracting a host of software developers who have created free apps for new features, like making it respond to voices or music. The bulb can also tie into the Nest thermostat, a so-called smart device from Apple alumni who helped develop the iPod, that learns consumer heating and cooling patterns and adjusts to them automatically.

REF: The New York Times

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LED Lights, and an App to Control Them

 

Review: TCP Smart LED Lighting System

 

The price of long-lasting LED bulbs is dropping rapidly — they are usually under $10, and they last many, many times as long as regular incandescent bulbs while using far less electricity.

 

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The TCP lights can be controlled with an app available for Apple and Android products.

 

 

 

You will pay a bit more for the TCPsmart LED lighting system, but each bulb comes with something cheaper ones don’t have — an Internet connection that lets you control them from your phone or tablet.

The lights come as a $55 to $150 kit with bulbs, a remote and a gateway that connects to your router, if you want to spend the money.

The TCP lights aren’t as fancy or expensive as the Philips Hue LEDs, which connect to the Internet and can change colors. But they can do quite a bit if you decide to control them with an app available for Apple and Android products.

Using the app, lights can be turned on and off and dimmed from your phone or tablet. You can do settings for different occasions and have lights go on or off on a schedule.

Setting up the basic on-and-off controls was easy. But light settings and schedules were not, even with the helpful videos on the TCP website. It seemed as if I was entering the same information repeatedly. Correcting mistakes — like removing settings I didn’t want — was impossible.

The quality of the light was good. The 11-watt bulb claims to put out the equivalent light of a 60-watt incandescent bulb. It was a softer, more yellowish light than the harsh blue-white of twisty fluorescent bulbs, and the 11-watt was more than sufficient for reading in bed at night.

If you get the hang of the app and want to add more bulbs, they are $17 each ($28 list). According to the manufacturer, the app can handle up to 250 bulbs.

 

REF: The New York Times

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Happy Chanukah!!!

Chanukah

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Wishing everyone a Safe and Happy Thanksgiving!!!


Gobble, gobble….

bulb turkey

Give Up Familiar Light Bulb? Not Without Fight, Some Say

WASHINGTON — American protests against the encroachment of government have been spurred by many causes — tea, of course, and guns, frequently. The latest catalyst: light bulbs.

A 2007 bill, passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress and signed into law by George W. Bush, will make the familiar incandescent bulb subject to strict efficiency standards next year.

The effect will be to make current 100-watt bulbs obsolete — and that has sent conservative lawmakers, libertarians, some environmental activists and owners of Easy-Bake Ovens into a frenzy of activity to get the law repealed or, at least, to stockpile the bulbs before they disappear from store shelves.

“I do care about my carbon footprint, not to mention my light bill,” said Dana Carpender, a cookbook author in Bloomington, Ind. “But unless something dramatic happens to bring down the cost of alternatives, I will be stashing away a pile of incandescents.”

The law does not outlaw incandescent bulbs or dictate that consumers must use the spiral-shaped compact fluorescent lights that have become increasingly popular in recent years. Rather, it sets standards for the amount of light emitted per watt of power used. Current 100-watt bulbs must become 25 percent more efficient, and makers are designing new bulbs.

To Representative Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who has sponsored a bill to reverse the new guidelines, that nevertheless means Congress is dictating what types of light Americans can use in their homes.

“From the health insurance you’re allowed to have, to the car you can drive, to the light bulbs you can buy, Washington is making too many decisions that are better left to you and your family,” Mr. Barton said when he introduced his bill in January.

Opponents of the regulations say the fluorescent bulbs are too expensive, flicker annoyingly and are health hazards because they contain mercury.

While they are not unanimous on the issue, some environmental activists counter that by saying the mercury in a single fluorescent bulb is less than what some power plants throw into the atmosphere while generating the electricity it takes to light one incandescent bulb.

Makers of appliances and light bulbs, meanwhile, support the federal standards because they do not want to have to make scores of products to meet individual state regulations.

But to many Americans, the 100-watt bulb has become a cause célèbre.

Tea Party campaigners have adopted it; Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who introduced a bill to repeal the light bulb law in 2008 and again this year, talked about the issue in her response to the president’s State of the Union message in January. And this week, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said not only did he resent the light bulb standards but he also blamed the government for poorly working toilets in his house because of the regulations on how much water they should use.

The light bulb regulations already have affected the American economy. Last fall, General Electric closed its last major United States plant producing the old-style incandescent bulbs, in Winchester, Va.

Nearly all compact fluorescent bulbs are made in Asia, although some United States manufacturers are retooling former factories to make other energy-efficient bulbs.

Several companies in the United States are working on light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs, and on energy-efficient halogen incandescent bulbs, which use a halogen element enclosed in a traditional glass bulb.

The Energy Department says the energy savings are significant. Kathleen Hogan, deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the department, told a Senate committee this week that by meeting the new lighting standards, consumers could save nearly $6 billion in 2015.

A household that upgrades 15 current incandescent bulbs could save about $50 a year, Ms. Hogan said, even after accounting for the higher cost of the fluorescent bulbs, which average above $1 each, versus about 35 cents for incandescent.

Halogen incandescent bulbs now cost about $1.50 each, and LED bulbs, which have only begun to be introduced, can cost $20 or more each, though they can last 10 years or more. Three-way bulbs, appliance bulbs and a few other specialty products are excluded from the new standards.

All of which serves to convince some people that the government should not dictate light bulb standards.

Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative group, said she already had about 100 old-style incandescent light bulbs stored in her basement in Laurel, Md., and she hoped to have several hundred by the time the new standards go into effect on Jan. 1.

Ms. Ridenour said that she opposed the government interference, but that her hoarding was primarily driven by concerns about the mercury in the compact fluorescent bulbs. Her middle child, a 10-year-old son, is autistic, Ms. Ridenour said. “He’s knocked over quite a few lamps,” she said, and broken plenty of light bulbs in the process.

The Environmental Protection Agency issues detailed instructions on how to clean up a broken fluorescent bulb because of the potential for spilling mercury. Each bulb contains about four milligrams of mercury, compared with 500 milligrams in old-style glass thermometers.

Nevertheless, the E.P.A. recommends recycling used fluorescent bulbs rather than disposing of them in household garbage.

Unknown, so far, is the economic impact of the retooling of the Easy-Bake Oven, the source of an unimaginable number of forced smiles summoned by parents after tasting a child’s cookies and cakes. The oven, a member of the National Toy Hall of Fame, uses a 100-watt bulb as its heat source, so Hasbro must give it a makeover. This fall, it will introduce the new Easy-Bake Ultimate Oven, which will use a different, so far undisclosed, heating element.

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