Benya Wins! The GE Edison Award
May 27, 2009
Jim Benya, PE, FIES, FIALD, LC, wins the GE Edison Award along with Michael Neils, Juan José Villatoro and James E. Christensen, PE. The winning project is the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. The event took place at a private party in NYC thrown by GE on May 4 at the start of LightFair 2009. Here’s the video…
Jim, Congratulations!
LightRightBlog
LED humor from Lightfair 2008
May 30, 2008
100,000 Hours of Life And Other LED Fairytales a seminar presented by Dr. John W. Curran gave great food for thought in regards to the hot trend of LEDs in the marketplace. Aside from the well-thought out content of the course, there were also some very humorous LED fairytales. We’d like to share a few of our favorites with you so, grab a seat, sit back and relax as you read through some of the almost familiar fairytales of LED’s…
Fairytales:
LEDs don’t generate heat:
Humpty LED sat on a wall
Raising its temperature unknown to all
Armies of optic and electrical men
Couldn’t get Humpty to light up again
LEDs will last 100,000 hours or more in normal use:
Twinkle, Twinkle LED
How I wonder what thee be
Up above the world so bright
But twenty years of constant light???
LEDs provide consistent color:
Mary had an LED
Its light was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
People said: “What’s that blue glow?”
Saving Energy = Saving Money
Hey diddle diddle,
The engineers fiddle,
Making LEDs light up the moon.
The accountants laugh to see such sport,
Knowing payback is none too soon.
John is the President of LED Transformations who has an excellent summary of LED basic technical information on his website.
Thanks John for an informative seminar and some really good laughs.
LightFair International ’08 Innovation Awards
May 28, 2008
With the kick-off of the Exhibit Hall at Lightfair 2008, the Innovation Awards have been announced. Some of the products that we feel have potential in the Downlights, Wallwashers and Accent Lights category include:
- Focal Point | Mini-Grazer - featuring a T5 lamp with a very narrow beamspread.
- Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions | eW Graze Powercore – exterior-rated LED fixture with high-quality white light.
- Focal Point | ID - Square and round MR16 halogen and metal halide downlights.
- GE Consumer & Industrial | LED Cove Lighting System – at 6.5 watts/linear foot.
More to come on these fixtures as we check them out live at Lightfair 2008.
Notes on New Lamp Technologies at LightFair ’08
May 28, 2008
Jerry Cassel, a specification engineer of GE Lighting made note that the GE had a full 1/3 of their show space dedicated to their LEDs. Questions from visitors to the GE Booth strongly focused on LED technologies with a steady flow of visitors all day. Of note, GE is now shipping their high power white LED called the VIO.
Ardee has just released a new downlight using the GE VIO. We think Ardee’s downlight has a lot going for it: small size, quality construction, excellent cut-off, acceptable halogen-like color temperature, smooth beam distribution, low glare reflector, affordable price point. Downside, it’s still a little underpowered. It would be great to use this product instead of a 20 watt MR16 but it doesn’t have enough punch for the majority of applications with just one 4 watt LED. No one really wants to add more fixtures to compensate. We’re hoping the 2-lamp version is already in development. We’ll share more on this product later.
Beyond LEDs GE also launched new ceramic metal halide (CMH) lamps. A new 39 watt ceramic metal halide MR16 and a 70watt ceramic metal halide with a G8.5 or G12 bipin base. Both have 12,000 hour life but the 70watt lamp, dubbed “next generation” has 90% lumen maintenance over it’s life compared to other low wattage CMH lamps at 60%. Ceramic metal halide technologies are not dimmable unless the lamps wattages are over 150 watts. Green Color shift is still limiting dimming of lower wattage CMH technologies according to GE.
LightFair ’08 floor opens to crowds.
May 28, 2008
The Light Fair 08 trade show floor opened today in the Las Vegas convention center with people packing the aisles.
Over the past few years the conference has been loosing popularity among some manufacturers who have declined to exhibit due to the costs for exhibiting, competition for their attention with other trade shows and their preference to be at the alternating year LightFair shows in New York.
You wouldn’t know that from this year’s show. It’s crowded.
Perhaps it’s the overwhelming interest in new LED technologies that is the driver behind waits as long as 2 hours for entry badges and lines leading into sold out seminars. Light Fair organizers appear to have addressed some past issues with changes to the Trade Show organization and offerings.
Seminars continue untill 12:00 Noon on Friday and the trade show floor is open until 3:00PM.
Sneak Preview from the floor of LightFair 08
May 27, 2008
The trade show floor of Light Fair officially opens tomorrow 5/28 but Light Right Blog got a sneak preview today.
Pure Lighting is showing two fixtures that we think have potential.
Their “Genna” MR16 wall wash which produces a smooth wash of light up to within an inch of the ceiling line. We’re told this product will be available in both Halogen MR16 and Metal Halide versions. It’s a trimless so it requires a bit more work coordinationg on the installation. The MR16 Genna preliminary cut sheet shows a maximum of a 75watt lamp.
The second fixture is a re-design of a slot product Pure introduced two LightFairs ago in Halogen. The halogen fixture has been discountinued and this LED wall grazer is in it’s place. It’s called the Stratus linear wall graze. Besides the lamp change a new shielding system has been introduced to reduce glare and correct some bell bottom like flare they were experiencing in shorter runs. According to Mike Donovan, National Sales Manager of Pure Lighting, Pure is calling new optical system a “louflector” (louver/reflector) because a rouver sounded too Scooby Doo. First glance, we like it, and Pure tells us they have tested it as effective grazing 30ft walls with low ambient lighting. Stratus Cut Sheet
To be sure we know the real case scenario we’ll be testing both of these products off the trade show floor out of the high ambient fill conditions.
Comfort and Cut-off Angle
May 9, 2008
Have you ever been in an interior environment in which you feel you need a baseball cap to get the light out of your eyes? There are two clear reasons that might be the cause of this. One, the fixtures might be aimed in a way that did not take into regard your position in the space and they are directed right into your face. If this is the case, it may need to be re-aimed. Or two, the fixtures may not have an appropriate cut-off angle.
Cut-Off is a term that refers to the visibility of the bare light bulb (lamp) in the fixture. The cut-off angle describes the position at which you can no longer see the bulb when directly viewing the light fixture. This is an important metric in evaluating the quality of a fixture because it is a performance criteria by which comfort can be predicted and controlled.
Quality lighting fixtures are designed in a way that optimizes the cut-off angle for the application it will be used.
The cut-off angle is a published detail in most lighting fixture specifications. It’s measured up from Nadir, directly beneath the fixture, to the point at which you can no longer directly see the bulb. Cut-off means you avoid glare when walking or sitting in a space. A “sharp cut-off angle” means that the visibility of the lamp disappears quickly as you move away from the fixture. A cut-off angle or 45 degrees or less is generally considered to be “sharp”.
There are various recommended cut-off angles that lighting designers strive to achieve. This is based on systematic research about comfort level and other user based criteria such as needs when viewing a computer or driving a car. Desired cut-off angle is also a function of the ceiling or mounting height of the luminaire.
Another relevant factor to consider is the reflected image of the lamp in the trim or cone portion of the fixture. Sometimes fixtures uses highly polished reflectors and depending on the effectiveness of the design, the lamp and thus the glare, may be visible in the reflector. What good does it do to not see the lamp directly if a near mirror image of the lamp is showing up in the fixture cone?
This lamp image is often experienced by the user of a space as a flash that occurs when walking underneath the fixtures. If you’re walking in a hallway, you may notice that you are experiencing a flash from the fixtures long before you are close enough to directly see the bulb. These flashes my occur in the fixture cone from the top down or from the bottom up. Images that occur from the top down are generally more comfortable and appear less chaotic than images that appear from the bottom up. Egg shaped images are less noticeable than rabbit ear type images. A good optical designer at a lighting fixture manufacturer takes this all into account.
So what’s the big deal if you have never before noticed that this existed? While this may not be as uncomfortable as sitting in a space with glare, it does attract your eye, conscious or not conscious. This interrupts you’re experience of a space. You begin to be conscious of the light source and what it’s lighting. For most applications, the goal is to feel the effect of the lighting on the textures and surfaces in the space, not the lighting itself.
We also absorb an unbelievable amount of information from lighting whether we realize it or not. Rabbit ear flashes in a reflector cone may actually be giving you a cue of economy or cheapness – since the last place you likely saw it was in a cost cutting environment.
Legislate this! please.
April 13, 2008
As a lighting designer I’m enticed by all the tools available to create great lighting experiences. All the light bulbs: I have thousands of dollars worth sitting in my garage so that any moment I can apply a full palette of options.
My confession is, despite this, I dread shopping the light bulb aisle at the big box retail stores: Lowes, Walmart, Home Depot, to name a few. Just yesterday I came home with the wrong bulb. Can you imagine? A near twenty year veteran of the lighting industry?
Not only that, I was shopping with a friend of mine who happens to be an experienced electrical contractor and I asked him – why do these boxes look different? At this point we were already standing at the check out and flipping between the boxes and their Spanish English text neither of us noticed the little L for long neck. Nor did we see the small font describing the neck amongst the flashy graphics of one of the boxes.
Shuffling amongst other items in our shopping cart we also didn’t note the slightly different box sizes. The boxes simply looked like different generations of packaging. The most prominent information on both was Halogen 50 watt. The actual bulb type PAR30 and PAR30 long neck was printed very very small. The wattage / lumen /hour summary at the bottom were identical.
When I got home I realized that one of the two blubs was a long neck. Upon further review of the actual lamp I realized that one had been stamped with the description wide flood. Both simply said flood on the box, one was a wide flood and the other a narrow flood. Where was this important differentiating information about this bulb type? The only place this information was displayed was printed on side of the bulb. I was actually wanting a WIDE flood. So this was good. But now I only had one. And to get back to the store to buy the second was about eight (8) dollars in gasoline round trip. Nice way to save energy. I would have especially loved to tell this story if I had been purchasing a compact fluorescent bulb.
The most prominent information on both of the boxes was in the form of two words – Two Year Bulb! Two year bulb? How is this measured? And why is it necessary to tout this when the hours are prominently displayed on the box? And what if the bulb is dimmed? What is the projected life then? Are the words Two Year Bulb an important piece of information that is valuable to the consumer in making the right lighting choice? Or is this something the marketing department determined would move this box off the shelf? Isn’t the clear display of rated life more valuable? How about the voltage of the bulb? This wasn’t displayed anywhere on the box.
What you see in the following photos is the impact of not having the best lamp for the job. The wide flood covers the entire work area. A little less bright but produces even illumination across the paper. The narrow flood concentrates the light in one spot, creating a harsh contrast between the lit and unlit paper.
Let’s not kid ourselves about our energy saving efforts when we leave issues like this unaddressed. How many consumers would go back and get a 75 watt lamp to fix this instead of the wide flood? Especially when the distribution of the bulb, which is the solution here, is not even displayed on the box?
I believe as we move forward in lighting we need to help the consumer make an educated choice. As lighting becomes more expensive to buy and run lighting decisions are becoming more important and we need to enable the consumer to make the best choice for them. This is quite a different approach than narrowing the choices of the consumer; which is the only legislation that I’m seeing. The lighting industry, consumer advocates and legislatures should look for opportunities to bring clarity, knowledge and product differentiation to the consumer.
Our Human Energy
March 11, 2008
Our human energy is sustained and transformed by the light we live in.
Our moods, our interactions, our work, our environment, even our health, can be dramatically changed by the alteration of light. This is the true power of light. We can use it to create more energy than it consumes.
It’s documented evidence in design reports, health studies, building post occupancy evaluations and even the unacknowledged consumer’s opinion on a compact fluorescent bulb brings us candid proof.
Why then are none of our increasingly restrictive energy codes weighing the value of light in our lives against the carbon credits?
The consumer has no idea what compromises are being made to their lit environments. At a rabid speed choice and quality are being traded for political gain and face saving alliance with the green movement.
Should a consumer be told that beginning 2012 they can’t use an inexpensive, simple, incandescent bulb to light their homes? Is this really wise or appropriate?
Human celebration with light dates back to one of the first uses of fire by mankind to warm a dark cold night and possibly even before. What is the impact when a midwinter retreat to a snowy Aspen lodge can only produce a LED fireplace? One cannot ask what is the value of that light without asking what is the value of our experiences? On one had we ask that our experiences and world be more organic, and on the other we require it to be more synthetic.
Light has the power to transform and refuel our human energy.
That value of light needs to be part of our discussions and conscious choices about our consumption of resources or we risk wasting whatever energy we do spend regardless of the efficacy of the light source, the efficiency of the fixture or the stringency of the code based design decisions.
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