Make Your Kitchen Glaring at You

Light has been on my mind a lot lately.

Probably, though, it’s because whenever I’m in my kitchen, I am pinned beneath the clinical glare of a monstrous 45-by-16-inch fluorescent light fixture situated over my island. Just a few feet away, a second one (22 by 22 inches) stares down from above the sink. The effect is far from soothing, and in fact rather unsettling, as though my kitchen were a morgue and my island an autopsy table.

The good news, as I contemplate a kitchen overhaul in the (hopefully) near future, is that lighting in kitchens has changed a lot since the previous owner of my home remodeled the space some 15 years ago.

Kitchen designer Mary Galloway of Onesta Design in Alexandria agrees, saying she views the kitchen as a place of many scenes set, in large part, by how it is lit. “You think about someone cooking, someone eating, someone snacking at midnight,” Galloway says. ” . . . Your lighting needs change depending on the scene.”

Recessed lighting, which provides the general lighting in many kitchens these days, has come a long way, says designer Jennifer Gilmer of Jennifer Gilmer Kitchen & Bath in Chevy Chase. Most types now use smaller cans than the once-standard six-inch size, and incandescent bulbs have been replaced by more efficient lights.

Indeed, just as we’ve seen the proliferation of tiny, bright LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs on trees and roofs during the holidays, so are these energy-efficient lights making their way into the kitchen, not only in recessed lighting but also in task and accent lights.

More and more kitchens are also adding accent lights — those that draw attention to a particular appliance or decorative piece, the inside of a cabinet, or the so-called toe-kick space just above the floor — though the latter seems to have its detractors. “I would say that 50 percent of our customers love the toe-space lighting, while the other 50 percent see no point in it,” says Anderson. Its primary function (and appeal) is that it can softly light the kitchen at night, he says.

Pendant lights continue to be popular. They are “a good way to add color and some bling,” Anderson says. Gilmer says the sheer variety in styles makes pendant lighting a good option for almost any kitchen. In fact, it was a pendant light that helped solve a puzzle for one of Gilmer’s clients. “This particular person has contemporary tastes, but we needed something that would fit in with the traditional look of their Georgetown brownstone.” In the end she chose a pair of spare, vessel-shaped frosted glass and chrome pendants to hang above the sink and adjacent cream, black and gray mottled granite countertop.

Revolutionary LED Showroom Opened in Texas

It was reported that LED Illumination Direct opens its one-of-a-kind, green showroom in the Waco area. This 2,500-square-foot showroom hosts LED Illumination Direct’s 200 different varieties of LED products. LED Illumination Direct’s showroom demonstrates LED lighting capabilities by comparing its LED lights to incandescent, CFLs, and Fluorescent lighting and showing various light spectrums and colors available in the LED light.

“Our doors are open to commercial, industrial and residential consumers who are looking for the best selection of quality LED products to provide energy efficiency and solid state lighting,” says Greg Klepper, CEO of LED Illumination Direct.

LED Illumination Direct’s lights are recyclable, energy efficient and cost effective and emit 90% less heat than a conventional bulb. The LED low emission bulbs can be touched by the human hand, unlike that of incandescent, CFLs, and Fluorescent lights. The showroom is set up where the lights can be touched, held and controlled by anyone present.

“Greg Klepper and LED Illumination Direct produce the highest quality LED products on the market today and are the leaders of the LED lighting industry,” said Anthony Newberg, Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing, Dealers Electrical Supply Company. “Without LED Illumination Direct the lighting industry would not be where it is today.” Dealers Electrical Supply is the authorized distributor in Texas for LED Illumination Direct.

The technologically advanced showroom at LED Illumination Direct displays LED lighting products ranging from LED tube lights, LED high power bulbs and spotlights, LED household lights, LED PAR/Flood lights, LED flexible strips and LED Modules.

LED Lighting Types include:

• High Bay
• High Power Bulb
• Household Bulb
• Low Bay Light
• PAR Light
• Street Lights
• Tube Light
• Bi-Pin Down Light
• Growlights
• Grid Lights
• Wall Washers

Fantastic Motion Sensing LED Light

There are times when it’d make life a lot easier if lights would just come on.  Be it because you usually have your hands full in that area or any other reason, it’d just be nice.  Now this little motion sensor won’t turn on all the lights in the room, but it will turn on a small light to help you find your way.  Plus it could be used as a security device, so you’ll know if someone is moving around where they shouldn’t.

This simple little light could even be used in other areas besides in your home.  It could also be grabbed for when you go camping if you need some small lights to keep you from tripping over anything.  On the light itself you can adjust the sensitivity of the motion sensor.  You can also just shut off the light entirely.  It runs on 4 AAA batteries which aren’t actually included.

Long-life Panasonic’s LED Lightbulb

How often do you change lightbulbs? Every few months, maybe? It is found that the early generation led light bulbs are pretty weak. Well, when Panasonic’s new LED bulbs hit shelves, change that time frame from months to decades.

Yes, these insanely efficient bulbs keep shining and shining, providing the brightness of a traditional 60-watt bulb. Of course, they won’t be cheap, with pricing set at about $40 a bulb in Japan when they hit stores in October. But seeing as they cost a mere $2 to run per year in energy costs and last 19 years, that seems like a good deal in the long run.

Energy Saving Star – LED Lighting

In your home, lighting may be 10 percent of your bill. But in an office building it’s probably 40 percent, and so if you reduce your lighting energy consumption by a large fraction, the savings will be huge,” said James Brodrick, who leads the DOE’s solid-state lighting program.

A fact sheet from Brodrick’s office says this about LEDs: “In the coming decade, they will become a key to affordable net-zero energy buildings, buildings that produce at least as much energy annually as they use from the grid.”

The technology is advancing quickly, and costs will continue to drop, Brodrick said. The DOE tests LEDs and sets performance and efficiency guidelines under its Energy Star program.

LEDs are directional lights, used in recessed lighting and under-counter lights, for example. They’re not yet available as bulbs that cast light all around and fit in ordinary sockets.

“There’s an enormous and exciting potential, but we have a long way to go before we see anything besides directional lighting,” said Jeffrey P. Harris, the vice president for programs at the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit group that promotes energy efficiency.

Even so, LEDs already are used to light offices, hotels, restaurants and other businesses.

The DOE predicts that LEDs will have better performance capability than fluorescent lighting in the next few years, and that they’ll continue to improve after that. They’re now comparable with fluorescent fixtures in efficiency, and the DOE says its Energy Star LEDs last two to five times longer.

Cost is the biggest reason that LEDs aren’t used more widely, Brodrick said.

LEDs have other advantages: They can be dimmed, don’t emit heat, don’t contain mercury – unlike compact fluorescents – and can produce warm-toned light.

Home Depot, the world’s biggest retailer of light bulbs, is starting to stock LED bulbs this summer and plans to have 10 kinds by September, said Jorge Fernandez, who’s in charge of light bulb purchases for the company.

Philips is working on many kinds of LEDs, including one to replace a 40-watt incandescent bulb that’s scheduled to be available next year, she said.

Derrick Hall of RE/Construct Inc. in Asheville, N.C., said that residential customers weren’t asking for LEDs because of the high upfront cost. Still, he’s hearing of some nonresidential customers who are looking into LEDs for the energy savings.

LEDs are much better than other lighting options, Hall said. The quality of the light is “far superior,” they offer big energy savings and there’s no cost to society for dealing with mercury, he said. Mercury, a neurotoxin, is found in small amounts in compact fluorescent bulbs.

Green Bulbs Green Traffic Light

According to a member of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance, interest in energy-efficient traffic lights is brightening on Aug. 6.

Forty-three municipalities, including nine in Lackawanna County, have signed up to have incandescent traffic lights replaced with LED — light-emitting diode — bulbs, which require less energy to illuminate and don’t have to be changed as often, said Kurt Bauman, manager of the alliance’s energy assistance program.

“Incandescent bulbs go out more frequently,” he said. “LED bulbs are guaranteed for five years and expected to last 10 years.”

Throop is the latest municipality in the county to approve the switch. It has 17 traffic signals at two intersections — a total of 51 bulbs to be replaced.

Replacement work costs about $3,500 per intersection — 25 to 30 bulbs — including the price of the bulbs and installation, Mr. Bauman said.

Brightness is the most noticeable difference between LED and incandescent bulbs, Mr. Bauman said.

Drivers may also notice a small ring within the light itself, he said.

“They’re somewhat distinguishable,” he said.

LEDs got a trial run in Clarks Summit earlier this year. Mr. Bauman’s organization partially funded the purchase and installation of the lights at four intersections.

“We know that converting incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs offers energy savings,” he said. “We just wanted to make sure that the funding we provided the municipalities would be an incentive.”

A post-project energy audit estimated the town will save $3,600 this year.

The organization has applied for grant money to assist municipalities with the cost of replacing the lights. It would need about $1 million to fully finance projects in all interested municipalities. If necessary, municipalities have to sign a letter agreeing to pay matching funds toward the project.

LED Era Come Soon

As we all know that LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs which will consume even less power than the CFL bulbs and once the mass production of Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs will start, its cost will go down. Gradually the era of electric bulbs will come to an end and only CFL bulbs will exist then. This will go a long way in promoting the LED bulbs among the masses,” said Venugopal, a senior member of the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission, on Wednesday.

The occasion was the Second Capacity Building Programme, organised by the department of Industrial and Management Engineering of IIT, Kanpur. On the second day of the six-day long programme, Dr Anoop Singh of IIT-K, Venugopal, member of DERC and others were present.

Venugopal also explained that the entire focus is on to encourage the people of the country to save power instead of adopting a careless attitude towards it. Shutting down power switches when power is not required is something which people need to inculcate in themselves as a habit.

Giving an example about reduction of the load during the lunch hours in Delhi, Venugopal said, “At the time of lunch it has been observed that there is a reduction of 150 MW to 200 MW of load in the state of Delhi. This happens due to the fact that people in offices and at other commercial establishments shut down power. Such an exercise should be followed everywhere which will help in reducing the load.”

Dr Anoop Singh, said, “Power saved is power gained. Here in IIT-K we have street lights which are timer guided. The timer attached with the street light is set on a particular time as to when the street lamp should go off. The moment the clock strikes the set time, the street lamp goes off. This not only helps in saving power but also no human being is required to go from pole to pole for switching off these lamps.”

Additionaly, street lights can be put off with the help of the remote used in TVs and in other electrical devices.

Philips Find Ways to Closes Yellow LED Gap

The yellow light-emitting diode (LED) gap always trouble Philips till now. Recently, researchers with Philips Lumileds (San Jose, CA) have developed a monochromatic nitride diode to closes the gap. The phosphor-converted (PC) amber LED demonstrated by Regina Mueller-Mach and her colleagues uses the down-conversion of blue light from an indium-gallium-nitride (InGaN) LED to longer-wavelength light by a phosphor, in a variation of a well-established process for producing cold or warm white light from blue LED light (see also “Fluorescent microspheres create white-light LEDs”).

Monochromatic light-emitting diodes cover a large part of the visible spectrum with high efficiency. For blue light, nitride diodes achieve external quantum efficiencies in excess of 65%. For red light, phosphor diodes achieve efficiencies of approximately 50%. However, so far no highly efficient monochromatic LEDs have been available for the “yellow gap” at around 560 nm.

Leveraging previous research on warm white light, the researchers succeeded in down-converting blue LED light into monochromatic amber light with a 595 nm wavelength and a color purity of 98.7%. The external quantum efficiency of the PC amber LED is at 30-40%, depending on temperature. Compared to direct amber LEDs, the new PC amber LED is two to five times as bright. It achieves a light output of 70 lumens at a 350 mA current.

There are numerous applications for the LUXEON Rebel PC Amber LED. It can be used in yellow traffic lights or signals as well as in cars’ turn signals or warning lights for construction sites. They could also be used in consumer electronics and their high efficiency makes them inexpensive.

How to Make an Old House into a Modern

This artical shows you how to push a 1920s house into a modern, low-carbon age. The last few touches – appliances and rare light bulbs.

After spending the past year reducing the home’s heating bills by adding stacks of insulation, the owner has now turned her attention to slashing her electricity needs. She buy electricity from Good Energy which is a 100% renewable electricity supplier, but she would like to reduce our dependence on it, as all electricity is expensive – green or not. She monitor her energy usage with weekly measurements taken directly from both the gas and electricity utility and currently the house consumes 8kWh of electricity every day.

As part of her drive to save eneergy, She has reviewed the efficiency of all of her electrical appliances. Fridge freezers are significant consumers of electricity in the average house because they are switched on 365 days a year. As she was old, she recently replaced it with an A-rated one to minimise energy usage. Their television is an old-fashioned boxy cathrode ray tube, which is quite energy-hungry, consuming 300 watts per hour when on. The plan – when she has the money – is to change it over to a LCD type. They’ll plan their purchase with a great site called Sust-It which you can use to determine the energy cost per year of new tellies and other products.

What else? Well, she changed most of our conventional light bulbs to energy-savers several years ago. That was easy with standard bulbs, so now she is replacing the more obscure ones.

The garage security floodlight was rated at an energy-guzzling 500 watts – the equivalent of around 50 standard energy-saving bulbs. Although it produced an instant bright light , it was repeatedly set off by animals wandering into the garden at night. So she found a low-energy bulb from B&Q which, although less than half as bright, consumes just 18 watts and reaches full brightness within a few seconds. B&Q now sells a better version using an incandescent bulb for instant bright white light, but after a few seconds the more efficient but slower compact fluorescent bulb takes over.

Continuing outside, our garden lights used to consume only 6 watts each, but having eight of them she was determined to replace them with a more efficient option. Compact fluorescent bulbs don’t exist for such a small wattage so an LED light was the obvious choice. She has now replaced each of them with a very bright 1 watt LED version which nicely lights up the path to the house. A timer ensures the overall energy consumption is minimised.

She has used LED technology inside too. Earlier in the year she bought several Deltech LED bulbs from ebulbshop.com and was very impressed with its brightness and warm-white colour. It matches the incandescent GU10 bulbs (one of the most common spotlight-style fittings) very well and most importantly it has the same physical size, so it fits in her bathroom ceiling’s recessed bulb-holders. These GU10 LED bulbs consume just 5 watts each but come close to the light output from their 50 watt incandescent equivalents. They won’t pay for themselves for more than 10 years because they’re so expensive up-front, so I justify the LEDs on the grounds that their carbon payback is immediate.

Salmon DNA LED Bulbs

It is reported that the latest LED breakthrough comes from the University of Connecticut, and it uses salmon DNA to create very long-lasting white LEDs (though they can be tuned to other colors). By now a lot of cool LED technology still needs to make its way from the lab to the store, it’s exciting to see that engineers are still finding new ways to squeeze more performance out of those semiconductor diodes.

Fluorescent dyes (two different ones, spaced between 2 and 10 nanometers from each other) are added to the DNA molecules, which are then spun into nanofibers. These are very durable because DNA is a particularly strong polymer (it has to be!) (they should last 50 times longer than acrylic, for example).

A LED emitting ultra-violet light is then coated with the DNA nanofibers: “When UV light is shined on the material, one dye absorbs the energy and produces blue light. If the other dye molecule is at the right distance, it will absorb part of that blue-light energy and emit orange light.” Using DNA has the benefit of orienting the dyes “in an optimum way for efficient [fluorescence energy transfer] to occur,” according to David Walt, a chemistry professor at Tufts University.

To tune the light quality, all you need to do is vary the ratios of dye. The light can be tuned from cool white to warm white, for example.

Unfortunately, numbers on how many lumens per watt these LEDs produce haven’t been released yet (though that might just be because they’re still improving them), so it’s not clear if the main benefit from these will be the longer life, or if the extra fine tuning will also mean better light quality than other white LED (like those that use quantum dots, for example), or if energy efficiency will also be superior. But it’s a new trick that will no doubt be useful. Maybe someday we’ll have a bit of DNA in our lights.