CRS Elec Lights Turned to New LED Lamp

It was reported from TORONTO that when Manhattan’s tony One Beacon Court on the Upper East Side looked for ways to reduce its energy bill, as part of a much-broader global effort to green the planet, it turned to a small Canadian company for its lighting needs.

CRS Electronics Ltd. (LED.V) based in Welland, Ont., CRS developed, designed and manufactures solid-state lamps that use light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as their light source. It’s a disruptive technology that’s on the cusp of transforming the estimated US$100 billion global lighting industry. If well designed, LEDs can provide light that is the same as or better than conventional light sources, with significant energy and cost savings. According to Strategies Unlimited, a Mountain View, Calif. research firm, the commercial and industrial market for LED replacement lamps is forecast to roughly double each year through 2013.

CRS, whose roots are in school-bus lights, makes a low-watt MR16 LED replacement lamp that replaces halogen technology. MR16s are widely used for accent, task and display lighting in stores, hotels, restaurants, condominiums, commercial buildings, museums and art galleries.

“We didn’t just want to do LED because it’s green, and it saves energy and costs. It also had to have an aesthetic value, and match up with the coloring of the bulb that was already in the hallways. And that’s what we achieved. The bulb itself was just a better product than I could get anywhere else,” he says.

He’s ordered 500 lamps, and expects a 12-to-14 month return on investment, since each lamp can burn for 50,000 hours.

The commercial market for MR16s is estimated to be about US$2.2 billion, according to industry statistics. It’s such a big market that hundreds of upstarts, primarily from China, are popping up, primarily because the lighting giants, such as GE, are looking further afield. “It’s buyer beware. There’s a lot of misleading information out there,” says Mia Paget, who manages the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solid-state Lighting product testing program, CALiPER.

The CRS MR16 is technologically and aesthetically superior, a claim that’s backed up by the results of both independent laboratory and DOE testing.

In May, CRS went public, listing on the TSX Venture Exchange.

CRS, which installed the LED street lamps in downtown Welland, is eyeing the US$61 billion street and area lighting market, where there was 0% LED penetration in 2008, according to an October 2008 Navigant Consulting report.

The Advantages of LED Lights

As we all know that the future of energy efficient lighting is LED. Not only are LED’s environmentally friendly, the light represents a true white light. A recent press release printed in the Village News on ways to cut energy expenditures missed the mark completely.

Although it is true that CFL bulbs do save energy, they also contain mercury, which is a hazardous material, and these bulbs cannot be disposed of easily. If the bulb is broken, there is a huge problem because the mercury is disbursed throughout the area.

The future in lighting is the use of LED (light emitting diodes) lamps.

First, the operational life of current white LED lamps approaches 100,000 hours. The key strength of LED lighting is reduced power consumption approaching 80 percent efficiency, compared to an incandescent lamp, which operates at about 20 percent efficiency. LED lamps are now available on the Internet and at Wal-Mart.

If, in fact, a bulb burns out in your lifetime, it can be disposed of easily and if broken there is no contamination.

I would urge all Village News readers to learn about LEDs and stop purchasing the dangerous CFL mercury contained lamps.

The folks responsible for traffic lights have started replacing the red, yellow and green lamps with LEDs; you can distinguish the LED lamp because the light is made up of clusters of round LEDs which make up the light.

I recently purchased a GE PAR 30 long neck LED lamp at Wal-Mart to try in my kitchen ceiling. I am very pleased and it only draws 10 watts of power, compared to the 65 watt incandescent bulb that the LED replaced.