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 Most types now use smaller cans than the once-standard six-inch size, and incandescent bulbs have been replaced by more efficient lights.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.

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.

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

Green Mountain Power Plans to Go LED

As we all know that new lights that save energy and lower emissions might be coming soon to a street near you.

Green Mountain Power plans to replace worn-out street lights throughout its service area with energy-efficient, long-lasting LEDs. The LED lights have a life span of more than 25 years, compared to the 5 to 7 years for traditional street lamp bulbs.

LEDs are traditionally used in Christmas tree lights, newer flash lights and basketball scoreboards. They use a different technology from standard incandescent bulbs.

“By reducing the amount of electricity that you use by more than half, it eliminates any environmental effects that will be needed to produce that power,” said Dotty Schnure of GMP. “Also, with the lights they’ll be replacing, mercury lights, those lights have mercury in them and have very specific disposal issues. With LED, we’ll be avoiding all the mercury disposal issues.”

GMP submitted the plan to the Vermont Public Service Board. If approved, the lights could be installed as early as March 1.

New Greensburg City Hall sign Plan to Use Solar Lights

It was reported that a new Greensburg City Hall sign has been under way for a couple of weeks, but a lot of the final pieces came together this week.

First came the LED light bars, unwrapped by Curtis Shaddox, president of Kansas City-based Sunpower Sign. Brian Eliot, manager of the Sign House in south Salina, grabbed a 12-volt power pack from a cordless tool and touched the leads on the light bar to the contacts to make sure it worked.

The permanent power source arrived with Sunpower executive vice president Troy Haefner from Minnesota, who carried a roll of flexible solar film wrapped around each arm.

Like much of the rest of rebuilt Greensburg, the new City Hall sign packs some serious environmentally friendly tech: the LED lights will use a fraction of the power a bank of fluorescent tubes would, and the solar film will power it.

The Sign House has been using LED lighting on some signs for about five years, Eliot said, “But this is our first experience with solar power. It’s very new for the industry and definitely for this area.”

The sign was scheduled to be delivered to Greensburg on Friday, though it won’t be permanently installed until warmer weather, when the concrete base can be poured.

The design calls for a bank of LEDs at the top and bottom of the sign, illuminating the lettering and pushing light through a frosted acrylic layer near the top, causing a “glowing halo” effect, Eliot said.

Shaddox said the LEDs will have a 15-year lifespan, as opposed to about five years for a fluorescent tube — and there’s no ballast to go bad.

Eliot said solar-powered signs will likely become an important part of his company’s business, and he and his employees are having fun learning about the new technology.

The flexible solar panels are also a relatively new technology and are starting to replace older designs, which are heavier, bulkier and more fragile.

And, Shaddox said, the thin film will generate power in almost any light.

“You don’t need full sun, and it doesn’t have to be tilted at 30 degrees south to get the right angle,” he said, explaining those benefits allow for more design possibilities. “Instead of this big panel standing there, we can just apply it to the top of the sign.”

NASA and the military have used flexible solar film for several years, but as more companies start producing it, the price is dropping to where it’s cost-effective.

“The cost per kilowatt is dropping every week,” Shaddox said.

The adhesive-backed solar film has about a 25-year lifespan, Shaddox said, and is much more resistant to damage than more traditional photovoltaic panels.

“You could take a box knife and cut it, and that one area won’t work any more, but the rest of it will,” he said. “And, it’s got a teflon coating, so you can spray-paint it and just clean it off.”

A combination of advances in solar power and LED technology makes such signs possible, Shaddox said; it wouldn’t be practical to try to power a fluorescent-tube sign with solar panels.

The Main Challenge of LED Industry

In last article, we talk about that there’s a consensus that most of those barriers. They should be removed in the next 2-3 years. Impressive energy efficiency progress are announced on a regular basis by LED manufacturers and reliability is improving as engineers become aware of the challenges posed by the design of a flawlessly integrated LED luminaire (GE recently identified more than 100 possible failure mode in LED light engines).

Multiple standardization organization are working on defining and implementing testing and performance standards and communicating them to the public. Solid state lighting is progressing niche by niche.  More municipalities are testing LED streetlight and some have already committed to massive retrofits (200,000 street lights in Los Angeles). Adoption in commercial and retails lighting, while still low in volume is progressing fast (announcements from Wall Mart, Starbucks…). While we all have our eyes focused on residential applications, it’s important to realize that homes are the smallest segments (in term of lumens) compared to industrial, commercial and municipal lighting. However, for most, it remains the ultimate frontier.

But even this application now seems within reach and LED replacement bulbs might come to your home faster that you expected. Don’t rush yet though, as low quality products are still flooding the market and might create a negative initial perception of the technology, a risk that the industry is aware off and trying to control by working on performance standard (make sure you get products meeting or exceeding the Energy star criteria for solid state lighting). In Japan, the largest electronic manufacturers are making a strong push with quality products. Toshiba Lighting and Technology introduced a 60W equivalent replacement LED bulb for JPY9,000 in late 2008. The same product now goes for less than JPY4,000. Sharp launched similar offers and the price is now expected to reach  JPY2,000 in 2010. At this pace, most now expect the cost of LED replacement bulbs to reach the $10 for 1000 lumen target commonly accepted as the “magic” number that will trigger massive adoption by 2012.

In the US, Philips released the first LED bulb to participate to LPrize contest organized by the US Department Of Energy to reward the first 60W replacement LED bulb to meet aggressive performance targets.  A lot of credible light bulb replacements could be seen at the recent Strategies In Light conference exhibition floor and CREE is planning to release a retail version of its award winning LR6. The price point at which it will be released will send a strong signal to the industry.

LED Makers Promise to Shake up Global Market

LEDs, once confined to the tiny red indicator lights on TV remote controls, have now grown to illuminate TV screens themselves and promise to shake up the global lighting market.

LED (light emitting diode) backlit TVs were heavily featured at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, as manufacturers announced products intended to emulate the success seen by Samsung in 2009.

Samsung, which has 80 per cent of the US market for LED TVs, aims to quadruple global sales in 2010 to more than 10m.

But manufacturers such as LG, another Korean player, say Samsung will not have things all its own way as LED-backlit TVs become available at entry-level as well as premium prices. LG will offer cheaper edge-lit LED technology, which requires fewer arrays of diodes, on its entry-level TVs and full LED backlights on premium models.

LEDs have graduated from use in mobile phone screens to backlights for notebooks, PCs and now TVs and monitors.

They offer better brightness and contrast, energy savings and slimmer screens than those using the established cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) now used for backlighting.

LED technology was first introduced in 1962, beginning with a low-intensity red light. Semiconductor-based diodes or valves produce light from the excitation of electrons as they are moved over a “light” bridge by a direct electrical current. LEDs differ from traditional incandescent light bulbs, which produce their light from heat generation.

Over the years, white LEDs have been developed by combining chips that produce different colours into a single package, or by adding a yellow phosphor layer. Improvements in light intensity and cost reductions are now resulting in wider adoption of LEDs.

Pete Moran of the DCM venture capital firm says LEDs have advantages such as longer life and greater efficiency compared with both incandescents and the energy-saving compact fluorescents with which consumers are currently replacing them.

As well as the green argument, there are manpower savings from LED’s longevity. Cities such as San Francisco, San Jose, New York and Minneapolis are testing LED street lamps that will not need regular bulb replacement by lighting crews. In retail, Walmart and Starbucks are replacing lighting in their US stores with LED bulbs to cut energy consumption.

But as big semiconductor makers such as Samsung and Micron begin to take an interest in the LED industry, it could eventually take on the same characteristics as the DRAM, or flash memory, industries, according to analyst Daniel Amir.

The LED industry will then become cyclical, with a period of oversupply as early as the second half of 2011, according to Lazard, although demand should still be growing at rates of 20 to 30 per cent a year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Decorating a Green New Year

The New Year holidays are just around the bend! For all you holiday planners with decorating on the brain, make sure to light up your holiday nights this year with the greenest lights available – LEDS.

If you made the switch from traditional energy-sucking holiday lights to efficient LED ones this year, we applaud you. But we also know that they aren’t the cheapest thing in the world. That’s why were absolutely delighted to receive this clever tip from reader SleepySyrup that lets you leverage your LED light investment into something that can provide you with light year-round instead of just around the holidays:

“A string of LED holiday lights, combined with a two-dollar socket adapter from your local home-improvement store, can transform a lamp or overhead light into an eco-friendly light source. A 50-bulb string uses less than 5 watts of electricity, and, this time of year, they can be had for a fraction of the price of a commercial LED bulb.”

LEDs use 10% the electricity of incandescents, and are 90% more efficient than their old-school tungsten counterparts. They’re perfect for strings of holiday lights, because they don’t get hot, they last forever and when one burns out, it doesn’t take the whole chain with it! You’ll get a full 100,000 hours out of most LEDs, they’re made with less nasty chemicals, and come in all kinds of festive shapes! What more could you ask for? Read on for some suggestions on where to buy…

The Future of LED Lighting Industry

Even better, the industry offers a superior product with an earth-first attitude. The LED light bulb, which use current passed through a diode to provide light, is in the midst of serious growth. Databeans, a leader in electronics market research, estimates that the global LED market will grow to $5.3 billion by the need of this year. An impressive figure by itself, this number is all the more striking when taken into account that very few consumers are using LEDs, as they are currently far more common in commercial applications.

The rate of growth is remarkable, but the fact that the size of the energy efficient light bulb industry is growing should come as a surprise to no one. These bulbs provide significant financial savings by reducing energy costs up to 75% compared to incandescent bulbs. Maintenance costs are also lowered due to a far longer life (up to 50 times longer than incandescent lamps. This also means less time spend climbing ladders, recycling bulbs, and dealing with outages. Other benefits of LED light bulbs include a much cooler operating temperature and more flexible color options.

The most important reason for the growth of the LED light bulb industry is that these bulbs have a much smaller environmental footprint. Less energy used due to an efficient product and less trash in our landfills due to a longer life and fewer replacements are both very compelling reasons for eco-conscious companies to make the shift today. LEDs are great as part of your commercial lighting plan, which should be developed with a lighting consultant or expert.

Many vendors offer affordable LED light bulbs. Where suppliers really differentiate themselves is in the level of expertise which they bring to the table. Companies such as Superior Lighting, Ft. Lauderdale’s energy efficient lighting experts, understand this entirely. Their wealth of knowledge enables them to work with their clients to develop cost-effective energy-efficient lighting plans for both commercial and residential applications. Anyone thinking about going green should give them a call today to see what they can do for you.

Superior Lighting’s, Ft. Lauderdale’s (South Florida) energy efficient lighting expert, mission is to help our customers choose the most energy efficient lighting. We lead the lighting industry by providing the best value in products and services to all of our customers, and we differentiate ourselves on the basis of our honesty and expertise.

LED Wind Turbine Light

Windmills have inspired Mathmos to come up with Wind turbine LED lights, and you can use these lights in your gardens or inside your own room for your personal leisure.

Wind turbines are the best eco-friendly sources of energy and in this day and age we definitely need more alternative, reliable and long lasting sources of energy. These lights function based on the same principle of windmills, and they light up as you blow on them.

So you can now enjoy a relaxed breezy evening and a nice dinner in your garden lit up with these LED lights for only $14.99 at ThinkGeek.com. They are also small enough to be mounted on your bedroom window too, if you fancy that! Some other eco-friendly lights and lamps that you can look at are the Spray Can lighting and Spark green energy lamp.

Sure! It is really cool. What is the application of this LED? I think it will be not widely used in our life but the idea is helpful to our future design.