Cree, Inc. has been awarded ENERGY STAR ^® qualifications for its LED downlights. The product line, including the LR6, LR5 and LR4 downlights, has demonstrated LED lifetime and fixture efficacy that qualifies for the stringent commercial rating, as well as the residential rating.

ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that helps consumers and organizations save money and protect the environment by promoting energy-efficient products. Products earning the commercial ENERGY STAR qualification must meet extended lifetime criteria, which is 40 percent longer than residential standards.

"Being rated for both commercial and residential applications is especially significant since more than three-quarters of the LED lighting we are deploying today is in commercial installations," said Neal Hunter, president, Cree LED Lighting. "Cree also provides the highest color rendering of any ENERGY STAR-qualified LED downlight. In stark contrast to compact fluorescent devices that contain toxic mercury, Cree's non-toxic LED fixtures deliver better efficiency and render colors such that the user doesn't have to compromise their lighting experience."

The Cree LR6 recessed downlight is available and qualified in two color temperatures (2700K and 3500K), and boasts efficiency of more than 54 lumens per watt with lumen output of 650 lumens--higher than any other qualified recessed downlight. The LR6 was the first recessed downlight to receive the ENERGY STAR commercial qualification.

The Cree family of LED downlights excels in delivering beautiful, efficient LED light in a manner that surpasses even the most stringent ENERGY STAR standards, as set out in the SSL ENERGY STAR 1.1 criteria for Category A: Recessed Downlights.

	ENERGY STAR Residential	ENERGY STAR Commercial	Cree LED Lighting Downlights
Efficacy	35 lumens per Watt	35 lumens per Watt	46 to 54 lumens per Watt
Color Rendering Index	75	75	91 to 94
Rated Lifetime	25,000	35,000	50,000
Minimum Lumen Output ≤4.5" diameter	375	375	515-540
Minimum Lumen Output >4.5" diameter	575 lumens	575 lumens	650 lumens
Power Factor	≥ .70	≥ .90	.96-.97

 

To see the full list of ENERGY STAR-qualified LED fixtures visit the ENERGY STAR website:

·          Residential:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=ssl.display_products_res_html

·          Commercial
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=ssl.display_products_com_html

 

About Cree

Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and setting the stage to obsolete the incandescent light bulb through the use of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting solutions, and semiconductor solutions for backlighting, wireless and power applications.

Cree's product families include recessed LED downlights, blue and green LED chips, high-brightness LEDs, lighting-class power LEDs, power-switching devices and radio-frequency/wireless devices. Cree solutions are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, electronic signs and signals, variable-speed motors, and wireless communications.

For additional product and company information, please refer to www.CreeLEDlighting.com

CREE introduces the LRP-38 LED lamp that provides a tightly-focused beam, exceptional color quality, extended life and unmatched energy-efficiency.

Designed for display and retail installations, the Cree LRP-38 is a narrow beam spotlight for use in supermarket produce displays, department stores, and museums--especially where exceptional color quality is valued. The lamp is currently being evaluated in grocery, department and furniture stores, as well as in big box retailers, where it replaced halogen and ceramic metal halide bulbs.

The Cree LRP-38 uses Cree TrueWhite(TM) technology to generate a CRI of 92 at a color temperature of 2700K. The lamp is designed to last 50,000 hours in open track fixtures or 35,000 in non-IC commercial recessed downlights.

The lamp has a unique optical design that maximizes the amount of light within the beam while minimizing the source brightness- so the eye is focused on the merchandise, not the light source.

With this product Cree extends the quality and performance of their award-winning LED lights into beam-controlled retrofit lamps.

The Cree LRP-38 will be sold through Cree LED Lighting sales channels and is currently shipping in volume, with high preliminary demand.

For additional product and company information, please refer to www.CreeLEDLighting.com

More than 4,200 LR24 recessed LED luminaires are planned for installation in Wedge 5 of the Pentagon as part of a major renovation.

  The Cree LR24 luminaires have undergone extensive government testing and business-case analysis, including a preliminary Pentagon installation to meter the fixtures and compare the results to the alternative fluorescent technology.

This independent analysis demonstrated a 22% reduction in energy usage and improved light quality.

• The business-case analysis yielded a payback of less than four years.
• The payback analysis considered energy savings, lifetime maintenance savings, savings from reduced load on the HVAC system, and elimination of hazardous waste disposal fees for mercury-laden fluorescent bulbs.
• Extensive modeling was also performed to determine optimal lighting design--analyzing the light distribution and spacing to ensure superior lighting and energy efficiency.
• The Wedge 5 installation is estimated to save 140 tons of CO2 emissions per year.

"The U.S. federal government is taking a leadership role in energy efficiency for federal buildings both through existing mandates, as well as President-elect Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which calls for the renovation of public buildings to make them more energy efficient," said Chuck Swoboda, Cree chairman and chief executive officer. "Installations of highly efficient, low-maintenance LED lighting, like these in the Pentagon and in the U.S. Federal Reserve, demonstrate that the future of energy-efficient lighting is here today."

The LED units being used for the Pentagon renovation are being purchased from Cree by the Department of Defense's (DoD) Title III program as a part of its ongoing development program with Cree, and provided to the Washington Headquarters Services (WHS), which oversees the Pentagon renovation program.

Have you thought of applying for projects that include 24/7 applications of LED lights in local public housing facilities?  Follow the money... here are some funding sources:

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG)

ARRA provided $3.2 billion for this Department of Energy (DOE) program, $2.8 billion to be distributed by formula, with the remaining $400 million to be awarded competitively.  EECBG provides grants to states and local governments for improvements in energy efficiency and to reduce energy use and fossil fuel emissions.  EECBG is a new program, receiving money for the first time due to ARRA, although it was authorized in 2007.  The block grant is administered by DOE's Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Programs in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Potential housing-related uses of EECBG include: grants to nonprofits to perform energy efficiency retrofits; financial incentives for energy efficiency improvements; energy efficiency for buildings; and, residential energy audits.  In addition there are many other eligible uses ranging from energy efficient traffic signals to carbon capture and sequestration from power plants. 

Applications from sates and local governments are due June 25.

EECBG webpage, http://www.eecbg.energy.gov

EECBG Financial Assistance Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA),
http://www.eecbg.energy.gov/downloads/DE_FOA_0000013_Amendment_000003.pdf

Experts estimate that municipalities, businesses and consumers could save up to 189 terawatt hours of energy by switching from conventional HID lights to solid-state LED fixtures, the equivalent of taking 16 million households off of the grid and $20 billion in electricity savings.

J. Dee Dennis Jr., CEO and President of Visible Light Solar Technologies says, "For 150 years it was all about pushing as many lumens out onto the ground as possible without a thought to how much heat was generated or power was used. That's over. Now, our solar/LED solutions mean we can light right, not just light big." Dennis also asserts, "By reinventing lighting and replacing all the old HID fixtures in every commercial and industrial application in the US, we can reduce our customers' power consumption by billions of kilowatt hours, taking hundreds of coal powered plants off the drawing board."

Visible Light Solar announced it has installed or is installing Vector retrofit lighting applications at 12 sites, including the Bosque School, DKD Electric, and Osuna Business Park.

Vector products let businesses significantly reduce their kilowatt consumption without having to replace their existing infrastructure of light poles, heads, casements and wiring. Visible Light Solar claims to be the first commercial and industrial lighting company to integrate LED lighting devices with solar power technology in exterior and interior retrofit lighting fixtures.

According to a statement by the company, their solar/LED lighting applications operate up to 85% more efficiently than their HID counterparts because of the integration of energy efficient LED components with solar power technologies. Linking these two technologies is Visible Light Solar's Self Powered Device Interface (SPDI), a patent-pending intelligent power management infrastructure that combines custom hardware and software to control voltage fluctuations, seamlessly switch between solar battery and grid power, and provide the ability to customize each fixture's illumination levels.

In addition to dramatically lowering energy consumption, Visible Light Solar's solutions reduce maintenance costs; LED's require far fewer changes than HID bulbs because they can last up to 100,000 hours and are resistant to thermal and vibrational shocks.

First Product Line: Vector Lighting Retrofit

Visible Light Solar's inaugural product family, Vector Lighting, addresses the need by businesses to rapidly retrofit energy-inefficient, maintenance-intensive, metal halide and mercury vapor lighting fixtures while leveraging existing light poles, heads, casing and wiring. Customers can upgrade their existing lighting applications to hybrid solar/LED or LED-only retrofit solutions with no waste and minimal incremental cost while maintaining 100% reliability by backup grid connections. Businesses can choose from an extensive line of Vector retrofit applications, including:

Street Light Heads Parking Lot Heads High Bay & Low Bay Fixtures Wall Packs Parking Garage Fixtures Bollards

Self Power Device Interface (SPDI) 

Visible Light Solar's SPDI software and hardware infrastructure extends the light quality and reliability of LED lighting technology, provides voltage balancing, and allows for fixture-by-fixture programmability. SPDI gives facility managers the ability to program illumination levels for each fixture based on clock time, motion detection, ambient light levels, temperature and solar storage availability thereby increasing businesses' ability to provide enhanced security for their customers and raise and lower illumination levels as needed in order to reap energy savings.

For Visible Light Solar's solar/LED applications, SPDI provides the intelligent interface between the solar battery, grid power and the lighting application, ensuring the fixture's optimal use of solar power while maintaining 100% reliability through its grid connection. If the solar gain on a particular day has not sufficiently charged the battery, or if the battery charge becomes low, then SPDI will automatically manage the switch from solar to grid power to ensure adequate lighting levels are maintained. Finally, SPDI manages the voltage and current driving the LED devices, controlling power spikes and maintaining LED longevity.

Visible Light Solar's Certified Installation Partner Program will provide nationwide installation and maintenance of the company's products.

Outdated mercury containing HID bulbs and PCB-laden ballasts will be responsibly recycled by National Metals as part of Visible Light Solar's corporate commitment to environmental stewardship.

Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Visible Light Solar Technologies (www.visiblelightsolar.com) is an intelligent solar and LED lighting technology company. The company is headed by J. Dee Dennis Jr., the former founder and CEO of DKD Electric, and staffed by an experience team of solar, embedded software and LED lighting technology engineers. Visible Light Solar is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society, US Green Building Council and the International Dark-Sky Association. The company is backed by the venture accelerator firm, Noribachi (www.noribachi.com).

"In the U.S., 78% of the public is completely unaware that traditional light bulbs will be phased out in 2012," reports Charles F. Jerabek, president and CEO of Osram Sylvania, a unit of Siemens.

By law, bulbs must be 30% more efficient than current incandescent versions beginning 2012.

Lighting manufacturers say LEDs last longer than incandescent bulbs and CFL bulbs and their energy consumption could eventually be less than fluorescent lights". They can also be made in many shapes and sizes and colors.

Unlike compact fluorescents bulbs, LED lights contain no mercury and they work well in cold weather. They also provide more pleasing light than fluorescents.

LED applications that already are capturing marketshare include large warehouses, garages and street-lighting fixtures, flexible light ribbons, and replacements for the halogen reflector lamps used in kitchens and offices.

Strips of flexible LEDs put light in places where it could not otherwise fit. Later this year, Osram will market tiny LED chandelier lights that use 6 watts instead of the 15 watts typical of an incandescent version.

Energy efficiency is a major driver of innovation and much of the industry's effort is aimed at making LED lamps that emit as much light as a 60-watt or 75-watt incandescent bulb.

Cree, a leading researcher and manufacturer of LEDs, has developed a new version of its LED ceiling fixture that uses 6.5 watts, compared with the 11 watts used by last year's model, to create the light of a standard 65-watt lamp.

Even with a wide range of LED products available, CFL bulbs will be the a popular consumer choice for many years because of LEDs' high prices  the challenge of delivering bright bulbs. Consumers like bright light!

But the sea change is coming -- GE Lighting, a division of General Electric, is devoting 50% of its research and development money to LED-related technologies.

Technology Change Brings With It Business Model Change

Long-lasting bulbs will remove the "replacement" factor from the lighting business model. Light bulb companies have to shift away from making most of their money selling replacement bulbs.

The industry is still reeling from the market's rejection of early CFLs that produced unacceptable quality. They are taking extra care that the same reaction doesn't happen with their introduction of LED lighting to the consumer marketplace.

Read the complete article at New York Times

During the campaign, President-elect Obama committed to overhaul how DOE sets appliance standards.

Under court orders and Congressional deadlines, the incoming administration must complete at least 25 new energy efficiency standards within the next four years.

Tubular Fluorescent Lamps in Offices Tops Energy Projections!

Among the first up will be a new standard for the tubular fluorescent lamps found in most offices.

According to DOE’s preliminary analysis, this standard could deliver more energy savings than any other DOE has ever completed.

Read more at ACEEE.org

Live theatre is heavily dependent of reliable lighting, and very concerned about costs.  With today's lighting innovations such as solar, LED, CFL and HID fixtures and bulbs, it's possible for theatres to upgrade their lighting to save money and provide greater creativity and flexibility for their productions. 

Lighting, Sound and Video Costs for Theatres

The issues of lighting, sound and video involve fewer raw materials than sets and costuming, but require management of and storage space for a capital inventory of related technology. But as technology for performance evolves and expands the energy resources necessary to produce at a professional level increase and/or shift. Sound and video have experienced large advances in technology in recent years that have increased energy efficiency of devices used while also seeing prices drop. But, they have also increased in fidelity and controllability in such a way as to create a larger demand for a larger variety of devices. This leaves the question of the overall impact these advances have had on energy consumption for these areas of design. However, the essential technology for lighting has remained unchanged since the invention of the electric light.

Theatrical Luminaries

Large steps have been made in efficiency and efficacy of theatrical luminaries, but all other electrical devices pale in comparison to the overall demand that the electrical loads of theatrical lighting. Quite some noise can be made with a few Meyer Sound wide coverage loudspeakers, each having a peak load of 2.55kw (Meyer).

Using methodology from the EPA and Solar Buzz, an online solar technology resource, one can convert the power consumption of this show into a number of equivalents. To produce the power to be able to provide the capacity for this show one would need to spend $1,347,527.40 for a solar array based on the national average of the price per watt of existing commercially available technology.

Running with all lighting intensities at full this design would create 10.88 metric tons of CO2 over the ten performance run of the show. This is equivalent to the yearly emissions of two passenger cars, the yearly energy consumption of an American home, 25.29 barrels of gasoline and would require nine acres of pine to offset. Simply using the conventional electrically grid costs $2,739.79 per hour and requires an HVAC system to compensate for a thermal gain of 877,849.80 btu/hour.

Strides have been made to increase both efficiency and efficacy of theatrical lighting. The largest leap in both occurred in 1992 when Electronic Theater Controls (ETC) introduced the Source Four.

The Source Four not only included features that made huge steps in the usability of theatrical luminaries, it also introduction new reflector and lamp technology. Due to filament design and the integration into more efficient aluminized (now dichroic) reflectors, the High Performance Lamp or HPL is able to produce the same luminous flux, or perceived power of light, as most 1kw lighting instruments with only 575w (ETC). Future strides, within the same product line included the introduction of a 375w lamp and continued improvements of reflector and optic technology. But, as far as these strides advance the state of the art, each lamp is still an incandescent source and is still losing 90% of the energy consumed to heat, as opposed to the 30% -40% of fluorescents.

• The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, has mandated phasing out the sale of incandescent lamps by 2014 (United States).
• Australia has passed a similar ban to phase out incandescents by 2010
• Ireland plans to by 2009
• Both Brazil and Venezuela both started to phase out incandescents in 2005 without an outright ban.
• California has proposed beating the United States deadline by having banned incandescent sales by 2012 (Kurtzman 1), but even before these bans began, California enacted Title 24 in 1978, most recently updating the standard in 2005, which requires high efficiency lighting in all new construction.

While homes, offices, and retail space will see noticeable differences with this legislation, fields requiring specialized lighting devices will be relatively unchanged. Tom Littrell of ETC remarks, "Most of the energy stuff - ASHRAE, California's Title 24, etc. exempts "portable" lighting, i.e. stage fixtures that you re-hang every now and then, from the watt-per-squarefoot guidelines that govern the rest of the buildings.

Fluorescent, Compact Fluorescent (CFL), High Intensity Discharge (HID), Light Emitting Diode (LED)

Fluorescent, Compact Fluorescent (CFL), High Intensity Discharge (HID), Light Emitting Diode (LED) and more are all viable for a number of applications. Many of these technologies have been incorporated into instrumentation for theatrical applications as well, but there are a number of hurdles that prevent lighting suppliers and theaters from changing.

Control is the largest issue. Theatrical applications primarily use large banks of high capacity resistance dimmers coupled with computerized control consoles using the DMX 512 standard to provide designers with extensive control over luminaries in a light plot.

• Fluorescents and HID lamps require ballasts to be used with the alternating current (AC) that our electrical grid is based upon and this change in resistance in the dimmers damages both the ballasts and the lamps.
• Dimmable fluorescent technology is fairly new and uses specialized ballasts and require two separate powered connections, one for power and the other for dimming control.
• HID lamps are themselves not dimmable, but fixtures have been designed to use them with a mechanic douser that reduces the about of luminous flux that escapes the instrument.
• LED lights are photon-emitted semiconductors and AC power causes them to flicker since they only allow electricity to flow in one direction. They also require voltage to be dropped from the standard 120v American standard and must be dimmed through specialized magnetic ballasts. To provide control for these newer technologies would mean not only replacing lamps and luminaries but also the electrical infrastructure of a theater, costing tens of thousands of dollars.

The ability to accurately represent color is measured by the color-rending index (CRI). Incandescent light has a CRI of 100, and reproduces all visible color accurately across the spectrum. Alternatives are able to match this benchmark, the best of these technologies having CRI in the low 90s, while an HID lamp like a low pressure sodium lamp may be nearly zero.

Many LED fixtures are touted for their ability to produce most any color through color mixing of red, green and blue diodes, occasionally packaged with whites diodes. While this does produce color accurately when reflected off a surface, this light has wide gaps in the spectrum created by the severe spikes in each LED's color.

But benchmarks aside, the most concrete barrier is cost. Most non-profit theaters maintain an inventory of lighting instrumentation. The price from B&H Photo for a Source Four is about $325. ETC manufactures an HID version of this lamp that uses a specialized ballast and lists for $750, also from B&H Photo.

The costs of building new inventories of lighting instruments without industry standard resistance dimmer racks are huge when dealing with hundreds of fixtures. The cost difference for instrumentation alone based on these published prices is nearly $100,000 without purchasing the necessary dousers form dimming or considering the costs of electrical and control infrastructure. Any theater that already has an inventory would be even harder pressed to expend the additional amount while also give their existing inventory over to obsolescence. Many well established theaters have already invested in changing over their inventories to Source Four instruments in the last decade and would find a change over of this scale especially hard.

The success of the Source Four is due to the fact that it puts more light on stage with less power and less heat gain. LEDs were embraced because they offered accurate color mixing, have extremely long lamp lives and draw a fraction of the power of conventional incandescent instruments while producing negligible heat. The benefit is not just on the electric expense for lighting, but also reducing the burden on resource hungry climate control. Though new efficient, power-saving lighting technology does result in environmental benefits, the bottom line has always been the primary concern.

 

Platinum LEED doesn't necessarily mean energy efficient operations

Portland Center Stage recently completed a new theater for themselves that received Platinum LEED certification. This is a stunning achievement for PCS, but even with a "green" building, they are trying to figure out how to make their productions "greener". They have made big steps in maximizing their resourcefulness in scenic and costume design, based partially on their sustainable goals, but also on the necessity of fiscal efficiency in being a non-profit theater. They are an all Source Four house as well.

How can we increase ecological sustainability without jeopardizing organizational sustainability? Demand exists for improvement, but no changes will be undertaken without the ability to justify the expense.

Theatrical operations players and providers

Phillips recently purchased Genlyte, a collection of theatrical lighting companies including major control and dimming powerhouse Strand Lighting, the creators of moving lights Varilite, and LED revolutionaries Color Kinetics. The largest manufacturer of energy efficient compact fluorescents is now horizontally integrated into all of theatrical lighting.

Mike Lawler, writer of the ecoTheater blog and long time theatrical designer/technician, points out that most people working in theater have a college degree and many have master's degrees. If sustainability and the efficiency of resources is integrated in all fields of high education for theater those next generation of theater artists being pushed to be innovative in aesthetics and storytelling could be doing so with maximization of available resources in mind.

Expanding the budgeting process for production beyond raw materials to include intangible resources lighting energy could not only push lighting designers to make better choices, but allow them to do so with the intention of shifting freed up funds to newer technologies and expanding their visual vocabulary.

Theaters Working on Sustainability Improvements

• The California Institute of the Arts School of Theater has begun to integrate sustainability instruction into its curriculum and in coordination with facilities has been working to develop new strategies for more sustainable production.
• Mo'oelo Performing Arts in San Diego has started building a new model for a small non-profit theater company and has been rewarded with a partnership with LORT heavy the La Jolla Playhouse.
• New York Theater Workshop is set to break ground on a new LEED certified shop this summer.
• Actor Gideon Banner has been working to fund his Green Theater Initiative in New York City;
• Sharon Swingle has created thegreentheater.org as a discussion board for ideas on how to make theaters more ecologically sustainable in Northern California.
• The Electric Lodge in Venice, California, a largely solar powered facility has grown two local Los Angles Theater heroes, Joel Shapiro and Justin Yoffe, a cultural supervisor for the city of Santa Monica. They have developed a one-page standard called the Arts Earth Partnership (AEP) for small to mid-sized performing arts companies to build eco-friendly practices in their operations and offices.
• In coordination with Miranda Wright, a second year grad student at the California Institute of the Arts and the Law Firm for Non Profits, I have started to create a venture called the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts.

A number of other projects and groups are in the works or just emerging and rally around not an idea of strict environmentalism but a combined ecological, organizational, economical model of sustainability.

SOURCE: Digested version of "The Ecological Sustainability of Theatrical Lighting"
by Ian Garrett
MFA3 Lighting Design & Producing Student, California Institute of the Arts
Presented at the "Constructed Light, Constructed Meaning" Visual Culture Graduate Student Conference
April 12, 2008, St. Louis University

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