News Updates for the Week of November 19

1.      Osram Sylvania Wins Race to Offer 100W-Equivalent LED A-Lamp - Just a few weeks back, Philips Lighting announced that it was readying to ship its 100W-equivalent and that the lamps would be in Home Depot by December 1. So the race is mainly for bragging rights, but the availability of 100W-equivalent LED lamps is a positive move for the industry.  The Osram lamp is selling for $50 at Lowe's now. Philips has said that Home Depot will price its product at $55.  The Sylvania product outputs 1600 lm with efficacy of 80 lm/W. It has a CRI of 80 color temperature of 2700K, 25,000-hr rated life, and is dimmable to 10%.  Philips says its lamp will deliver 1780 lm and is a 22W lamp. Both are A-21. Back at LFI, GE Lighting said its lamp would deliver 1600 lm and consume 27W and will be A-19. http://ledsmagazine.com/news/9/11/6

2.      LIGHTFAIR to Move to San Diego in 2016 - The 2016 staging at the San Diego Convention Center marks the San Diego premiere for LFI, which is produced alternately annually in large east- and west-coast venues. The San Diego location follows LFI’s long-running staging in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Convention Center, its west-coast venue beginning in 1998, continuing in 2001 and then recurring in even years 2004-2012. LIGHTFAIR^® International 2013 is set to produce the single-largest trade show and conference in its 24-year history April 21-25 in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center, which will house important new category additions accommodated by expansion to an additional exhibit hall. www.lightfair.com

3.      World LED Lighting Markets (2012 Update) - The LED lighting market is growing, driven predominantly by supportive legislation phasing out inefficient lighting technologies. Frost & Sullivan research service examines the global LED lighting market, providing specific breakdowns for North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of World. Decreasing prices, improving quality, and increasing technical advantages are significant influences on the market’s anticipated growth trajectory. The study period is 2008-2018, with a base year of 2011 and a seven-year forecast period of 2012-2018. Key market drivers and restraints, market engineering measurements, and forecasts and trends for the total market, are analyzed. http://www.frost.com

4.      Google Investing in Green Energy in Greene County, Iowa - Google invested $75 million in a 50 MW wind farm in Rippey, a small town in Greene County, Iowa, bringing the company just short of $1 billion in investments in green energy projects. The wind farm, developed by RPM Access, is expected to produce enough energy to power over 15,000 Iowa homes. It uses turbines produced by Nordex USA at their Jonesboro, Arkansas facility. The energy produced by the wind farm has been contracted to the Central Iowa Power Cooperative, an Iowa-based utility that will deliver the energy to local consumers. http://www.google.com/green/energy/investments/

5.      LEDucation Expands Expo Floor for 7th Annual Educational Event/Expo on MARCH 20, 2013 in NYC - The new larger expo space at the Penn Plaza Pavilion allows for additional exhibitors to join the long list of veteran exhibitors from previous years. Exhibit hours for 2013 will begin with expo doors opening at 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. LED presentations will begin at 11:00 a.m. thru 7:00 p.m. Visit theLEDucation website (leducation.org) for details on attending, exhibiting, and educational sessions or visit the host website at (www.dlfny.com).

6.      Lighting for Aging Vision & Health - Robert Dupuy, IALD, LC & Eunice Noell-Waggoner, LC provide an in depth perspective on the subject of lighting for aging vision & health for the November session of the Human Centric Lighting Committee. http://humancentriclighting.com/?p=738

7.      White Paper: Choosing the Right LED Product for Industrial Applications - If you’re using HID or HPS fixtures, your lighting energy costs are probably in the range of $1 per square foot per year--meaning that your 200,000 square foot facility likely costs $200,000 annually. The way to reduce that massive energy expense is to upgrade to industrial LED lighting, which can reduce lighting energy use up to 90%. This white paper by Digital Lumens provides a comprehensive overview of the industrial LED alternatives—from plain LED fixtures to Intelligent LED Lighting Systems. http://ecmweb.com/whitepapers/white-paper-choosing-right-led-product-industrial-applications

8.      PECO Develops Additional Programs to Help Customers Save Energy and Money - On November 1 PECO filed a plan with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for enhanced PECO Smart Ideas energy efficiency programs for residential and business customers. Following PUC review and approval the new programs would be available beginning in June, 2013. Included in PECO's filing are seven new programs for residential and business customers as well as the continuation of six existing programs. The programs are part of the company's ongoing support of Pennsylvania Act 129 and specifically the second phase of Act 129 energy efficiency and conservation targets. To view PECO's filing visit www.peco.com. To learn more visit www.peco.com/SmartIdeas.

9.      Maine Ripe for Energy-Efficiency Savings - Maine homes and businesses could trim their overall electricity consumption by 16 percent over the next decade by installing more-efficient lights, equipment and appliances, a new study for Efficiency Maine Trust has concluded. Efficiency Maine, an independent agency, was set up three years ago as a trust to guide and administer energy-efficiency and alternative energy programs in Maine. It spent $45 million in its first two years, with the money coming from a small surcharge on electricity bills. That spending leveraged as much as $50 million in private participation.  http://www.efficiencymaine.com/about

10.   An Afterlife for the Electric Car - Advocates of electric cars and renewable energy have talked for years about repackaging the battery packs built for cars as home energy storage devices once they can no longer hold enough charge to run a vehicle. The idea behind the prototype is two-fold: to provide a market for past-their-prime batteries, giving them a resale value that will lower their cost of ownership, and providing distributed storage that could be used to shore up weak spots on the grid or to absorb energy from intermittent sources like solar panels and wind machines and deliver it in a steady stream suitable for the power grid. A battery pack from a Chevy Volt. A new prototype lashes five of them together in an array that is supposed to provide two hours of electricity for three to five average houses. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/

11.  Ford, Toyota Will Lead Plug-in Electric Vehicle Sales in the U.S. Through 2020 - Assembly lines in Japan and the United States produced more than 20,000 plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in 2011, an all-time record for such vehicles.  But optimism about the market for PEVs has gradually been replaced with a better understanding of the practical challenges of launching new models and expanding PEV sales to mainstream consumers unfamiliar with the technology.  Nevertheless, according to a recent report from Pike Research, sales of PEVs in the United States will climb steadily over the remainder of this decade with Ford and Toyota leading the way in the U.S. from 2012 to 2020. http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/plug-in-electric-vehicles

News Updates for the Week of November 28

 

1.     Switching to Efficient Lighting - Shopping for energy-efficient lighting can now be as quick as screwing in a light bulb. These apps not only help you find a light bulb that fits your lighting needs, but also calculate savings from replacing your current bulb and estimate the payback period:  CFL Light Bulb Savings Calculator for CFL options, EnerSave for LED options, Light Bulb Finder is an award winning app that places an order for your light bulbs. http://ase.org/topics/lighting

2.      Energy Efficient Lighting for Commercial Markets - For more than 130 years, the world has relied on variations of incandescent and gas-discharge lamps to illuminate commercial buildings. With the rise of the general-illumination white LED lighting only a few years ago, the lighting industry is experiencing its first revolutionary change since the commercialization of the fluorescent lamp in the 1930s. As the semiconductor and software industries converge on the traditional lighting world, Pike Research expects that the lighting industry will see more change in the next five years than in the previous 50. By the end of our 10-year outlook, LED solid state lighting will not only capture over 50% of the global market, but the extraordinary lifetimes of these lamps will drive a steady decline in the commercial lamp market despite a steadily growing base of new buildings and access to electricity in emerging countries. This Pike Research report describes the key factors that are influencing the market for energy efficient lighting around the world. http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/energy-efficient-lighting-for-commercial-markets

3.      DOE Municipal Solid-State Street Lighting Consortium - The DOE Municipal Solid-State Street Lighting Consortium shares technical information and experiences related to LED street and area lighting demonstrations. The Consortium also serves as an objective resource for evaluating new products on the market intended for street and area lighting applications. Cities, power providers, and others who invest in street and area lighting are invited to join the Consortium and share their experiences. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/consortium.html

4.      Ceres, California, to Use CEC Loan to Purchase 2,200 Betaled Streetlights - The city council of Ceres, California, approved the use of a low interest loan from the California Energy Commission (CEC) for the purchase of LED streetlight fixtures earlier this week. The loan will allow the city of Ceres to convert all city-owned streetlights to LED streetlight fixtures, starting in January 2012.   Funds totaling $1.193 million will be used to purchase and install over two thousand LED streetlight fixtures manufactured by BetaLED, a division of Ruud Lighting/Cree of Sturtevant, Wisconsin. http://www.newstreetlights.com/index.htm

5.      Sacramento Parking Garage LED Installation - In the area of outdoor SSL deployments, the city of Sacramento, California has completed the installation of LED lighting in five of eight city-owned parking garages according to the Sacramento Press. The remaining three garages will be retrofitted by February. The total cost of the project is $1.3 million. But the city received utility incentives and federal and state grants to cover the cost of the SSL installation.

6.      Existing Home Sales Improved in October - According to data released Monday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), existing-home sales in October rose 1.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million.  Compared to a year ago, the current figure is up 13.5%. An ongoing positive trend is a steady decline in the number of homes on the market.  11/22 HCN

7.      Special Offers and Rebates from ENERGY STAR Partners - To encourage customers to buy energy efficient products, ENERGY STAR partners occasionally sponsor special offers, such as sales tax exemptions or credits, or rebates on qualified products. Partners also occasionally sponsor recycling incentives for the proper disposal of old products. The search is provided as a service to consumers to find such special offers or rebates where they exist, based on information that partners submit to ENERGY STAR. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=rebate.rebate_locator  

8.      Google Pulls the Plug on Its Green Energy Program - Google has decided to power down its 4-year-old REhttp://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/11/23/google-pulls-plug-its-rec-green-energy-program 

9. Shipments of LED Lamps and Luminaires to Exceed 500 Million Units in Asia Pacific by 2021 - While energy-efficient products are an expensive form of lighting for many customers in the Asia Pacific region, the higher costs are increasingly justified by the higher efficacy and performance compared to traditional lighting products. As a result, demand for LED products is growing among customers in developed countries such as Japan and Korea. Moreover, a number of regional and national government programs are in place to promote LED lighting, and these initiatives will serve as a key driver of the market in the coming decade. LED is now viewed as an affordable and efficient technology with long-term benefits. According to a new report from Pike Research, sales of LED lighting systems will increase rapidly over the next 10 years, accelerating sharply after 2015. Unit shipments, including lamps and luminaires, will rise from 66 million in 2011 to 542 million in 2021 – an increase of more than 700%. http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/energy-efficient-lighting-in-asia-pacific

10. Fuel Economy Leaders: 2012 Model Year - Rankings are based on combined city and highway fuel economy estimates (weighted by 55% city and 45% highway). http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/overall-high.htm