News Updates for the Week of February 18, 2013

1.     DOE Plans to Alter Lighting Facts Program - At the Strategies in Light conference, a US DOE said that later this year manufacturers can get Lighting Facts Label recognition for all members of a product family, while only fully testing one product in the family to the LM-79 standard. The manufacturer will then calculate or extrapolate performance figures for other products in the family for submission to the Lighting Facts program.  For now, only lighting manufacturers with at least a year of history in the program, ten or more products submitted previously, and a clean track record will be allowed to participate. Each manufacturer will define its own related products grouping and the method by which they will calculate results for the products that don’t go through testing. The Lighting Facts program will review and approve that work before manufacturers can get the Lighting Facts listing.  http://ledsmagazine.com/news/10/2/13

 

2.     Tax Break for Energy-Saving Improvements Is Back - The fiscal cliff legislation, which Congress passed on New Year’s Day, revived the tax credit for energy-efficiency improvements for both 2012 and 2013. If you made any eligible improvements in 2012 -- after the credit expired -- dig up the receipts before you file your taxes for the year because you may get a tax break after all. These new rules should also be kept in mind when planning home improvements for 2013. http://money.msn.com/tax-tips/post.aspx?post=8cd88651-dc7f-485d-b8cf-a071239aa8dd

3.     Sharp Announces 100W COB LED Delivering 14,000 Lm - Sharp is apparently adding a 100W chip-on-board (COB) LED to its Zenigata family. The GW7GAL50SGC LED will output 14,000 lm, and achieve efficacy of 143 lm/W while targeting solid-state lighting applications such as street lights and high-bay lighting. The 50W Mega Zenigata LEDs measure 20×24 mm. The new 100W device is 86.8 mm measured from one point of the hexagon to the opposite point, and 75 mm measured from flat side to flat side.  http://ledsmagazine.com/news/10/2/10

4.     Next Generation Luminaires Design Competition Announces 2012 Outdoor Winners - Winners in the Outdoor category of the fifth annual Next Generation Luminaires™ Solid-State Lighting Design Competition were announced at the Strategies in Light conference in Santa Clara, CA. They came from four different manufacturers and covered four different areas of outdoor lighting:

• The Lighting Quotient for its for its fraqtir™ Outdoor – Style S170 facade lighting fixture
• Relume Technologies, Inc. for its Oxford decorative acorn streetscape and walkway fixture
• GE Lighting for its Evolve™ LED Scalable Cobrahead roadway lighting fixture
• Edge Lighting for its TV and Dial LED decorative wall sconces

More information on all the winning entries is available at www.ngldc.org

5.     2013 Lighting for Tomorrow Competition Launched - Lighting for Tomorrow launched its 11th consecutive annual competition at the Dallas Market, January 17-20, 2013. The competition is widening its scope in 2013 with the inclusion of OLED fixtures, and continuing with a broad range of residential LED products such as fixtures, retrofit kits, and replacement lamps. Entries in this competition will be judged on the basis of lighting performance, marketability, and energy efficiency. The first deadline for entries is April 5, 2013. Winners will be announced during an award ceremony at the ALA Conference, September 24, 2013 in Austin, TX. For complete guidelines and rules for the 2013 competition: http://www.lightingfortomorrow.com/

6.     NAED NATIONAL MEETING, May 4-7, 2013 | Boston Marriott Copley Place | Boston, MA -Early Bird Registration Deadline: March 27.  The National provides a venue for a vigorous exchange of ideas complete with networking, visionary keynotes, educational speakers and some of the industry's best distributors and suppliers. You'll find all the ideas, strategies and information you need to be successful in one place.  http://www.naed.org/national/#tabs-5

7.     Indoor Positioning Systems: We Know Where You Are - Studies have found that people spend 80-90% of their time   indoors. So it's no surprise that one of the most promising technologies for buildings is Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS). An IPS simply locates objects and people in a building and provides location dependent information. Such data could be used optimize the building operations, correlating the occupant data to building systems, energy consumption, space utilization,  and even using the data for renovations of existing buildings or design of new buildings. So we track and locate people and objects outdoors in real-time via GPS; IPS provides for similar tracking indoors. http://www.smart-buildings.com/uploads/1/1/4/3/11439474/2013febindoor.pdf