Induction Light Retrofit...

"light is clean" 

Car Dealership saves $11,000 Annually after Induction Light Retrofit Project  

The concept of induction lighting has been around for over 100 years, but has seen a recent resurgence with incentives from government and utility companies.  One of the main attractions of induction lighting is the incredibly long lifetime. In a fluorescent lamp, the electrodes at either end are the weakest link, and the lamp usually fails when the cathode coating on one of the electrodes is depleted after 15,000-20,000 hours. Induction lamps however, have no such electrodes, so their rated lifetimes are as long as 100,000 (that's over 11 years, running 24/7).  In addition they offer energy-savings from traditional HID light sources while providing the same or better light.  They also have good vibration resistance and low starting temperatures, making them a great choice for outdoor and difficult to maintain and access lighting applications.

Premier Lighting recently worked with Merit Chevrolet in Maplewood, Minnesota to retrofit forty-five 1000 watt shoe box metal halide fixtures located on 24' poles with forty-five energy saving 500 watt shoe box induction light fixtures.  In addition, ten 500 watt induction fixtures were installed on the dealership building to replace the original ten 1000 watt metal halide fixtures on the building.  The project also replaced two 250 watt high pressure sodium wall packs located at the garage door entrances into the dealership with 150 watt induction wall packs.  

The picture below shows the Induction Light Fixtures installed. 

The energy saving induction light fixtures reduced energy usage at Merit Chevrolet from 57.1 Kilowatts annually to 25.9 Kilowatts annually. This resulted in an energy savings of almost $11,000 annually and had a payback of only 2.5 years. Merit Chevrolet also received a $12,000 rebate from Xcel Energy as an incentive to retrofit to the energy saving induction lighting system.

The long life of the induction lamps will also reduce the maintenance costs at Merit Chevrolet by over $5,000/year, with less need for an electrician and a bucket truck to replace the shorter life metal halide lamps and ballasts on the 24' poles.

Chris Rinkel, owner of Merit Chevrolet said after the installation of the induction light fixtures; "the place is lit up like a baseball field, the light is clean and shines evenly over the entire lot".  Chris also likes the standard ten year warranty that comes with the induction fixtures.

For more information on induction lighting and how your facility could benefit from this contact Premier Lighting. 

Lightfair 2011...LED's and more LED's

More manufacturer's offer more LED options 

Lightfair International is one of the best indicators in the lighting market of the pace of product innovation, and you didn't have to take more than 10 steps onto the show floor in Philadelphia this week to see that manufacturers are spending big money to bolster offerings of LEDs.

LEDs once again dominated the show. Over the past decade at Lightfair, LED lamps have quickly spread from accent lighting and special-effect lighting to screw-in replacements for lower wattage incandescents. At this year's show, more manufacturers than ever before were showcasing LED lighting in parking lot and street lighting and the use of wireless technology to control LED lighting systems.

LED fixture manufacturers said LEDs have become a popular option to light streets and parking lots and walkways because their long life can cut down on the high cost of lamp replacement in these applications. EYE Lighting International, Mentor, Ohio, was among many manufacturers launching new outdoor lighting fixtures at the show. Rob Freitag, the company's V.P. of marketing, said Lightfair was EYE Lighting's "coming out party" for k�aroLED, its new line of outdoor LED fixtures.

Several manufacturers were marketing new wireless control packages for LED lighting systems. Lighting Science Group, Satellite Beach, Fla., demonstrated how homeowners could control LED lights with Android applications on tablet computers and said they were the first lighting company to develop a lighting app for Google Inc.'s recently announced Android@Home application.

Another quick indicator of the growth of LED lighting is Lightfair's annual Product Innovation Awards, and LEDs once again dominated the competition. While the category for conventional lamps, which includes incandescent, fluorescent and high-intensity discharge (HID) technology, only attracted a handful of entrants, the specialty lamp category, which includes LEDs, OLEDs and induction lighting, had several dozen entrants. There were dozens of other LED lighting fixtures and LED lighting controls among the competition's 239 entrants. The top winners were:

Most Innovative Product of the Year. Revel by Acuity Brands

Design Excellence Award. Low-Voltage LED Wall Wash/Flood by Tech Lighting-Generation Brands

Technical Innovation Award. LUXEON A by Philips Lumileds

Copyright, Electrical Wholesaling, G-Biz, May 23, 2011  

For more information on LED lighting options and how your facility could benefit from LED lighting contact Premier Lighting.  

LED's Hit Mainstreet...Mall of America, Walmart!

MOA largest LED conversion!

 

Writing in the Reader's Digest in 1963, a scientist named Nick Holonyak Jr., who then worked for General Electric and is now a professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at the University, predicted that light-emitting diodes, better known as LEDs, would replace the incandescent light bulb of GE's founder, Thomas Edison.

Holonyak, who is known as the father of the LED, wasn't wrong.

He was just early.

LEDs haven't replaced incandescents in homes -- not yet, anyway -- because they're pricey.  But energy-efficient white LEDs like the one below are increasingly replacing HID (high intensity discharge) lights in indoor and outdoor parking lots. They're finding their way into commercial buildings, too.

Beginning in July, the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., will replace 5,400 metal halide and high pressure sodium fixtures in its parking ramps with specially designed new fixtures like the one above featuring LED technology from Acuity Brands.  It's thought to be the largest LED conversion that has ever taken place -- the giant mall has more than 12,000 parking places to light!

Meanwhile, Walmart has decided that all of the parking lots at new Walmart supercenters, Walmart Markets and Sam's Club will be lit with LED fixtures from GE. This decision comes after three years of research and testing of LEDs at stores in Kansas and Arkansas, as well as work with other retailers who were brought together by the U.S. Department of Energy's Commercial Building Energy Alliances.

You can't get more mainstream than the Mall of America and Walmart.

"It's a new technology, and that's normally a barrier," said Ralph Williams, who is senior electrical engineering manager at Walmart. "You can get on the wrong edge of the leading edge." But the pilot tests in the U.S. and Central America, where higher electricity rates made LEDs a better deal, as well as his conversations with government officials and other retailers, persuaded him that LEDs provide the bright, safe, customer-friendly light that the retailer wants.

Here's a Walmart parking lot in Guatemala City before LED lights were installed.

Here is the same lot after the LED's.

Mike Naylor, the vice president and general manager for outdoor lighting at Acuity, which is doing the Mall of America job, told me: "We're just now entering a time when LEDs are applicable to outdoor and indoor parking structures. We just turned the corner in the last two years or so."

Roughly speaking, he said, LED fixtures cost two to three times as much as the equivalent HID fixture. "That causes some people to choke down pretty hard." But the LED bulbs use about 50 percent to 60 percent less energy to produce the equivalent light. Payback, as a result, is about five years, not including savings from reduced maintenance. LED bulbs are expected to last as long as 10 years.

Rich Hoge, director of technical operations and construction at the Mall of America, said the big retrofit will cost about $3 million and that the mall expects to reduce its energy costs by about $500,000 a year. The project was helped along by a $500,000 federal stimulus grant and low-cost financing from the city of Bloomington. "The stimulus money had a big impact" on the decision to go forward, Hoge said.

Uh, stimulus money for a megamall? It's not the best imaginable use of your tax dollars and mine, but it will provide clear public benefits -- reduced greenhouse gas emissions from a 50 percent or more cut in energy usage, plus a boost for a still-new technology whose costs will decline as demand rises. Industry experts say the costs of LEDs are falling about 10 percent or more a year, even as the performance improves by 10 percent.

Acuity, by the way, calls itself "one of the world's leading providers of luminaires, lighting control systems and related products and services." Based in Atlanta, it generated sales of more $1.6 billion last year. In a recent letter to shareholders, the company's chairman and CEO, Vernon Nagel, wrote:

The lighting industry is on the dawn of a new era driven by significant and ever increasing pace of change in technology, particularly as lighting sources go electronic and incorporate new intelligent capabilities and features. This will drive more change in the lighting industry over the next decade than the industry has experienced in the previous century.

As I said, Nick Holonyak wasn't wrong when he predicted the end of incandescent bulbs back in the 1960s -- just early.

Copyright Marc Gunther, GreenBiz Published, May 27, 2011