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Here’s why the new Lighting Facts label is important for consumers

Posted by Ginny Skalski

It’s official. New “Lighting Facts” labels are coming to U.S. light bulb packaging in mid-2011. Watt’s up with that? (Sorry, couldn’t resist). Well, the new labels mandated by the Federal Trade Commission mean many consumers may finally start to put “Watts” in the right context.

The Lighting Facts labels will emphasize lumens as a measure of light output instead of Watts. A graphic on the front of bulb packages will display how many lumens a bulb delivers. The back of the package will have additional information on Wattage, color temperature, etc. This change to the packaging will push people to understand that Watts measure energy consumed and lumens measure light output.

This is important because as more energy efficient lighting options (such as LEDs) are sold at the store, consumers can no longer judge the brightness of a bulb based on Watts.

Here's a look at the new labels approved by the FTC.

Back when incandescent lights were the only thing on the market, you could pretty much judge what type of light output you would get based on the Wattage (even though, it’s not the right way to measure the type of light you’ll be getting). It was safe to assume that the higher a bulb’s Wattage, the brighter it would be.

But now that energy-efficient lights such as CFLs and LEDs are taking up shelf space, many consumers must be weaned off their old shopping habits and become familiar with lumens as a measure of light output.

For example, the average 40W incandescent bulb has a light output of about 500 lumens. But a CFL that puts out 500 lumens might only consume 10 Watts. And an LED light that produces 500 lumens can consume even fewer Watts.

Other features of the new labels include:

• Wattage: You’ll still be able to see how much energy your light consumes
• Estimated yearly energy cost: That way if you’re spending more on the up-front cost of an energy-efficient bulb you’ll be able to gauge estimated savings to see the true value.
• Life based on three hours of usage a day: Since Cree LED lights are designed to last 50,000 hours, their life expectancy would be more than 45 YEARS if used for only three hours a day.
• Light Appearance: There’s a scale measuring the light from warm to cool, including the specific color temperature.  No more guessing whether soft white means warm or cool or somewhere in between.
• Mercury Alert: Bulbs that contain mercury (ah hem: CFLs and other fluorescents) will be required to disclose that on the package, and include a link to the Environmental Protection Agency’s site that details how to clean up a broken mercury-laden bulb.

The new labels are exciting because they’re really setting the stage for the LED Lighting Revolution.

“The new labels that focus on brightness in lumens will help consumers make purchasing decisions as they transition to more energy-efficient types of bulbs,” according to the FTC press release.

Do you think the new label will do a better job of educating consumers on light output v. energy consumption? Or will the new labels just confuse shoppers?

Oldest parking deck in Durham, NC, receives major facelift including LED lights

Posted by Ginny Skalski

In 1964, the city of Durham, NC, began construction on its first parking garage. The Corcoran Parking Garage is still heavily used more than 45 years later, providing daytime parking for downtown workers and evening parking for theater-goers at the Durham Performing Arts Center and even baseball fans at the nearby Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Renovations on the aging garage began last year, and are being wrapped up this month. Among the new features are 200 LED lighting fixtures, which dramatically improve visibility in the newly-painted garage.

A look at Durham's oldest parking deck after it was built in the 1960s. Photo courtesy of Endangered Durham.

I walked through the deck after a recent Durham Bulls game to get footage of the new lights and I kept declaring how amazing it was. As a former Durham resident, I’ve actually been inside this deck when it was lit with the dingy metal halide lights, and the deck felt older and not as safe. The difference with the new LED lights was truly extraordinary. There were no shadows and the signage was easily readable.

City officials say the new LED fixtures use only one-fifth of the energy consumed by the metal halide fixtures they replaced. At the 0:52 mark in this video, you’ll really notice the dramatic difference in lighting if you look at the contrast of the orange high pressure sodium streetlight glowing in front of the garage.

As part of other renovations, the City of Durham is currently installing LED lighting in another downtown parking deck and has plans for yet another. The Bull City, as it’s affectionately called by locals, joined the LED City program last month, and plans to continue considering energy-efficient LED lighting as it renovates and constructs new buildings and structures.

For a look at some original photos of the Corcoran Parking Garage as it was being built in 1964, check out this blog post on Endangered Durham.

Country Living House of the Year lit with Cree LED lights

Posted by Ginny Skalski

If you think a two-story house with shutters and a wrap-around-porch looks a little out-of-place nestled between the skyscrapers and marina in New York City’s World Financial Center, you’re not crazy. The Country Living 2010 House of the Year was airlifted in to show Manhattan what a high-end, well-built green home could look like.

The Country Living House of the Year as it's being set up in Manhattan.

The historically-inspired green modular home is on display through Thursday, so you can see for yourself how a home can consume 50 percent less energy and save thousands of gallons of water a year compared to a standard code-built house, according to Country Living.

Among the ways this home is saving energy is through the use of energy-efficient Cree LED lighting. Cree provided our LR6™LED downlights for this year’s Country Living House of the Year to demonstrate the beautiful light quality and major energy savings that can be achieved through the use of LED lighting.

We constantly hear from skeptics that LED lighting isn’t ready to light your home. But that’s simply not the case, and we’re glad that the Country Living home in Manhattan (of all places) will be yet another public demonstration of LED lighting.

The LR6 downlights that are in the house consume only 10.5 Watts of energy and are designed to last 50,000 hours. That means the lights in this house could stay on for 8 hours a day and run more than 17 years. Could you imagine not changing a light bulb for 17 years? What’s more is at the 50,000 hour mark, these LED lights shouldn’t just burn out. Instead Cree’s LED lights are designed to provide at least 70 percent of their initial light output at the 50,000 hour mark. So, depending on your lighting needs, you could still be using them 50,000 hours later.

If you would like some LR6 LED recessed lights of your own, you can try to win our monthly photo contest. Each month we giveaway five Cree LR6 downlights to one lucky winner.  Just submit a photo of bad lighting in your home or office to qualify for the June contest.

American Power Act forum will offer better understanding of potential opportunities from clean energy policy

Posted by Ginny Skalski

The following is a guest blog post written by Robin Landgon, an energy efficiency specialist with the Raleigh chapter of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Our nation is engaged in an on-going debate about the importance of long-term, clean energy and climate policy.  Much of the debate centers on the costs of such policy and makes little attempt to identify the potential enormous benefits.  In the last 24 months the volume on this debate has intensified, and this summer may present Americans with an opportunity to move beyond debate and actually make good public policy a reality.  This summer, the United States Senate will likely discuss and debate the recently introduced American Power Act, which, if enacted, could unleash economic growth and opportunity for the U.S. as well as for North Carolina.

On June 15, the Raleigh chapter of the Environmental Defense Fund will host an educational forum about the American Power Act at Cree. To RSVP for the event, RSVP to EDF here.

The idea for the June 15^th forum came about as a way to bring federal policy discussions closer to home and include North Carolinians in those discussions.  The forum’s objectives are to educate and talk with policymakers, small businesses, citizens, and other local interests about the often overlooked and significant potential benefits of long-term, clean energy policy. 

For example, wind turbines have some 8,000 component parts and robust, federal clean energy policy would encourage manufacturers to produce these parts, potentially many here in North Carolina.  Similarly, such policy could unleash market opportunities for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean technology products, including  LED lighting products.

The economic upside gets simultaneously larger and closer to home when considering both the opportunities (1) for the private capital markets to invest in innovations and other clean technology products that we currently can’t imagine and that we genuinely want to move beyond just the “drawing board”, and (2) to revitalize our communities and put ready, willing, and able workers back on the job.  The forum is designed to touch on many of these policy-driven opportunities and benefits.

Our nation, and North Carolina, has choices to make about how to move beyond our old energy habits and to consider changing how we generate, distribute, and consume energy.  We feel confident that the outcomes of the June 15^th forum on the American Power Act will (1) include a better understanding of the benefits of and opportunities from sound, clean energy policy, and (2) spark conversations, ideas, and innovations that show us all how participating in the debate is not only a matter of good public policy, but a matter of necessity.

Please be our guest — join us on June 15^th to learn more about how seemingly far away issues really do matter close to home.

Texas CandlePowerForum meetup gives flashlight fans a chance to take online conversations offline

Posted by Ginny Skalski

Matt Bransky couldn’t do his job without a bright flashlight. Matt is an aircraft mechanic for Southwest Airlines. So when planes are grounded overnight, he relies on his trusty flashlight to illuminate his work area.

When one of his flashlights stopped working a few years ago, Matt figured he could fix it. After all, he is a mechanic. So he searched online for tips on how to take a flashlight apart and found CandlePowerForums.  The online forum is dedicated to a variety of lighting discussions including flashlights, lanterns, spotlights, night vision scopes, and headlamps. Matt’s simple Google search in 2006 soon sparked a new hobby and helped him meet new friends when he later moved from Chicago to Dallas.

CandlePowerForums boasts more than 114,000 members, many of whom regularly pose questions about the lights they’re building or customizing, show off custom lights they’ve created and reminisce on topics like “What was your first loved flashlight?” Many of the posts center around the usage of LEDs.

“It’s just a share and share community,” he said. “Someone comes up with an idea and everyone else runs with it.”

CandlePowerForum members at the Dallas-Fort Worth meetup.

Matt says he reads more than he posts on the forums. And while he says he has a broad range of knowledge about LED components and flashlight parts, he considers his knowledge intermediate compared to some of the knowledgeable participants in the forum.

And since the CandlePowerForums community has so much to share online, some of them even get together offline for meetups. When Matt moved to Dallas a few years ago, he found out about one and went. Soon he was helping organize them.

The latest Dallas-Fort Worth Meetup was May 8, where 21 like-minded light-lovers showed up to continue their online discussions in the flesh. “It’s a time when you can meet with people who don’t think you’re weird for talking about flashlights,” Matt said.

CandlePowerForum members in the Dallas-Fort Worth area got together May 8 to talk about lights.

 We thanked Matt for reaching out to us by sending him a couple of CreeLEDRevolution.com T-shirts and collapsible Coleman lanterns lit by a Cree XLamp® XR-E LED. We hope the prizes ended up in LED-loving hands.