Cree, Inc.
Cree LED Revolution Blog
Cree and LED lighting are starting a revolution
January 19th, 2010
Cree brings the LED Lighting Revolution home at the International Builders’ Show
Take one look at our booth at the International Builders’ Show and you’ll see that we’re serious about bringing LED Lighting into your home.
In the LED lighting biz, we often hear from people who say they bought an LED bulb at the grocery store and it stunk. As a result, they write off LED lighting as an expensive technology that doesn’t live up to its price tag, or billing.
At Cree, our hearts seriously break a little each time we hear that. Our booth at the International Builders’ Show explains why. You see, we’re making these gorgeous recessed LED lights that provide beautiful, warm color and are designed to last a crazy long time (50,000 hours). These LED lights are the real deal. They’re not too dim. They’re not bluish. They don’t flicker.
Yet, like anything, it often only takes one bad apple to give everyone else a bad name. My co-worker Deb actually blogged today about the LED bulbs you can buy in the store that are supposed to be a 60-Watt equivalent. Deb wrote: “Unfortunately, except for a few, they are mostly too dim or bluish, or worse, flicker and then go out for good.”
So we’re hoping that our booth at the International Builders’ Show will help SHOW people that LED lighting is ready for the home. It just depends on the type of LED lighting you use and how you use it.
All the lights you see in these photos from our booth are Cree LED lights, and we think they’re beautiful. True, they’re not light bulbs that you would screw into your desk lamp, but they provide very efficient overhead lighting for your home. And that, my friends, makes our hearts sing.
January 15th, 2010
Skate under LED lights at the #RaleighLED Ice Skating Tweetup
It’s been more than three years since city officials in Raleigh, NC, first installed energy-efficient LED lighting. Since then, the city has embraced the energy-saving technology by installing LED lights at more than two dozen locations around the city!
At Cree, we’re excited to honor the city of Raleigh as the world’s first LED City® with the #RaleighLED Ice Skating Tweetup!
Triangle-area Twitter users and other LED lighting fans are invited to ice skate under LED lights at downtown Raleigh’s outdoor ice rink from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31.
You can secure your free ice skate rental by registering for #RaleighLED Ice Skating Tweetup here.
The Raleigh Winterfest Ice Rink is one of more than two dozen locations in Raleigh that features LED lighting. It’s an awesome chance to sip on some hot chocolate, mingle with Tweeps, see LED lights and get your outdoor skate on.
LED lighting will play a big role in Raleigh during the week of Feb. 1, when the Department of Energy hosts its Solid-State Lighting Research and Design Workshop at the Raleigh Convention Center. I bet you didn’t even know that the fancy industry term for LED lighting is “Solid-State Lighting,” did you? Hundreds of LED aficionados and experts from all over the country will be coming to Raleigh for the workshop and to see the light(s)!
We hope you can make it to the #RaleighLED Ice Skating Tweetup to see some LED lighting in action and learn more about this technology in advance of the Department of Energy’s conference in Raleigh! Don’t forget to register!!
January 11th, 2010
How an engineer’s 21-minute YouTube video on LED Lighting and Thermal Design wiped a sour look off my face
If you told me a week ago that I would be thoroughly entertained by a 21-minute YouTube video featuring an engineer talking about thermal design, I would’ve shot you one of these looks:
But that was before I was introduced to David L. Jones’ vlog. The title caught my attention right away: “Solid-State LED Lighting, and How Thermal Design Sucks.” Please note, he doesn’t say Solid State LED Lighting sucks. 
Dave is an engineer who lives in Sydney, Australia. Armed with a video camera and a heck of a lot of enthusiasm, Dave decided to attach some Cree LEDs to a piece of aluminum to light up his new outdoor deck. For the record, Cree didn’t know he was doing this. I say this because even though he doesn’t like the act of calculating the junction temperature of each LED (hence his blog title … “How Thermal Design Sucks”), he ended up loving the results he achieved with our LEDs. And because he’s so enthusiastic and sincere, I actually sat through the entire 21-minute video and watched him fill up his whiteboard with calculations that are way over my head.
If you don’t have 21 minutes to spare, here are some highlights:
Watch the first four minutes for context. Tune in again at the 17:15 mark to hear his declarations about why his calculations are a waste of time. Then skip to 19:20 to hear him describe the difference between efficacy and efficiency (don’t be fooled by their similar spellings, there is a difference) and then stay tuned for the rest of the video to see what all his hard work went toward.
Dave tells video viewers not to bother writing in and telling him that his model was wrong. So I won’t go into whether his calculations make sense, but stay tuned to the 21 minute mark and you can see that regardless of whether his model was right or wrong, his homemade LED lighting system sure looks sharp.
January 7th, 2010
Washington-based nonprofit wins five Cree LED lights in December photo contest
Having your own office is pretty sweet. You get a door that you can close while you’re at work. An office provides a level of privacy many cubicle dwellers crave. So what if your cube was turned into your office? You’d probably be pretty happy, right? That’s what happened to Mark Wickman, who works for the nonprofit Opportunity Council in Washington.
Mark is the winner of the December Cree LED Lighting photo contest, winning five LED lights for his office. In Mark’s photo, he showed off his new office, which used to be two cubes, but they were torn out and converted into an office. The new construction meant he was “escaping dreary fluorescent ceiling tube fixtures” outside his office, but he really wanted some energy-efficient LED lights for his new digs.
Mark is the production manager for the weatherization department at the Opportunity Council, a nonprofit that helps homeless and low-income families learn to become self-sufficient. I asked him to describe the lighting in his office now and he wrote: “mostly ceiling fluorescent tubes – dreary – with a few CFLs which provide no better light quality.”
Mark says the only LED lighting he’s ever tried before was in Christmas lights, flashlights and his bike light. I can’t wait until Mark screws in his new Cree LED lights. He chose our LRP-38 lamps (see photo below), which have a color rendering index (CRI) of 92. The CRI characterizes light sources ability to render colors accurately and can be between 0 and 100. A higher CRI means that colors are more true and the light is perceived as more pleasant. The CRI of fluorescent tubes is often around 72. So Mark is in for a change!
A couple of other facts about Mark’s new LED lights … The Cree LRP-38 lamps are designed to last 50,000 hours. That means they could last 17 years if he keeps the lights on 8 hours a day, 7 days a week! And each LRP-38 uses 12 Watts of energy, but provides the equivalent light of a 50 to 90 Watt halogen bulb. So his new lights will also consume significantly less energy than traditional lighting!
Are you starting to get jealous of Mark? Don’t bother. Just snap a photo of bad lighting in your home or office and enter our January contest. We’ll be giving away five more energy-efficient Cree LED lights at the end of the month. You could win next!
January 5th, 2010
North Carolina’s first green McDonald’s uses LED Lights (and cotton, bamboo, recycled glass and more)
Take a quick look at one McDonald’s in Cary, NC, and you might not guess that it’s different than every other McDonald’s in North Carolina. But step inside and you’ll see why this McDonald’s in the Saltbox Village shopping center is making history.
The restaurant is the first green McDonald’s in the state, on track to receive its LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council later this month. (Take a look at the 25+ year-old McDonald’s v. the new one. Approximately 99 percent of the debris generated by the demolition process was diverted from landfills by either being reused or recycled).
I recently visited the restaurant to chat with franchise owner Ric Richards about why he chose LED lights to light up 97 percent of the store. Turns out the LED lights in his store consume 78 percent less electricity compared to a standard lighting package at other McDonald’s restaurants.
The restaurant was designed to take advantage of natural light and uses a fully automated, intelligent lighting-control system that combines light from Cree LED lighting and daylighting from Solatube skylights. There’s even a photo sensor to maintain the proper light levels on work surfaces. So, if it’s rainy and overcast outside, the LED light levels are increased to compensate. And since the system is automated, it’s not up to an employee to notice the changing light levels and fool around with the switches. How cool is that?!
Of course, there are many other neat steps taken to use green technologies, and there’s even a touchscreen video kiosk at the front of the store that shows off some of technologies. Here’s a video featuring some of the neat building materials used in construction and my interview with Ric about the energy-efficient LED lights:
Stay tuned, we’ll be updating you soon on the official LEED certification of Ric’s franchise.
December 23rd, 2009
Furniture Row replaces Halogen lamps with LED lights
The LED Revolution is happening all around the country. We’ve been sharing some great examples of the forefathers of the revolution here.
I think it’s important that we show off some of the places where you can find LED lighting so you can see that it’s truly happening. So take a look at this LED lighting installation at Furniture Row in Denver, Colorado.
One of our lighting guys took a flip cam with him and interviewed a store manager about the lights. I love this video because you can tell the manager is sincerely pleased with the energy savings he expects his LED lights.
Take a look:
December 21st, 2009
Cree won a 2009 ECN Tech Award
Last month I told you Cree’s XLamp® XP-G was a finalist in ECN Magazine’s 2009 Reader’s Choice Tech Awards. Well, the votes are in and we won the award in the Optoelectronics and Displays category!
We’re thrilled to be recognized for making a brighter and more efficient LED. And it’s even better knowing that we were selected by readers and our fans to win the award.
But don’t worry, we’re not just going to tuck this award on the cyber-shelf and stare at it. Our Research and Development teams are working hard now to push lumen output and efficacy even further. We’ve already come a long way since 1989.
December 17th, 2009
Cree commercialized the blue LED 20 years ago
What were you doing in 1989? Maybe you were rocking out to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” the Grammy-award winning hit of the year. Perhaps you were killing time playing Tetris on the newly-released Nintendo Game Boy.
At Cree, our founders were busy commercializing the blue LED in 1989. Cree was the first company to truly commercialize the then state-of-the-art technology, explains co-founder John Edmond.
I recently brought my video camera and tripod over to John’s office to talk about what things were like at Cree 20 years ago and why the commercialization of the blue LED was so significant in 1989. (Here’s a hint: You couldn’t make white LED light without blue LEDs).
Twenty-two years after helping found the company, John still works on improving LED technology. He’s Cree’s director of advanced optoelectronics. But don’t let the title scare you away, John does an excellent job of describing the blue LED advancement in easy-to-understand terms.
The video includes a peek at an actual blue LED from the time period compared to one today. It’s truly amazing how much has changed in 20 years.
December 15th, 2009
Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum installs LED Lights
A new exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum is a dream for space exploration fans. The new “Moving Beyond Earth” exhibit features a 12-foot tall space shuttle model, parts of the Hubble Space Telescope and a model of the Ares launch vehicle. But there’s something even more exciting at the exhibit for LED lighting fans like me – LED lights are replacing the 30-year-old mercury vapor work lights!
Cree’s LR24 recessed LED lights are lighting up the gallery for about eight hours each day so museum staff can clean the gallery and take care of other maintenance when the exhibit isn’t open.
The work lights will be on for about eight hours a day. And since the museum’s new LED lights are designed to last 50,000 hours, they could last 17 years if the lights are on eight hours a day, seven days a week!
You can read all about the installation and some more details about the benefits of having the LED lights at the Smithsonian here.
So if you go to the exhibit, look up at the 20-foot high ceilings and take note of those square lights (they’ll likely be turned off, unless you get a job working at the Smithsonian after hours) and smile to yourself because now you know yet another place that has joined the LED Lighting Revolution.
December 14th, 2009
Will new labels for light bulbs make it easier to select lights?
Have you ever stood in the lighting aisle at the store and picked out a bulb based on the wattage, only to come home, screw it in and see that it was way brighter (or dimmer) than you expected? It’s an easy mistake to make, especially when you’re buying energy-efficient lighting.
The Federal Trade Commission is proposing new labels for light bulbs that are based on light output instead of energy consumption, a move that could make it easier for consumers to pick out the bulbs they need.
Under the proposed change, the front of a bulb’s package would list the brightness in lumens and the estimated energy cost per year. Flip the package over, and you would find a “lighting facts” label that includes details on life expectancy, color appearance (warm to cool) and energy use in watts, under the proposal. The labels would also require acknowledging whether bulbs have mercury (CFLs contain mercury, but LEDs don’t). Take a look at the proposed changes here:
Those of us who grew up with incandescent bulbs knew that an average 75 Watt bulb was going to be about twice as bright as a 40 Watt bulb, even though light output is measured by lumens and not watts. But since energy-efficient lights like CFLs and LEDs produce more light while using less energy, you can’t really judge their brightness based on their wattage.
To get a fair comparison on brightness, you really need to look at lumens and not watts. Consider this: This month Cree announced that we were able to achieve 186 lumens per Watt for a white power LED. That’s pretty remarkable when you consider the average 25 Watt bulb produces 215 lumens.
Now, it’s important to note that we’re not currently putting that 186 lumen per Watt LED in a light bulb. But our business is basically built on the premise that it’s possible to produce bright light while saving energy.
But back to the bulbs…as traditional incandescent bulbs are phased out, it will become increasingly important to make sure consumers understand how the new energy-efficient lighting they’re buying will perform. That’s also why I blog about issues like this. The more you know about LED lighting, the better!
And for those who think LED lights will never be viable, definitely take a look at the full report the FTC made on the proposed label changes. Among the many bright spots for LEDs in the report is this: “The Commission believes that labeling for LED bulbs is likely to assist consumers in their purchasing decisions because they are substitutes for incandescent and CFLs and are likely to become increasingly available for household use.”
Coincidentally, one of our Twitter followers recently asked us why bulbs aren’t measured in lumens v. Watts:
Well, @Chris_Gammell, we hope this post helps answer your question! If you need more details, check out this post by Jim Brodrick, who oversees Solid State Lighting for the Department of Energy, about the proposed change.
What do you think about the FTC proposal to change the way labels look? Do you think this will make buying a light bulb easier?
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