When Colleen Locchi began planning lighting for her kitchen, she thought she would go with CFLs. But the more investigating she did, the more she realized that mercury-containing CFLs likely weren’t the energy-efficient solution she wanted.
“Initially I was all about CFLs,” Colleen wrote me, “but the more research I did, the less enchanted I have become. LEDs seem to be the way to go. I did incorporate some into my new kitchen and find I now prefer them over my incandescent lamps.”
Once Colleen got a taste of LED lighting, she wanted more. So she entered (and won) our November LED lighting giveaway by submitting a picture of her large family room, which is lit almost entirely with lamps. Colleen won five Cree CR6 LED downlights, which she says she plans to use to accent her fire place and provide overhead task lighting without an assortment of lamps. Here’s the photo she submitted:
“We purchased the house in the mid-90s and the lighting in this room has been a thorn in my side ever since. The expense of the lighting always put it on the back burner so I am quite thrilled to be able to move forward with this project. I really think it will finish off the room,” Colleen wrote.
Not only will Colleen’s new Cree LED downlights deliver beautiful light quality (warm, 2700K color temperature), the lights will also save her energy. The CR6 LED downlight (pictured below) consumes only 10.5 watts, but delivers the same warm light you’d expect from a 65-watt halogen light.
And once Colleen installs her new recessed LED lighting, she won’t have to worry about changing them for years – possibly decades – to come. That’s because the CR6 LED downlight is designed to last 50,000 hours, which means Colleen could leave them lit eight hours a day, seven days a week and they could last more than 17 years. And, let’s be real, chances are Colleen’s family isn’t going to be using the lights that frequently, which means they’ll likely last even longer.
Cree is proud to announce that it has been selected as a recipient of the Building Operating Management magazine’s Top Products awards. The Top Products Awards recognize the most popular manufacturers and suppliers of the year. The award was given to Cree for the SLM™ IP66 area luminaire featuring BetaLED® technology.
Building and facility executives participated in a national survey and chose the winners from 557 possible products, making this award a veritable popularity contest. Readers were asked to select their choices for Top Products awards that met the criteria of innovation and usefulness to facility managers. Based on reader votes, 73 products were selected as Top Products winners and the SLM IP66 area luminaire featuring BetaLED® technology was one of the winners. The SLM IP66 area luminaire will be featured in this month’s issue of Building Operating Management (BOM) as a Top Products Award Winner.
Cree’s SLM IP66 area luminaire featuring BetaLED® technology has a distinctive, slim, low-profile design and offers architectural character for exterior applications. The combination of a unique modular design with light bar scalability and patented NanoOptic® technology contributes to exceptional lighting performance and reduced energy use.
This low-maintenance area luminaire significantly reduces energy consumption compared to traditional lighting technology and provides optimum target illumination performance—that means the light goes where you want it, and not where you don’t. The unique design of the SLM IP66 lends to maintaining lower operating temperatures that can contribute to the longevity of the luminaire and the light bar-based design means the light levels of the luminaire can be scaled for the specific application. The SLM IP66 luminaire is designed with the total systems approach, integrating best-in-class LED packages, driver technology, optics and style. Extended operating life and exceptional lumen maintenance are achieved in a range of environmental conditions.
It’s an electrifying time to be engaged in the lighting industry. The world is more focused than ever before on energy efficiency. And innovations in lighting are happening faster than ever before, with LED lighting emerging as the most efficient way to replace traditional lighting.
The LED Lighting Revolution is gaining momentum, and as with any new technology, education plays an important role in moving this forward. And part of that education requires LED lighting manufacturers to do their part to provide accurate information about their products.
That’s why we wanted to take a moment to talk about the beauty that is the Cree LRP-38 LED lamp. We believe it’s a smart fit for anyone looking to use directional lighting to illuminate places like museums, grocery and retail stores and more.
So when we read lighting designer Kevan Shaw’s guest post in this month’s MondoArc magazine, which questions whether LED lighting is the best solution for illuminating precious works of art in museums, we had to pause. That’s because we believe Cree LED lighting can absolutely be a good match for museums. In fact, it’s already featured in several museums, including the Liberty Science Center and recently the Metropolitan Museum of Art (more to come on that soon).
Cree LRP-38 LED lights illuminate the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.
And while Shaw certainly doesn’t rule out using LED lighting in museums (he wisely suggests that lighting designers do a cost-benefit analysis before committing), he also makes some sweeping statements about quality of light, color and maintenance—some of which aren’t exactly fair.
No doubt the quality and control of light that comes from a Low Voltage Halogen IR lamp is excellent for museum exhibitions. And if LVHIR didn’t have infrared, ultraviolent, heat and lifetime issues as compared to LED lighting, we wouldn’t be enthusiastically shopping our LED lights to museums. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of LED products on the market misleading design professionals on what is possible today with LED.
Among Shaw’s concerns:
“The thing I find most difficult to deal with is the constant change. We know this should be offering benefits over time, however it makes things difficult if you want to add or change lighting. If each time you want to add fittings they will have subtly different performance characteristics, how do you achieve a consistency in display? What is worse is that even if you have an open cheque book and buy as many fittings as you would ever want at the beginning of a project, LEDs change in output and colour appearance throughout their lives so a new fitting from your original stock will look different to fittings bought at the same time but that have been running for a couple of years.”
We’re definitely sensitive to that, and certainly his concerns apply to plenty of LED lighting products on the market. However, when people get their hands on an LRP-38 LED light for the first time, many see a side of LED lighting they are not used to. That’s because our lamp features Cree TrueWhite™ Technology, a revolutionary way to generate white light with LEDs that maintains color consistency throughout the life of the lamp. Starting with the highest performing LEDs, Cree TrueWhite Technology mixes the light from red and unsaturated yellow LEDs to create beautiful, warm, white light. Our patented approach enables color management to preserve high color consistency over the life of the product. So if a museum wants to add more Cree lighting a couple years after its initial install, it should find that the color on its original Cree LRP-38 lights has not shifted.
Cree LRP-38 LED lights.
The LRP-38 also features 94 CRI, exceeds 50 lumens per watt and has beautiful 2700K warm color, and it’s designed to last 50,000 hours. It’s also dimmable to 20 percent. And, a bonus that museums may relish is that the LRP-38 produces little heat and emits virtually no ultraviolet rays, which can help protect those priceless objects the lights are shining on. The LRP-38 may not solve every lighting challenge, but we believe it truly demonstrates the power of LED lighting.
We applaud Shaw for starting a conversation on this topic, as a healthy dose of skepticism among lighting designers can help keep low-quality lighting products with false promises from being installed. It’s wise to be skeptical of claims by LED lighting manufacturers because inferior products are making their way into the market. However, we hope that Cree’s innovations and commitment to LED lighting leaves lighting designers excited about joining the LED lighting Revolution.
The Bright Tomorrow Lighting competition, known as the L Prize in lighting circles, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and is designed to encourage lighting manufacturers to develop high-quality, high-efficiency LED lighting products to replace the common light bulb.
At the heart of the entry lies an innovative custom LED component that GE and Cree collaborated to design, featuring Cree TrueWhite™ Technology.
Cree TrueWhite Technology is our patented approach to create beautiful warm white light by mixing the light from red and unsaturated yellow LEDs. It delivers high efficiency with beautiful light characteristics and color accuracy, while maintaining color consistency over the life of the product.
It wasn’t easy picking a winner for the October Cree LED lighting giveaway. There were so many bad lighting photos that our selection committee decided to award lights to several runner ups.
The grand prize winner is Mark Rogers of Encinitas, California, who tried to eliminate the energy-wasting incandescent lighting in his home office by replacing it with LED lighting on his own. But Mark chose PAR30 LED spotlights, which aren’t really the right type of fixture for a downlight application.
When I wrote Mark to tell him he won, he said he was excited because “there are evenings when I would love to work just under the downlights.” Well, thanks to the five new warm CR6 LED downlights he won, Mark should be able to get some work done while saving energy.
His new lights will illuminate his office with beautiful light (2700K for you lighting geeks) while only consuming 10.5 Watts each. And his new LED lights are designed to last 50,000 hours, which means he shouldn’t have to change a light bulb for many years.
Mark Rogers won the October LED lighting giveaway with this photo.
But Mark isn’t the only October winner. Our judges had a tough time saying no to a few other entrants. So we gave away two CR6 LED downlights to Dan Leighton of Cary, NC, an energy-conscious homeowner who sent us this picture of his “spooky” bathroom lighting:
Dan's spooky entry.
The judges also loved the submission from Garrett Loewenberg, so they decided to help the boy rid his parents’ home of CFLs by giving him two CR6 LED downlights. And, finally, the judges wanted to help Oregon resident David Myrick banish the bad track lighting in his stairwell. So they awarded him three Cree LRP-38 LED lights, which should be a huge improvement over the current set up he submitted a picture of:
David submitted this picture of his dark hallway.
We’ll be announcing the November winner soon. And there’s still time to win our December giveaway. Submit a photo of the bad lighting in your life. Whether it’s at home or work, let us help you fix it! Simply upload your photo here!
If you don’t have a recessed downlight in your home or office, chances are you know someone who does. An estimated 500 million downlights are installed in homes throughout the United States, according the U.S. Department of Energy. And that number is growing, with an estimated 30 to 40 recessed lights going into newly-constructed homes.
With so many downlights lighting up American homes, there’s a big opportunity to save a lot of energy with LED lighting. But how? Well, today we’re ecstatic to announce that the LED Lighting is officially coming home! That’s right, Home Depot customers can now buy affordable six-inch LED downlights powered with Cree TrueWhite® Technology online at HomeDepot.com. This LED light is also targeted to be available in nearly 2,000 Home Depot retail stores in fall 2010.
Sold as the EcoSmart LED Downlight, this new energy-efficient light retails for less than $50 and features the award-winning technology that sets Cree’s LED lights apart from other LED products on the market — Cree TrueWhite Technology.
This is truly a milestone for the LED Lighting Revolution. Here are six reasons you should be excited about the EcoSmart LED Downlight:
1. Incredible Light Quality: Let’s face it, we love saving energy but we hate it when energy-saving light makes a room look like a dungeon. You truly don’t have to sacrifice light quality with the EcoSmart LED Downlight. This downlight is powered with Cree TrueWhite Technology, which delivers high efficiency with beautiful, warm color by mixing the light from unsaturated yellow and red LEDs.
Cree’s one-of-a-kind approach maintains high color accuracy over the life of the EcoSmart LED Downlight, exceeding even ENERGY STAR® color consistency requirements for LED lighting! That means the light quality is beautiful and can stay that way throughout the long-life of these fixtures.
2. Extremely Long Lasting: What if you didn’t have to haul out a ladder to change bulbs in your ceilings for decades? The EcoSmart LED Downlight is designed to last 35,000 hours. That means this light could last you more than 32 years with three hours of daily use. Install it in a hard-to-reach places such as foyers, high-ceiling kitchens and family rooms and you can avoid the hassle of dragging a ladder into your home to replace burned out bulbs…for years! In fact, you may never have to buy another light bulb (sorry, Thomas Edison).
3. Big Energy Savings: Imagine this scenario: Swapping out the 65-Watt incandescent light screwed into your recessed fixture with a 10.5-Watt LED light, while still having beautiful light quality. Now, wake up, you don’t have to daydream anymore.
The EcoSmart LED Downlight consumes only 10.5 Watts and doesn’t waste energy as heat like incandescent lights do. That means you can cook in your kitchen without feeling like your downlights are cooking you. Bonus: This downlight is dimmable to 5 percent, so you can rack up even more energy savings while having mood lighting for a romantic dinner or a scary movie. And, unlike, fluorescent lights, LED lights don’t contain toxic mercury. LED lights are also instant-on, which means you don’t have to wait for the lights to achieve full brightness, like you do with many fluorescents.
4. It’s Affordable: The EcoSmart LED Downlight will sell for less than $50. And considering its extremely long life and energy savings potential, you can stand to save a lot of money over the life of the fixture. This is the first affordably-priced and widely distributed consumer product to use Cree TrueWhite Technology. Bonus: Some utility companies are offering rebates. We’ll keep you posted on those, but feel free to inquire with your local utility provider.
5. Easy to Install: How many people does it take to screw in an EcoSmart LED Downlight? Just one. This light installs easily into most standard six-inch recessed insulated ceiling or non-insulated ceiling housings. It’s designed for new construction and retrofit. Need specific instructions? Watch this video.
6. You’ll Be Part of the LED Lighting Revolution: It’s one thing to support the concept of energy-efficient LED lighting, and we LOVE all of you who do. That being said, it’s another thing to experience LED lighting in your home. In fact, if you order the EcoSmart LED Downlight, please feel free to post your reviews on HomeDepot.com and to add them to our comments section. We would love to hear about your experiences.
You can find the EcoSmart LED Downlight on HomeDepot.com simply by typing “LED Downlight” in the search field. Or just click this link for the first step toward your energy-savings future.
Seeing is believing when it comes to lighting. So if the folks at Indiana-based Grote Industries sent you an e-mail saying their LED work lamps were stunning, it probably wouldn’t have the same impact as if they set up the lights in your driveway and switched them on.
So Grote is taking its new LED WhiteLight Work Lamps to the streets, literally. Earlier this month, Grote hit the highway for an 80-plus city tour in a truck adorned with LED-loving Super Heroes dubbed Team Trilliant, named after the company’s Trilliant LED WhiteLight Technology. Take a look:
This truck features 34 exterior work lamps all lit with Cree X-Lamp® XR-E LEDs. The tricked out truck will travel west across the northern United States and parts of Canada this summer then head south during its return leg in the fall and winter, according to a Grote press release.
It’s definitely a different way for a manufacturer of vehicle safety systems to reach its audience. Grote officials say they redirected resources traditionally aimed at industry trade shows to pursue the tour. The tour also features a mobile theater, giving visitors a chance to learn more about the advantages of LED work lights where ever the truck stops.
Did you know the CFL is celebrating its 25th birthday this year? We just found out from the folks at Sylvania, who plan to commemorate the occasion tomorrow at Light + Building, the big lighting tradeshow happening this week in Frankfurt, Germany.
To its credit, the CFL has come a long way since it was born in 1985. Its average life span doubled, its size shrunk considerably, it got cheaper and there’s less mercury inside. But it still has mercury inside, which means if it ever breaks, you can’t just sweep up the glass and be on your way. You’re supposed to follow these steps, which include airing out the room, washing or even throwing out materials that come in contact with the broken bulb and more.
But we’re realists. We realize the CFL – for all its toxic faults – still consumes less energy than the 130+ year old incandescent bulb. So we’re not going to crash the CFL’s birthday party because, frankly, this may be the last year folks show up to celebrate.
The CFLs days are numbered. The LED Lighting Revolution is gaining traction because most LED lights consume even less energy than CFLs and they do so without containing toxic mercury. LED lights are designed to last significantly longer than CFLs. And LED lights reach full brightness immediately.
And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “It’s not really fair of you to rain on the CFL parade when I can’t even buy a 60 Watt equivalent LED bulb at the store.” To that I say touché, and then I’ll duly note that there are plenty of other LED lighting products made by Cree and other companies that can successfully replace incandescent and fluorescent lights. And innovations are happening all the time.
So happy birthday, CFL. Sorry we can’t make it to your party, but we’re busy Lighting the LED Revolution.
It’s not easy to make an LED light. Designers have to consider a lot of factors in their fixture designs including chip selection, LED packaging, color mixing, optics, electronics, thermals, oh my.
But we’re making it easier for manufacturers to overcome the common design issues they’ve faced when trying to incorporate LED solutions into their lighting fixtures.
Today we announced the launch of Cree LED Module LMR4. This module can make it easier for designers to create LED lights of their own, which means ultimately it can lead to even more energy-efficient LED lights on the market.
More LED lights means it will be easier to help people break their fluorescent shackles and incandescent cuffs. It means there will be even more opportunities to bring energy-efficient, beautiful LED light into homes, offices, businesses and other places that need to be enlightened.
How can this LED lighting module help? Well, since the module contains the LED light, heat sink and driver electronics, designers can just drop this unit into their designs. This helps take some of the burden off of lighting fixture manufacturers that are interested in developing LED lights but just don’t have the experience. This can help speed up the time it takes manufacturers to develop and produce LED lights of their own, which means we can all buy them sooner. Fixture design becomes faster and easier.
And, the big bonus, is that this module produces beautiful, warm white light using Cree TrueWhite™ technology. That means designers who use this module will get access to the same light used in Cree’s fixtures. They won’t have to reinvent the wheel (or the light, as it may be).
Watch this brief 1-minute video to see some more details about the new Cree module. Please note my awesome hand modeling skills:
I’ve been known to jump up and down or wave my scarf at hockey games in hopes of being projected on the big screen in between plays. But if I ever attend a Dallas Stars game, I’d probably check my hair and makeup before I attempted to attract the cameras.
That’s because the American Airlines Center now features high definition screens, which means Dallas Stars and Dallas Mavericks fans can now experience HD in every seat. And let’s face it, few people would enjoy being projected in HD in front of a stadium full of people with Alfalfa hair! But how awesome would it be to follow game highlights in HD (especially if your seats are in the nosebleed section).
I know we focus closely on the LED lighting revolution – helping the world ditch its addiction to incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. But our LEDs are also used in some other neat applications, and when I hear about uses such as these massive HD screens, I have to share them!
Here are some pictures:
So how many Cree LEDs are used to light the 25 individual screens at the American Airlines Center? 13 million. Pretty incredible, huh?
