Cree and LED lighting are starting a revolution
President Obama will be visiting Cree in Durham, NC, on Monday to tour one of our LED lighting manufacturing lines. While he’s here, Obama will meet with the Jobs and Competitiveness Council to talk about initiatives and policies that could help boost economic growth, job creation and the acceleration of hiring across the country.
We’re pleased to welcome President Obama to our manufacturing facility! While he’s here, he’ll get to see where we make our new LED troffers, the Cree CR Series. Our energy-efficient LED troffers are our latest innovation in LED lighting. They’re designed to replace outdated fluorescent tubes that illuminate so many commercial buildings. These lights are just one of many ways we’re working to bring energy-efficient LED lighting to homes and businesses around the world.
President Obama will tour one of our manufacturing lines to see how our new energy-efficient LED troffers are made.
“We’re honored to host President Obama at Cree,” our CEO Chuck Swoboda said today. “We look forward to showcasing our industry-leading, energy-efficient technologies and participating in discussions on policies that can spur economic growth and promote U.S. job creation.”
It's truly amazing how much energy businesses can save with our new LED troffers. This paint store in Virginia reduced its energy consumption by about 65 percent by switching to Cree LED lighting.
President Obama will also be addressing Cree employees and other guests, as well as meeting with his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. We will be live blogging and live tweeting his remarks. Follow along right here on our blog or on Twitter. We’ll be using the hashtag #ObamaCree.
On Saturday night millions of people around the world will be turning off their lights for one hour. March 26 marks the 4th annual Earth Hour, a global initiative in partnership with World Wildlife Fund to raise awareness for environmentally sustainable action.
Participating is easy. At 8:30 p.m. Saturday, turn off your lights. There are no time zones to adjust for, it’s 8:30 p.m. no matter where you are. Sit in darkness and be comforted by the fact that you’re taking part in the largest voluntary action ever witnessed, with participation across 128 countries and territories and every continent, according to Earth Hour organizers.
This year Earth Hour boosters are asking people to go “Beyond the Hour” and pledge to do something else that will help make the world more sustainable. This could be as simple as pledging to use a refillable water bottle instead of sipping from disposable plastic water bottles. Or it could be more of a commitment, like pledging to start composting.
We like those ideas. But, since we’re all about energy-efficient lighting, we have an idea of our own.
During Earth Hour, when your electricity is already turned off, why not use this as an opportunity to replace an incandescent or fluorescent light in your home with an energy-efficient LED light?
Replacing an energy-wasting bulb won’t take long. You’ll be back to your candlelit board game or romantic dinner before you know it.
Then, when it’s time to flip on the switch again, you’ll be conserving more energy than you were an hour ago. Now that’s a change we can all get behind.
Ever try to unscrew a light bulb from a lamp right after you shut it off? It’s one of the easiest ways to burn your fingertips.
There’s a good reason why incandescent lights are used to keep your fries warm at restaurants and to bake brownies in an Easy Bake oven: Those suckers are hot!
Stick with me on this, and I’ll explain how/why my boss’ beautiful baby boy (say that five times fast) is able to safely hold our demonstration LED bulb, the TrueWhite Light, in his tender hands.
Baby Ben safely holds our TrueWhite Light.
Most of the energy emitted from incandescent bulbs (about 90 percent) is emitted as heat instead of light. It takes a lot of current to heat that filament enough to make it glow and produce light. That’s what makes the incandescent bulb so inefficient and explains why you’ll burn your fingers if you try to touch one once it’s turned on, or even shortly after it’s turned off.
LED lighting is about 85 percent more efficient than incandescent bulbs. Since LEDs consume significantly less energy, they don’t emit as much heat. That’s why you typically won’t burn yourself if you try to touch an LED light once it’s turned on.
Some LED boosters wrongly say LEDs don’t emit any heat. In fact, they do generate heat and it’s really important to dissipate that heat, or it can contribute to premature failure. That’s why you’ll notice metal fins wrapped around the base of most LED lights. Those fins make up the heat sink, which helps transfer the heat away from the LEDs and cool the lighting system.
The overall efficiency of LED lighting combined with proper thermal management makes it possible for our model baby to touch the TrueWhite light without burning his little hands. It also explains why this chocolate bunny barely melted under one of our other LED lights.
Those of us in the LED lighting biz have a game we love to play with our friends. We invite them to touch an illuminated LED light, such as our CR6 downlight. Then we watch as their hand reaches for the light with trepidation. Once they touch it and feel that it’s not blistering hot like an incandescent light, their face relaxes and we all have a good laugh. Yes, we really do this.
So as we prepared to showcase our TrueWhite Light, we wanted to make the efficiency of our LED bulb clear. We think baby Ben safely holding the next-generation of lighting in his precious hands does just that. And don’t worry, his mom is an LED lighting pro and she had him propped up in her lap the entire time.
And here’s a final thought for Baby Ben as he drifts off to his next nap: If his mom screwed this LED bulb into a lamp in his bedroom, she probably wouldn’t have to touch it again until he was off to college.
Rusty Ponder is always looking for ways to save energy and money. As the Energy Management Coordinator for the third largest school district in Mississippi, Rusty was recently researching new lighting technology for work. In fact, it was his quest to find ways to save energy and money that led him to our website and our LED lighting giveaway.
Rusty is the December winner of our monthly bad lighting photo contest. He wins five Cree CR6 LED downlights for his home. In his entry, Rusty submitted this photo and wrote:
“This house has very little foot candles in every room. Actually it is like living with candles and no electricity!”
Well anyone who talks in foot candles gets a shining star in the lighting geek book. And we couldn’t let Rusty feel like he was living in the dark. Turns out he has bigger plans for his new Cree LED lights. When I wrote Rusty to tell him he won, I asked him why he entered the contest. Here’s what he wrote:
“I thought if I can win these, I can show my bosses the LED technology and do some light meter readings and demos, so they can see firsthand how good they are. Then I can install them in my house and enjoy them for years to come.”
I think that makes Rusty a true LED Revolutionary. Because he’s going to spread the good word about high-quality LED lighting before enjoying them himself. And indeed, these lights could keep Rusty’s home lit for many years. They’re designed to last 50,000 hours, which means he can leave them on eight hours a day, seven days a week for 17 years. The lights are also dimmable, which means he can bring some mood lighting home. And since they only consume 10.5 watts, Rusty will be saving energy and money, which was his goal all along.
“I believe I will have a lot more evenly-spread light with better color and use a lot less energy, which will help me save money and help save the planet at the same time,” Rusty wrote.
This will be the first time Rusty has used an LED light. We’re pretty sure it won’t be his last.
If you want to try to win five Cree LED lights of your own, hurry up and enter our February LED lighting contest. Simply submit a photo of bad lighting in your home, office or business here. Next month, you could be joining Rusty in the LED Lighting Revolution.
Minnesota resident Nicole Ronich is always on the lookout for LED lighting. Her father introduced her to LEDs years ago and lately she’s noticed that LED lighting is on the rise. She even recently learned that the Minnesota Twins’ Target Field features display boards lit with LEDs.
So when Ronich saw that Cree was giving away LED lights in a monthly photo contest, her thoughts drifted to her dimly-lit bathroom. She snapped this photo and later won the May LED Lighting giveaway.
Nicole Ronich won the May LED lighting giveaway with this photo.
Here’s what she wrote about her bathroom lighting: “This is an old and hideous light fixture that is so inefficient. It also blows out light bulbs every other week. It gives my bathroom the shadow effect. I hate putting my make up on under it!”
I don’t blame her for not wanting to apply her makeup under this light. Hopefully her new energy-efficient LED lighting will improve lighting conditions in her home. Here’s what she wrote me when I e-mailed her to say she won the May photo contest:
“We have an older home and have been doing a ton of remodeling and updating of appliances to energy efficiency, improving insulation and replacing drafty doors, etc. It has been fun watching the utility bills drop! So, changing to a more efficient light bulb would be another step in the greener direction. My bathroom is going to be one of our last projects and to have better lighting would be awesome.”
If you’re jealous of Nicole’s new LED lighting, then enter our June LED Lighting giveaway for a chance to win some energy-efficient lights of your very own. Here’s how easy it is to enter:
Then, maybe I’ll be writing about your new lights soon! Congrats, Nicole!
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.
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?
My boss has been talking in hushed whispers and racing around our campus. I couldn’t wait for her to break her silence so I could find out what was going on. Turns out Vice President Joe Biden wanted to visit our Durham, NC, manufacturing campus. Since then she has had her hands full with arranging access and taking care of the many details that come along with having our country’s No. 2 leader stop by for a visit.
The Vice President will tour and make remarks at Cree on Thursday. For those of you who don’t know, Cree manufactures LEDs and energy-efficient LED lights. Our company mission is to obsolete energy-wasting light bulbs, including incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. We strongly believe that the cleanest, cheapest energy is the energy you never use. And the Department of Energy estimates that widespread adoption of LED lighting by 2025 will reduce electricity demands from lighting by 62 percent.
We’re working hard to educate the public about this energy-efficient technology. And we’re thrilled that our company is growing. We anticipate adding another 300 American jobs during the next several years, in addition to the many jobs we added in 2009. Cree received a $39 million Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help purchase new equipment and bring these new jobs to our North Carolina manufacturing facility to increase production.
So we can’t wait to show off our campus and hard working employees to the vice president and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who will be accompanying Biden on the trip. We’ve been told the pair is interested in hearing from our employees about the challenges and issues they face in their day-to-day lives.
I’ll be live tweeting the remarks made by Vice President Biden and Energy Secretary Chu (along with other observations about what it’s like to have the Vice President come to your company for the day). You can follow along on Twitter, we’ll use the hashtag #BidenCree. In the meantime, you can learn more about the LED lighting Revolution here.
