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Energy Awareness Month 2011: ComEd Offers Illinois Customers Major Rebates on Cree LED Lighting

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

Cree is celebrating Energy Awareness Month with a series of blog posts about ways Cree and our products are helping save energy.

When you hear the phrase “LED Lighting,” what comes to mind? If you’re like many, you probably think, “expensive.” And that’s okay – just know we’re doing everything we can to change that.

But some utility providers are offering rebates that make Cree LED lighting even easier on the pocketbook.

Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd), which serves more than 3.8 million customers across northern Illinois, or a whopping 70 percent of the state’s population, recently introduced major rebates on a host of Cree LED lighting products in an effort to help businesses and customers benefit from reduced energy costs.

Cree Energy Awareness Month

ComEd is offering rebates on Cree’s ENERGY STAR-qualified LR6 and CR6 six-inch LED downlights and the LBR-30 and LRP-38 directional spotlights. These rebates are part of the Smart Ideas for Your Business® Program, developed to help bring cost-effective energy-efficiency improvements to commercial and industrial customers. Each of these Cree LED lighting fixtures are designed to last 50,000 hours, and provide the high-quality light needed for conference rooms, office spaces and other common areas, while delivering higher efficacy than incandescent or compact fluorescent (CFL) lighting options.

Commercial and industrial customers can now receive a $15 rebate on Cree’s downlights and a $10 rebate on Cree LED spotlights! Considering the long-term, low-maintenance qualities of these LED lighting products, ComEd is offering its customers one heck of a deal!

Meanwhile, lighting-savvy homeowners can also save on high-quality LED lighting. If you truck on down to your local Home Depot store in ComEd territory, you’ll find the EcoSmart 6” LED downlight marked down to $29.97—thanks to ComEd’s incentive program.

So with more than just a golf clap, we applaud ComEd for its outstanding leadership in LED lighting rebates and hope it encourages more utilities to join the LED lighting revolution!

Want to find out more about utility rebates in your area? We have more information here.

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Posted in Cree, Energy Awareness Month, Energy Efficiency | No Comments »

Cree LRP-38 LED light is a smart fit for illuminating museums, grocery and retail stores and more

Friday, August 26th, 2011


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).

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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.

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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.

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Posted in LED Businesses, Revolution | 3 Comments »

Cree LED Contest Series: LED lighting looks good on this retail display

Thursday, July 21st, 2011


This is the fourth part of a five part series that follows up with winners of Cree’s monthly LED lighting giveaway. Each month, Cree gives away at least 5 Cree LED lights in a photo contest. To enter, submit your bad lighting photo here.

MONDAY: We revisit July 201 winner who has developed a love for Cree LED lights.

TUESDAY: We see how the October 2010 winner made over his office and how a bathroom went from spooky to smiley.

WEDNESDAY: We revisit an energy professional who is using his LED lighting from the December 2010 contest to spread the good word.

THURSDAY: It’s not all about your home. We revisit the February 2010 who shows us what LED lighting can do in a retail space.

FRIDAY: We’ll show you how LED lighting can even help a plein air painter. Confused? Stay tuned to see what our March 2010 winner did.

 

February 2010 Winner Bob Curcio

Store planner and designer Bob Curcio entered the contest on behalf of one of his clients, KICKSUSA, an urban footwear shop in Philadelphia. He won five Cree LRP-38 LED lights that consume only 11 watts each. He took them to the shop and swapped out five, 75-watt incandescent flood lights and loved the results.

“I was truly impressed with the product, most notably the ‘juicy’ color rendition that gives a rich color depth to the merchandise on display,” wrote to me in a recent follow-up email.

And it turns out that seeing really is believing. Bob explained that last year his client was wooed by the cheap price tag of CFLs, but now that he has experienced their poor performance, he’s considering scrapping them for LEDs.

Cree's LRP-38 LED lights are the three lights on the front of this track. You can see more down the right side of the track.

Cree's LRP-38 LED lights are the three lights on the front of this track. You can see more down the right side of the track.

“At the time I had installed the LRP-38 test, an electrical contractor was talking in the client’s other ear about CFL lamps. Of course, since the CFL lamps were cheaper, the client started installing them in his stores. Now he has some second thoughts about that decision and is very unhappy with CFL and its lackluster color rendition and overall quality. So the discussion about using LED lighting has been rekindled. Stay tuned.”

Sometimes it’s not your home that needs a makeover, it’s your business or office. If you work some place that needs better lighting, show us. Submit a photo of your bad work (or home) lighting to our July photo contest. One winner will receive five Cree CR6 LED downlights!

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Posted in Contest Winners | 3 Comments »

Cree’s October LED lighting giveaway featured several lucky winners

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

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 October Winner

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.

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.

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!

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Posted in For Fun | 1 Comment »

Furniture store employees can stop changing light bulbs thanks to new Cree LED lights

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010


If you took a job in the furniture business, chances are you wouldn’t expect changing light bulbs to be part of your daily routine. But for some employees at the 330 specialty furniture stores owned by the Furniture Row Companies, changing light bulbs became second nature.

That’s because many of the stores were lit with energy-wasting 90-Watt halogen bulbs. In fact, Furniture Row officials estimate that employees spent about 15 hours per week replacing burned out halogen bulbs.

At the Sofa Mart in Yuma, Arizona (one of the specialty stores owned by Furniture Row), store manager Stu Cozzens says employees changed out about 20 bulbs each month. But he’s hoping that will be a task of the past thanks to the newly-installed Cree LRP-38™ LED spotlights that shine on his store.

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Cree LRP-38 LED spotlights were installed at the Sofa Mart in Yuma, Arizona.

“We are hoping that number will be reduced greatly with the new bulbs,” Stu told me.

LED Lights are Long Lasting

That shouldn’t be hard. The LRP-38 LED light is designed to last 50,000 hours in open applications like this. That means Stu could leave these lights on in his store for eight hours a day, seven days a week and could go more than 17 years before he would have to replace them. There are 250 LRP-38 LED lights illuminating the showroom that Stu manages.

In fact, the Furniture Row Companies is in the process of converting all of its 330 Sofa Mart®, Oak Express®, Bedroom Expressions® and Denver Mattress Company® specialty furniture stores to Cree LED Lighting. Last month we announced that nearly 13,000 Cree LRP-38 LED lights were installed out of more than 80,000 planned. In most cases, the 11-Watt Cree LED lights are replacing inefficient 90-Watt halogen bulbs.

“We knew we wanted new lighting that addressed our goal of being environmental stewards, but we also wanted to remain fiscally responsible,” Rod Schnurr, Furniture Row store planning coordinator, said in a recent press release. “We also knew that we couldn’t sacrifice the high quality of light needed to accentuate the wood grains and highlight the beauty of the fabrics – that’s what these Cree lights do.”

Ladders and Bulb Replacement

We sent a photographer out to Sofa Mart in Yuma, and when I saw the height of the tracks the lights live on, I understood the hassle.

Can you imagine climbing a ladder to change bulbs up this high?

Can you imagine climbing a ladder to change bulbs up this high?

Replacing those bulbs means dragging out a tall ladder and climbing up it. Suddenly I was able to see why Furniture Row employees spent an estimated 15 hours per week replacing bulbs throughout the 330 locations. This isn’t like replacing a bulb over your bathroom sink, this requires actual labor.

The long life of the Cree LED lights isn’t the only perk Furniture Row should experience. These LED lights also consume significantly less energy than halogen lights while providing high quality light. The first Furniture Row Shopping Center to install Cree LED lights saved $4,200 on monthly energy costs compared to the original lighting, Schnurr said. Another bonus? The LRP-38 LED spotlights generate less heat, which can result in savings on air conditioning costs.

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So the next time you’re out shopping and you see an employee on a ladder changing a light bulb, maybe you should kindly tell their manager about long-lasting LED lights. And if you are a manager or a store owner, what are you waiting for? Give LED lights a try so your employees can spend more time doing their jobs and less time screwing in light bulbs.

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Posted in LED Businesses, Places Rocking LED Lights | 5 Comments »

How can grocers make their fruits and veggies pop? Hint: It involves LED lights

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

The ladders at a Michigan-based grocery chain are being used a lot less these days now that the produce sections are lit with Cree LED lights.

Up until a few months ago, employees at the three Value Center Marketplace stores used to haul out the ladder every couple of weeks to replace the burned out 90-Watt Par 38 spotlights that lit up the fruits and veggies, according to store owner Ron Fariada.

But earlier this summer, Ron replaced the energy-wasting incandescent lights in the produce sections at all three of his stores with energy-efficient Cree LRP-38™ LED lights. His new LED lights consume only 11 Watts of energy and provide beautiful, warm light that helps make the color of the store’s fruits and vegetables pop.

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“It’s just worry free,” Ron said. “I’m not going to have to worry about changing any bulbs for years. There was an upfront cost, but you’ve got immediate savings as far as power.”

When Ron opened the first Value Center Marketplace in 1989, he was committed to offering the freshest quality foods and the best in family value. More than 20 years later, Ron now runs three of the grocers just outside Detroit, Michigan.

In all, he replaced 50 incandescent lights at each of stores with Cree LRP-38 lights, for a total of 150 LED lights.

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Ron said he expects a two-year payback on his LED lights when he takes into account the energy savings and maintenance savings. The produce lights in his stores are on for about 12 hours a day, seven days a week. And since the LRP-38 LED lights are designed to last 50,000 hours, Ron could continue to save energy and money for another nine years before he needs to consider replacing the lights.

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Already he’s noticed that when he walks under his new LED lights, the area feels cooler than when the 90 Watt incandescent spotlights were lighting up the area.  Ron said he also expects to see HVAC savings.

The produce at Ron’s stores is hand-picked daily from the local farmers market. And now, it can truly shine under LED lights.

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Posted in Energy Efficiency, LED Businesses, Places Rocking LED Lights | 2 Comments »

New York-based Design firm wins the June LED Lighting contest

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

The lobby of Stressdesign may look modern and chic, but look closer and you’ll see that the Syracuse, New York-based Design firm is actually employing some pretty ancient technology – incandescent lighting!

Stressdesign president Marc Stress wanted to improve the lighting in his office, so he snapped a photo and submitted it to our monthly photo contest. Today, we’re pleased to announce that he is the June winner and will receive five Cree LED lights to replace the halogens heating up his workspace.

Here’s his winning picture and what he wrote about the lighting:

“We have a mix of incandescent and CFL lamps in our office. The CFLs are inconsistent at best, and all the incandescent lamps (add) to heat and $$$ on utility.”

lobby photo

This was the winning photo for the month of June.

I e-mailed Marc to tell him the good news. He opted to receive the Cree LRP-38 ™ light which will replace the 75W Halogens that hang from tracks over the office.

Some facts about the Cree LRP-38 lights that Marc is receiving:

  • The LRP-38 consumes only 11 Watts, while producing light comparable to a 75W incandescent.
  • It’s designed to last 50,000 hours. That means Stressdesign could leave the lights on for eight hours a day, seven days a week for just over 17 years.
  • But these lights won’t burn out instantly at the end of their life, like the incandescents Marc is currently burning.  Cree’s LED lights are designed to provide at least 70 percent of their initial light output at the 50,000 hour mark. Many different factors (such as fixture design and operating conditions like temperature and current) determine the actual lifetime of an LED fixture or bulb.
  • The light quality is beautiful. The LRP-38 light delivers warm light (2700K) and gorgeous color (achieving 90 out of 100 on the color rendering index).

Marc said he can’t wait to bring LED lighting to his Design firm.

“I’ve been using LED lighting solutions in various applications in my home and office for the past 5-7 years. I’ve used them for guide lighting, ambient lighting and supplemental area lighting. Early attempts were novel in their power savings, but light output and quality was lacking,” Marc wrote to me.

“Lately, I’ve noticed a huge jump in lumen output, CRI quality and lamping options. I am expecting the new Cree lamps to exceed expectations and provide a better alternative to CFL lamps,” he added.

If you want to give Cree LED lighting a try in your home or office, enter our July photo contest. To qualify for our giveaway, all you have to do is submit a photo of bad lighting to our site. We could be featuring you next month on our blog.

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Posted in Energy Efficiency, For Fun | 1 Comment »

Chocolate bunny melts under incandescent light, survives LED light

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

I was one of the most popular people at work this week after word spread that I was melting chocolate bunnies with light bulbs. People kept stopping by my desk to ask if the scuttlebutt was true. And when they found out it was true, several co-workers declared that I have the best job ever.

But I wasn’t melting the bunnies for fun, or even for a snack. This experiment was for the sake of the LED lighting revolution.

I can preach the benefits of energy-efficient LED lighting until my voice goes hoarse (which I’ve done) or type out blog posts, tweets and e-mails until my fingers callous. But, let’s face it, seeing is believing.

So I turned an empty office into a studio for my experiment. I placed chocolate Easter bunnies under a 12 Watt Cree LRP-38 and a 65 Watt incandescent floodlight. Both lights are designed to be hung from tracks. And, despite their Wattage differences, they’re a relatively fair comparison — a 12 Watt LRP-38 can replace Halogen bulbs up to 90 Watts (the folks at Furniture Row in Denver, Colorado replaced one thousand 90 W Halogens with LRP-38s).

Here's the setup.

Here's the setup.

The results were exactly what I expected. The bunny under the incandescent light melted into a pool of chocolate that spilled over the plate and onto the desk. The LED bunny kept his shape, with just the tip of his head becoming soft when I touched it with my fingertip. Watch the time lapse video to see the incandescent bunny’s downfall:

 

Once the incandescent bunny collapses, you can see my hand reach over and reposition the plate. That’s because that sucker fell backwards and out of the video shot, so I had to reposition him so we could all watch him melt.

I hope the video conveys how much more energy-efficient LED lights are. Since LED lights consume significantly less energy than incandescent bulbs (and even compact fluorescents), they don’t emit as much heat. In fact, LEDs are sensitive to heat, that’s why good thermal design is important for a long-lasting LED light, and that’s what the heat sink helps accomplish (the metal fins or slots that surround LED lights).

Hmmm. Perhaps I’ll have to start melting chocolate with light bulbs around every holiday. If you’ve got suggestions of what I should melt next, post them in the comments!

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Posted in For Fun, Videos | 19 Comments »

February LED lighting contest is a win for retail designer and his client

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

In a way, there were two winners in the February LED Lighting giveaway. We still only gave away five LED lights, but two people are quite happy about it.

Bob Curcio submitted a photo of a brightly-lit, fluorescent and incandescent filled urban footwear shop in Philadelphia into Cree’s monthly photo contest. He complained in his entry that the colors in the merchandise didn’t pop under the existing lighting. Take a look at his entry and feel his pain:

FebContestWinner

But it turns out, Bob isn’t even the owner of the store where these LED lights are going to go. He entered the contest on behalf of his client, who owns KICKSUSA. So when I wrote Bob to tell him he won, he contacted the shop owner to proudly say five new Cree LRP-38s are going to be installed in his store!

You see, it’s really a win-win for Bob. He is a store planner and designer, so he cares about things like beautiful lighting. I chatted with him on the phone this week and he told me the only LED light he owns is a flashlight. But he’s excited to learn more about LED lights for general illumination. He wants to test them to see how well they render colors and how much energy they save (I have a hunch he’s going to be quite impressed).

So the lights will be installed in the KICKSUSA  store in northeast Philadelphia sometime soon, Bob says. His client is thrilled to be the guinea pig. I can’t blame him, I’d be thrilled if someone won a contest on my behalf too. The lights he won consume only 12 Watts of energy, but provide the equivalent light of a 50 to 90 Watt halogen bulb. Bob said he’s pretty sure the lights he’s going to replace consume 75 Watts.

The March LED lighting photo contest is already underway. All you have to do to enter is submit a photo of bad lighting in your home, office or other workplace. You never know, I might be writing about you next month.

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Posted in Revolution | 1 Comment »

Cree goes to SXSW Interactive: Find us for chance to win LED lights!

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

I have two geek sides. One is my LED side, where I get excited geeking out over color temperatures, efficacy and CRI. The other is my social media side, where I geek out over Twitter, blogging and APIs.

Later this week, I’ll get to focus on my social media geek side as I join some 11,000 fellow passionate Internet users in Austin, Texas, at South by Southwest Interactive, the largest web, interactive and social media conference of the year.

lrp38

Here's a look at the LED lights you could win! We're giving away 3 LRP-38s!

I have a lot of goals for the conference, one of them being to spread the good word about the LED Lighting Revolution to anyone who will listen (feel sorry for the person stuck next to me on the plane).

If you plan to attend SXSWi, find me! I’ll be tweeting my location periodically (you are following @Cree on Twitter, aren’t you?). And I’ll be at the Cree Sustainable Media Happy Hour, presented by our friends over at TriplePundit and EcoPopTV on Monday, March 15.

If you’ll be in Austin on Monday and you want to socialize with other non-profits, social entrepreneurs, issues bloggers, clean techies, environmental filmmakers and North Carolina peeps, let us know you’re coming.

And at any point during SXSWi, if you find me, give me your business card. Once SXSWi is over, we’ll draw one winner to receive three Cree LRP-38® LED lights. These are the same LED lights that are being installed in the produce sections of 650 Wal-Marts and they provide gorgeous, warm energy-efficient light!

It shouldn’t be too hard to find me throughout the week. I plan on tweeting my location and using the location-based app Gowalla. Here’s a picture of me from last night’s News & Observer Tweetup in Downtown Raleigh. Find me for your chance to win!

GinnyNandoTweetup
Looking forward to Lighting the LED Revolution in Austin!

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Posted in For Fun, Revolution, Trade Shows | No Comments »

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