Guest post by Jim Brodrick, Department of Energy Results of the latest round of CALiPER testing were released recently, and as usual they can tell us a thing or two about the current state of solid-state lighting. As you may know, DOE’s CALiPER program supports testing of a wide array of SSL products available for [...]
The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, produced by the Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy (DOE), provides incredibly valuable information about how commercial buildings use energy and energy-using systems such as lighting and HVAC. If you wanted to know things like, “How many office buildings are in the Northeast?” or “What is the [...]
This blog post at the Philips community website, “Lighting Up Memory,” looks at the Berlin Wall and its impact on local lighting. The post discusses key elements of Alexander Tolle’s 2009 whitepaper on post-unification Berlin, Urban identity policies in Berlin: From critical reconstruction to reconstructing the Wall. It’s an interesting read; check it out here [...]
Part of the backlash against compact fluorescent lamps has been that they contain mercury. The argument doesn’t hold up on one level, which is that incandescent lamps require more power, which means power plants must burn more fossil fuels to satisfy that requirement, and thereby emit more mercury into the environment than CFLs. This type [...]
In 2008, it was my honor to work with legendary lighting designer Howard Brandston on editing LEARNING TO SEE: A Matter of Light, which was subsequently published by IES. If the book could be boiled even further to a single statement, it might be Brandston’s trademark question, “What is it you wish to see?” Check [...]
Guest post by Jim Brodrick, U.S. Department of Energy Some of you may have seen a new report on street lighting by the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A number of people have asked for my comments on that report, so here goes. In a nutshell, the LRC report implies that GATEWAY [...]
Guest Post by Jim Brodrick, Department of Energy [Recently], the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced its new consumer labeling requirements for medium screw-based light bulbs. The bottom line is that manufacturers of incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LED light bulbs will have to begin employing a new “Lighting Facts” label that’s similar to DOE’s Lighting FactsCM [...]
And more … my favorite bit was the people coming up with song titles with the word “light” in it. Welcome to the 2010 Lumen Awards!
Guest Post by Jim Brodrick, Department of Energy I was really gratified by the response to the Posting a few weeks back about DOE’s fact sheet on the performance specifications of LED T8 replacement lamps. In our booth at LIGHTFAIR last month, that fact sheet went like hotcakes, because it blows the whistle on a [...]
