LightNOW

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a free report detailing the characteristics of the U.S. lighting market by technology and sector. The 2010 U.S. Lighting Market Characterization provides comprehensive and detailed estimates of the national inventory of installed lamps as well as their associated energy use and lumen production. It focuses on four sectors: residential buildings, commercial buildings, industrial buildings, and outdoor.

In 2010, lighting accounted for approximately 700 terawatt-hours (TWh), or roughly 19% of the country’s total electricity use. Nearly half of that energy use (349 TWh) came from the commercial sector, which was dominated by fluorescent lighting. Although the residential sector (175 TWh) contained far more installed lamps, most of them incandescent, these residential lamps did not see nearly as much daily use, on average, as did commercial-sector lamps.

The new report is an update to a similar DOE report that modeled the 2001 U.S. lighting market inventory. During the intervening decade, two overarching trends emerged:

• Push toward higher-efficacy lighting. The average system efficacy of installed lighting increased from 45 lumens per watt in 2001 to 58 lumens per watt in 2010, due mainly to a move from incandescent to compact fluorescent lamps in the residential sector, and from T12 to T8 and T5 fluorescent lamps in the commercial and industrial sectors.
• Increased demand for light. The total number of lamps installed in U.S. stationary applications grew from just under 7 billion in 2001 to more than 8 billion in 2010, with most of this growth occurring in the residential sector.

Click here to get this report now.

Philips Lighting’s Energy Advantage CDM with All-Start lamps is a series of ceramic metal halide lamps available in 205W and 330W—and now, new in 2011, 145W—to replace 175W, 250W and 400W probe-start lamps to save energy and improve color quality. The lamp operates on both probe- and pulse-start metal halide ballasts in any orientation, so no ballast replacement is needed to generate 18% energy savings.

Construction spending totaled $807 billion in November 2011, the highest level since June 2010, as homebuilding, private nonresidential construction and public construction all increased compared to October, based on Department of Commerce data.

“Several segments of construction appear to be climbing out of a hole,” said Associated General Contractors of America Chief Economist Ken Simonson. “The new year should reinforce recent year-over-year gains in apartment, power, manufacturing and private transportation construction. But November’s upturns in single-family homebuilding and public construction may not be sustainable.”

Total construction spending rose 1.2% in November from October and 0.5% from the November 2010 level. Private residential construction posted increases of 2.0% and 3.4%, with gains in single-family, multifamily and residential improvements. Private nonresidential construction spending inched up a negligible amount from October but gained 4.5% compared to November 2010. Public spending rose 1.7% last month but declined 5.3% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the uptick in private nonresidential construction from November 2010 was widespread, led by manufacturing, up 12.6%; commercial (retail, warehouse and farm), up 12%; private educational, up 10%; private transportation, up 9.2%; and power (including oil and gas), up 8.4%.

Most public construction categories shrank over the past 12 months. Public educational construction was up 0.5% for the month and 2.8% year-over-year, however.

“Public construction segments face stiff spending cuts in 2012,” Simonson cautioned.

Associated General Contractors of America’s leaders said planned cuts to a range of federal building and infrastructure construction programs were likely to hurt the construction industry even as private sector demand finally rebounds. They noted that the federal budget for 2012 includes a more than 6% cut for construction programs and added that Congress is years late in passing much-needed water, aviation and surface transportation legislation.

“If lawmakers don’t act swiftly, they risk undermining a long-awaited recovery for the construction industry that could put tens of thousands of people back to work,” said Stephen E. Sandherr, the association’s chief executive officer. “These cuts aren’t helping balance the budget, but they are keeping a major segment of our economy in check.”

After showing struggling business conditions for most of 2011, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) has now reached positive terrain in consecutive months.

As a leading economic indicator of construction activity, the ABI reflects the approximate 9- to 12-month lag time between architecture billings and construction spending. The regional and sector categories are calculated as a 3-month moving average, whereas the index and inquiries are monthly numbers.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the December ABI score was 52.0, following the exact same mark in November. This score reflects an overall increase in demand for design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 64.0, down just a point from a reading of 65.0 the previous month.

“We saw nearly identical conditions in November and December of 2010 only to see momentum sputter and billings fall into negative territory as we moved through 2011, so it’s too early to be sure that we are in a full recovery mode,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “Nevertheless, this is very good news for the design and construction industry and it’s entirely possible conditions will slowly continue to improve as the year progresses.”

Key December ABI highlights:

* Regional averages: South (54.2), Midwest (53.1), Northeast (52.6), West (45.1)
* Sector index breakdown: multi-family residential (54.3), commercial / industrial (54.1), institutional (51.3), mixed practice (44.5)
* Project inquiries index: 64.0

David DiLaura walks you through the 10th edition of the IES Lighting Handbook.

Cooper Lighting has announced the 2012 SOURCE calendar of educational classes for the lighting and design community. The SOURCE is located at Cooper Lighting’s headquarters in Peachtree City, Georgia, and offers a wide variety of seminars designed to broaden the understanding of lighting and its applications. The SOURCE has been servicing the lighting industry for more than 20 years and to date, over 100,000 construction professionals have received education at this facility, according to Cooper, many of them receiving some form of continuing education units.

This year, the SOURCE has added a fundamentals class for lighting educators and will be hosting a healthcare seminar in Boston, Massachusetts and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada as noted below.

Current available seminars/workshops for 2012 are:

January 18 – 20: Lighting Fundamentals/Lighting Basics
February 9 – 10: Energy and Retrofit Solutions for Commercial and Industrial Spaces

March 7 – 8: LED Exterior Lighting Solutions
March 14 – 16: Lighting Fundamentals for Distributors and Contractors
March 26 – 27: Healthcare Lighting Solutions Workshop

April 12 – 13: Lighting and Controls for the Facility Manager

May 16 – 18: Lighting Fundamentals/Lighting Basics
June 6 – 8: Fundamentals for Teachers of Lighting
June 14 – 15: Healthcare Lighting Solutions Workshop (Boston, Massachusetts

August 23 – 24: Residential Lighting Solutions Workshop

September 5 – 7: Lighting Fundamentals for Distributors and Contractors
September 19 – 21: LED and Energy Efficient Retail and Hospitality Lighting Solutions Workshop

October 3 – 5: Lighting Fundamentals/Lighting Basics
October 9 – 10: Healthcare Lighting Solutions Workshop (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
October 23 – 24: Energy and Retrofit Solutions for Commercial and Industrial Spaces

November 14 – 15: LED Exterior Lighting Solutions

December 5 – 7: Lighting Fundamentals/Lighting Basics

Learn more here.

The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CEBCS) provides valuable information about the U.S. commercial building stock and its energy consumption. The 2007 CEBCS was canceled due to a bad data collection method (proving cheaper is not always better), and the 2011 CEBCS was suspended due to funding cuts at the Department of Energy. You may recall an outcry from this blogger and organizations like IES and the American Institute of Architects about this. Not only is the information critically important to the lighting industry, in my view if you don’t measure, you can’t enact good policy.

Some good news today: The Energy Information Administration (EIA), the data collection arm of the Department of Energy, has announced that it has resumed work on the next CEBCS. EIA plans to field the survey in April 2013, collecting data for reference year 2012. EIA expects to publish the first results of the survey in the first half of 2014.

Follow updates on the development of the 2012 CEBCS, and access free data for previous iterations of the Survey, here.

The Illuminating Engineering Society is now accepting project submittals for the 2012 Illumination Awards. The deadline is February 13, 2012.

Check it out here.

Beautiful images of the Saturn system courtesy of the NASA Cassini Mission.

The Lumina panel from Sensitile Systems offers a material that transforms a single integrated LED source into a surface within which thousands of points of light appear to seemingly float. Panels can be cut, shaped and joined to create shapes and objects.