October 2014

The international jury for the Zumtobel Group Award 2014 has selected projects from Arup of Germany, Studio Tamassociati of Italy and Elemental of Chile as the winners in their respective categories. To promote innovations for sustainability and humanity in the built environment, the Austrian lighting group had invited submissions for the award in three categories: [...]

The Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) recently announced the publication of Recommended Practice for Roadway Lighting, RP-8-14, an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved standard. The IES, as an accredited ANSI standards developer, revised RP-8-14 in accordance with ANSI consensus-based procedures. The primary purpose of this Recommended Practice is to serve as the basis for design [...]

The 2014 edition of LEDs and the Worldwide Market for Lighting Fixtures is now available has been published by CSIL, including historical data up to 2013 and 2014-2018 forecasts. In less than 10 years, LED share on the lighting fixtures market worldwide jumped from 1% to 25%. In just five years, LED share will be [...]

Philips Lighting has flattened the downlight with the introduction of the Philips SlimSurface LED family of downlights. Providing the illusion of recessed downlighting, but with just a 5/8” surface mount design that is nearly flush with the ceiling, SlimSurface allows lighting to be installed in locations where wall and ceiling clearance can be an issue, [...]

Below is an article I wrote for TED Magazine, which was published in its September 2014 issue. Reprinted with permission. Although LED directional lamps are steadily improving, halogen reflector lamps remain most popular for directional lighting applications and the gold standard to beat in terms of overall performance. Available in a wide range of configurations, [...]

Briteswitch recently sent me this nifty graphic outlining the current status of LED outdoor lighting rebate programs:

Republication of Postings from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solid-State Lighting Program by Jim Brodrick, SSL Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy Among solid-state lighting’s many potential advantages, energy efficiency is the one that’s best-known, and it’s the driving reason behind DOE’s multipronged effort to accelerate the technology’s development and market introduction. That’s why [...]

An article recently published in the IEEE Spectrum alleges that a cartel of lighting manufacturers engineered shorter life into their lamps to ensure a higher volume of ongoing sales. Read it here. Special thanks to Howard Wolfman for sending this my way.

USAI Lighting’s proprietary Color Select technology enables an architectural LED downlight offering independent control of both intensity and color temperature. Users can tune white light from candle-like 2200K up to a very cool daylight-like 6000K, and intensity from 100% to 0.1%, using local dimmers or programmable control systems. Click here to learn more. This great [...]