Craig DiLouie

Nationwide housing starts turned upward for the first time in eight months in February, rising to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 583,000 units in February, a gain of 22.2%. To put this in perspective, however, the gain was primarily due to a big bump in the often-volatile multifamily market–an 82.3% surge to a 226,000-unit [...]

Meyda Lighting has established MEYDA CUSTOM LIGHTING, a division that specializes in custom lighting fixtures, lamps, stained glass windows and more. Lighting diffusers are crafted of stained glass, steel, sandcarved glass, fused glass, blown glass, acrylics, fabrics and more. Fabricators work with steel, iron, aluminum, bronze, brass and copper which are welded, forged, formed and [...]

Across the United States, local governments are slashing budgets, presenting significant challenges to local government. The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan suffered a 60% reduction, spurring the search for areas to cut costs, including the city’s energy use. The city was spending more than $1.4 million a year just on streetlighting. Ann Arbor embarked on [...]

I was contacted by Placement Professionals, a recruiting agency located in northern NJ, which is looking to fill three regional sales positions for a high-end commercial lighting controls manufacturer in the NYC metro area, Los Angeles and Dallas areas. “The specific requirement is someone having sold lighting controls to the commercial industry and who has [...]

Acuity Brands Lighting, Inc. has entered into an agreement (subject to regulatory approval) to acquire 100% of the outstanding capital stock of Sensor Switch, Inc., the $37 million controls manufacturer, for $205 million. Sensor Switch, based in Wallingford, CT, offers energy-saving control solutions such including occupancy sensors, photocontrols and distributed lighting control devices. “The acquisition [...]

Philips has announced its MASTER LED collection of LED lamps that can be used in luminaires with E27 and GU10 sockets. The 7W E27 A55 lamp, identical in form factor to a conventional light bulb, is most interesting, suitable for retrofit of 40W incandescents for nearly 83% energy savings in general lighting applications. The lamp [...]

Cooper Industries has announced the acquisition of Irvine, CA-based Illumination Management Solutions, Inc. (IMS). IMS is a developer of specialized optics and system design for LED luminaires. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. IMS designs and manufactures LED systems and luminaires for a variety of lighting applications and has developed an innovation called LightBAR(tm) [...]

The Lighting Controls Association has announced that its Education Express online education system now supports lighting controls training and certification conducted by the California Advanced Lighting Controls Training Program (CALCTP). CALCTP is a new program operated by representatives of the California Lighting Technology Center, California Energy Commission, California Community College system, investor-owned and municipal utilities, [...]

In this post, I noted that ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2004 has been established by the Department of Energy as the commercial building reference standard for state building energy codes starting in 2010. Meanwhile, the stimulus package appears to be encouraging adoption of the latest version, which is 90.1-2007, as noted in this post. I promised a [...]