Craig DiLouie

The U.S. Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce recently announced that construction spending during January 2009 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $986.2 billion, 3.3% below the revised December estimate of $1.02 trillion. The January figure is 9.1% below the January 2008 estimate of $1.085 trillion. Spending on private construction was [...]

I recently wrote an article for TED Magazine about extended-life linear 4-ft. fluorescent T8 lamps. Industry averages: * 20,000 hours at 3 hours/start on instant-start ballast (the most commonly installed electronic ballast) * 24,000 hours at 12 hours/start on instant-start ballast * 24,000 hours at 3 hours/start on a programmed-start ballast * 30,000 hours at [...]

Furniture designer SAAZS has collaborated with Saint-Gobain Innovations to produce Planilum technology, which enables light to be incorporated as a material into stylish objects and furniture. Planilum, a complex multi-layered special glass containing a plasma gas excited through transparent conductive layers, can light up a 40-sq.m. room for 100 input watts. The result is incredible. [...]

UK lighting design practice Speirs and Major Associates has announced the promotion of Keith Bradshaw to Director. Bradshaw, formerly an Associate Director, first joined the Edinburgh office in 2002. A graduate of London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, he has a broad range of experience as a lighting designer. During his time at Speirs and Major [...]

Leviton marketing manager Bob Freshman has been a lieutenant/firefighter/EMT for Newberg, OR for the past eight years. Starting in 2008, he began competing in the Seattle Firefighter stairclimb and is participating in the 2009 event this weekend. The primary purpose of this event is to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and last [...]

More than 2,800 people attended ASHRAE‘s 2009 Winter Conference, held Jan. 24-28, Chicago. Also taking place in conjunction with the meeting was the Air-Conditioning, Heating, Refrigerating Exposition, which attracted 54,000 registered visitors and exhibitor personnel. A major announcement was ASHRAE’s proposed building energy labeling program, which the Society expects to launch at the 2009 Annual [...]

Since the launch of the blog I’ve been having to weed out comments for some of the posts where manufacturers or manufacturer sales reps are trying to promote their new products. I’m not against people doing this, not at all. It’s just that those posts were not the right place for promotional messages. To provide [...]

I hope you’ll excuse some blatant self promotion, but I received some good news about one of my books, The Lighting Controls Handbook. The book has been selected by NCQLP as a primary reference for its Lighting Certified (LC) certification exam. Here’s a description of the book from the publisher: “Intended for energy managers, electrical [...]

The Lighting Controls Association authorized ZING Communications, Inc. to conduct a survey of a group of nearly 900 lighting designers, more than 730 electrical engineers and more than 530 lighting/energy consultants subscribing to the LightNOW lighting industry and lightingCONTROL lighting control e-newsletters. The survey, conducted online based on three email invitations distributed in December 2008 [...]