David Shiller

  The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) established a temporary public interest waiver to waive Buy America requirements for steel, iron, manufactured products, and construction materials in electric vehicle (EV) chargers. The temporary waiver became effective on March 23, 2023. This short-term, temporary waiver enables EV charger acquisition and installation to proceed while also ensuring the [...]

  Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, and this article is a good faith, best effort at communicating the most relevant aspects of BABA requirements, for the lighting industry. The link at the end of this article goes to a more complete article published by the law firm, Steptoe. BACKGROUND The lighting industry has been [...]

  An interesting article by Trane lays out the basics of Building Automation System (BAS) communications and then addresses four common misconceptions. We should first define the protocols and mediums. Protocols are the language in which the building is speaking—BACnet® over MS/TP, BACnet over IP, Modbus, and LonTalk are some of the non-proprietary languages used [...]

  Clifton Lemon Associates today announced that Pacific Gas & Electric will present a free webinar on the growing importance of building controls integration in the process of building-grid connection, load management, decarbonization, and electrification. Titled Lighting and Smart, Grid-Integrated Buildings, the webinar presents a history and overview of building controls integration in both commercial [...]

  According to US Census Bureau data, September national nonresidential construction spending grew 0.3% marketing the 16th consecutive month of growth. The growth is primarily attributed to publicly financed construction. Some private categories, including power, commercial, amusement, and recreation saw month-over-month increases, however, publicly financed construction accounted for more than 72% of September’s rise. Federal [...]

  Optique Lighting has announced the release of their Orbita Collection of Nano Linear Architectural Luminaires, including two sconces and a wall mount luminaire. The modular designs allow customization of lengths and configurations to meet specific project specifications. The luminaires allow adjustable 360-degree rotation for fine-tuning of the light distribution onsite. The Nano Linear Light [...]

  The US Department of Transportation awarded $653 million in grants on November 3rd to upgrade 41 water-based ports around the country. The funding is through the Port Infrastructure Development Program, which provides planning support, capital funding and project management assistance, and comes from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The projects will boost [...]

Zhaga, a global lighting industry consortium dedicated to the standardization and interoperability of LED lighting components, announced that Zhaga’s Book 14 has been officially designated as IEC Standard 63356-1. The Zhaga Consortium actively collaborates with global and regional standards development organizations, as well as national lighting entities, to promote the widespread adoption of Zhaga specifications. [...]

  Li-Fi utilizes light (typically infrared), instead of WiFi radio waves, to provide blazing fast, secure, wireless connectivity. There has been some Li-Fi adoption by military organizations around the world, but generally, overall adoption has been very slow. That may be about to change. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been writing about a new [...]