Craig’s Lighting Articles

The Internet of Things offers electrical contractors powerful revenue-generating service opportunities and new challenges, according to a 2019 report published by ELECTRI International.

As the LED revolution matures and the technology approaches its practical limit for efficacy, the conversation is shifting from energy-efficiency back toward lighting quality.

For the electrical contractor, allying with a distributor participating in a midstream rebate program means being able to purchase or recommend energy-efficient lighting at a resulting cost discounted by a built-in rebate.

Based on research suggesting a correlation between building design and human health and wellness, in 2013 Delos created the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), which launched the WELL Building Standard. As of March 2019, more than 1,500 projects encompassing 315 million sq.ft. in 48 countries have been designed to WELL certification.

Prescriptive product rebates offered by utilities and energy efficiency organizations are an enduring and influential force in the lighting retrofit market. Typically, the rebate is administered by the utility and paid directly to the customer, usually involving a lengthy process involving qualification, pre-approval, and payment. In recent years, some rebate programs have begun to experiment with a different model called midstream or “instant” lighting rebates. In this model, the rebate is provided via the distributor at the point of sale rather than directly to the customer (downstream) or to the manufacturer (upstream).

Using visible light from LEDs, visible light disinfection (VLD) technology is designed to provide functional illumination that is safe for humans, while containing recipes for saturated blue/violet emission that is harmful to germs. It has been commercialized by companies like Kenall Manufacturing (Indigo-Clean) and Vital Vio, Inc., which licenses to Visa Lighting, Evolution Lighting and others.

Active core sunlighting is the subject of a new design guide (DG-31-18) published by the Illuminating Engineering Society. With this approach, sunlight is captured using solar-tracking optics, delivered deep within the building core, and distributed as general, task and/or accent lighting. By replacing electric lighting at least a few hours of the day, active core sunlighting can save energy and improve lighting quality. This article, which I contributed to the June 2019 issue of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR, summarizes the IES guidance.

For a decade, the lighting industry focused on increasing LED source efficacy (lumens/W), resulting in today’s highly efficacious and compact luminaires. As efficacy reaches an economically practical limit, the conversation is changing to emphasize “quality lighting” and its value. While it’s a longstanding, venerable concept in lighting, the LED revolution provides new tools for its realization, though these tools add to lighting’s complexity and thereby require education for proper implementation.

Electrical contractors consider themselves highly influential in lighting-equipment selection for both new construction and retrofit projects. That’s one key finding from the 2019 CII Lighting Trends Survey, which ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR conducted using the 1,000 members on its Subscriber Research Panel.