Craig’s Electrical Contractor Articles

The November issue of Electrical Contractor published an article here that I wrote about the Department of Energy’s Commercial Lighting Solutions for Retail webtool residing here. I was pleased to contribute to the webtool with general language about lighting control recommendations. The DOE’s CLS for Office version is about to be released in a beta [...]

That’s the title of an article I wrote about lighting and the new LEED 2009 requirements, published in the July issue of Electrical Contractor. You can check it out here.

“Incandescents are better than CFLs because CFLs contain mercury.” There are many arguments against favoring CFLs over incandescents, and I agree with many of them, but this one doesn’t wash. Click here to read this article I wrote for Electrical Contractor that makes a clear case that incandescents are actually the true net emitters of [...]

Writing for the February 2009 issue of Electrical Contractor Magazine, I make the case that lighting quality should be an equal partner to energy savings in an upgrade of an existing building. In fact, doing so can can result in a larger project and more work for the contractor. The article includes references to the [...]

Read the article I wrote on this subject for the January 2009 issue of Electrical Contractor here. The article makes reference to NEMA’s revised LSD25-2008, “Best Practices for Metal Halide Lighting Systems Plus Q&A About Lamp Ruptures in Metal Halide Lighting Systems,” available here.

I recently wrote an article for the April issue of Electrical Contractor, about some aspects of integrating lighting control and energy management systems. This is a hot topic because codes now require automatic shutoff of lighting and demand response is going to grow in importance in the future, but EMS traditionally has not done a [...]

Most lighting professionals are aware by now that the Commercial Buildings Deduction has been extended to 2013. Here is an article I wrote for Electrical Contractor Magazine, published in the March issue, that describes the Interim Lighting Rule, which in my opinion is the easiest and fastest path for an indoor lighting project to qualify [...]

Recently, I wrote a two-part series on LED lighting for Electrical Contractor that you might find interesting. The first article, titled “Lighting Up to the Legend: Will LEDs replace Traditional Sources of Light?”, acknowledges the importance of LEDs as an energy-saving light source with many other benefits, but notes that the technology is still rapidly [...]

A recent article I wrote for Electrical Contractor talks about the push to replace linear fluorescent lamps with linear LED replacement lamps. In a nutshell, linear LED replacement lamps are now being offered as direct drop-in replacements of 4-ft. T8 and T12 lamps. Even with the possibility of delamping due to higher fixture efficiency and [...]