Deb Lovig’s official title at Cree, the lighting and semiconductor company, is “LED Programs Evangelist.” The description fits. Ask her to pick a favorite project and she’ll name five before you get her stopped. She’ll skip from North Carolina State’s dorm lighting project (see picture, right) to the University of California-Davis’ smart parking garage to Notre Dame’s beautiful acorn-shaped fixtures without taking a breath.

The projects are all part of Cree’s “LED University,” a program that combines the company’s expertise with university situations and helps campuses figure out how to begin evaluating LED lighting projects for themselves. While many organizations know that LED lighting is less expensive and lasts longer than conventional lighting, they aren’t sure where to take it from there. Interior projects? Exterior security? A total campus makeover?

“The biggest issue I see besides price is just not knowing how to start,” Lovig said. “That’s what we’re trying to do, is just get people to get started.”

The motivation is there, certainly. As LED (light-emitting diode) technology continues to develop in brightness and color, it is becoming a darling in the green market. LED devices reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption, and contain no mercury. And they can make a big difference in an electric bill, partly because they consume less energy and partly because they can last for as many as 20-25 years.

Take the South Entry Parking Structure at UC-Davis, for example. You might not think it’s a very exciting project, but Prof. Michael Siminovitch, the director of the university’s Lighting Technology Center, would disagree.

“Parking garages are kind of unique,” Siminovitch said. “Parking garages are pretty intensive energy users because it’s 24/7, and they’ve got some real safety and security issues. LEDs are really suited to smart applications. You can have controls that respond to occupancy.”

The lights in the garage can be set at half-power, increasing to full power when sensors detect people or movement within.

“It’s a real opportunity to demonstrate effectiveness of new technology,” Siminovitch said.

And an opportunity to illustrate cost efficiency as well, considering that lighting accounts for 20 percent of the overall energy use in a building, according to U.S. Department of Energy statistics.

“The numbers that we’ve presented to the vice chancellor, we’re talking statewide about 50 percent savings. And while we usually associate (cost savings) with having to do without, this is not the case. Here it’s not how much lighting, it’s more the quality of the lighting. Lighting that improves safety, essentially.”

An item in the New York Times last week served as a good wrap-up of recent developments on the LED front, finding places (beyond traffic lights) where light emitting diodes are getting a toehold as replacements for less energy-efficient lights.

But does it, in newspaper terms, “bury the lead”? Readers who have been led in recent years to think of compact fluorescents as the next phase for common household lighting — and to think of LEDs as specialty items — might perk up at a quote thrown in near the end of the article. There, Kaj den Daas, chairman and C.E.O. of light bulb giant Philips Lighting, declares “we are not spending one dollar on research and development for compact fluorescents.”

Really!? Are CFLs dead before they’re fully accepted — old news while green prophets are still hailing them as one of the main eco-friendly steps every household should take?

While not every expert shares this opinion — the paper cites a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scholar who thinks much of the LED talk “is hype” — others appear to feel that the color-spectrum issues and mercury content of today’s CFL will be enough of a road block to let the still very expensive LED catch up. We confirmed this with Philips, whose Felicia Spagnoli (a communications manager in the solid-state lighting division) says “in the past two years alone Philips has spent $4.2 billion on lighting-related acquisitions, all intended to bolster competency in LED lighting” — and that dollar amount doesn’t include staff and resources that have been moved from work on conventional lamps to LED projects.

Spagnoli reports that, despite the well publicized downturn in housing, “Philips Lighting grew 19%” in the second quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, a result the company attributes mainly to LED growth. Furthermore, the company is looking forward to introducing new products to the United States, like the changeable Living Colors fixture (a “mood lamp,” to hear some describe it), that are already available elsewhere.

Most important, she notes that the Department of Energy is helping fund a Philips replacement for 60-watt incandescent bulbs. “With an ultimate performance target of 80 lumens per watt, the fully realized lamp would meet or exceed the efficacy of a majority of conventional light sources.”

Yes: When that bulb arrives, it will cost more than a traditional monofilament — but the company clearly believes it can explain the long-term financial and ecological benefits well enough to sell rings around those curly fluorescents.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media