It seems every day the LED industry is crossing new boundaries, reaching new thresholds, and brightening an expanding horizon. Adding one more reason for optimism, we’d like to share news about the latest developments in integrated daylight harvesting with LEDs. Integrated LED/daylight systems use sensors to assess how much natural light is entering a room, adjusting the LED system accordingly to reach a desired light level. Basically, these integrated lighting systems improve indoor lighting systems by optimizing artificial light in combination with natural light.  The benefit of this system is that it significantly reduces business and consumer energy consumption costs, while greatly improving quality and functionality over conventional lighting set-ups. On their own, high quality LED lights already produce light 80% more efficiently than incandescents. Conventional incandescents actually waste 80% of the energy they require by producing heat rather than light. On this basis alone, it’s clear that LEDs present a huge opportunity for energy savings. With electricity production as the single largest contributor to CO2 emissions, accounting for 38% of U.S. emissions from 1990-2012, the reduction in usage afforded by LED lighting has an enormous environmental impact. But by using natural lights when possible, capitalizing on integrated daylight harvesting with LEDs, the already astonishing energy savings of this revolutionary lighting technology are even greater. Intelligent controls represent one of the greatest advancements brought to us by LED lighting systems. Through digital programming and networked management, LED lighting systems can easily be adjusted to meet predetermined factors. LEDs are superior to CFLs for networked management because they can be turned off and on easier, and can also be finely adjusted. Not only that, but the quality of light produced by many LEDs is actually closer to sunlight than most CFLs, which is another reason people are turning...

Installing LED lights in your business, warehouse or home is the first step toward realizing a dramatically lower lighting bill. The next step is to program LED strip lights to connect with occupancy sensors, timers and smart controls to maximize the greatest savings possible. As demand for green technology and efficient use of resources continues to grow, networked LED lights have become a crucial component in the modern energy retrofit. Energy efficiency investments could total $959 billion from 2014 to 2023, according to forecasts by Navigant Research. One thing is for sure: when it comes to effective ways to save energy on your lighting bill, LED-based lighting systems are impossible to beat. To start with, LEDs are incredibly efficient. Thomas Edison’s incandescent lightbulb, which brought electric light to the 20th century, produces just 16 lumens per watt. In comparison, most commercially available LEDs produce anywhere from 60 to 100 lumens per watt. But the efficiency of LED technology doesn’t end at the diode; its ultimate energy-saving superiority lies in its advanced control capabilities. Using LED-based automated systems, lights can be programmed to turn on and off automatically when people enter a room. Further, dimming and other advanced features can be controlled externally via smartphones or software connected to the internet. This networked management is possible because LEDs can be switched off and on digitally, and can easily be finely adjusted for both brightness and color temperature. Highly advanced LED-based lights can even be tuned to correspond to natural sunlight entering the room in a method of lighting known as daylight harvesting. Advanced daylight harvesting uses sunlight entering a room from windows and skylights and adjusts the LED lighting system to automatically add the necessary light to meet the room’s predetermined brightness level. Changing to LED lighting...

Worldwide attention was recently centered upon LED technology when the Nobel Prize committee announced that three scientists were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the blue LED. While many people may have read the news and thought, “maybe it’s time to complete my energy efficient lighting retrofit,” less well-known are the benefits of LED lighting in developing countries. LEDs, combined with solar panels, have been a called a “transformative technology” for more than a billion people who live without a reliable source of electricity. Today, 5 percent of Africans without access to electricity, around 28.5 million people, are using renewable energy-powered LED lights to break through the dark night. That’s in addition to a growing market in South Asia as well. According to Russell Sturm from a private sector investment arm of the World Bank International Finance Corp, worldwide sales of solar-powered LEDs have been growing at a rate of 150% annually for several years. In the past six months alone, 2.1 million LED-solar products have been sold to people around the world who are unconnected to an electrical grid. The majority of the 1.3 billion people who are living without electricity rely on kerosene, wood and candles to produce light and home energy. The economic and environmental costs of these light-generating methods have been pointed to as major stumbling block to productivity and economic growth for the world’s poorest people. Kerosene in particular has been called out due to the fact that it’s relatively expensive and increases risk for fire and health damage. People around the world without electricity spend around $38 billion a year on kerosene. Recognizing the opportunity to disrupt the market, social entrepreneurs have taken to LED technology and are selling it to the world’s poorest people, allowing them to leapfrog...

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a $4 billion loan guarantee program to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. LED lighting projects will qualify for the program. To qualify for the loans, projects must meet one of the following requirements: renewable energy systems; efficient electrical generation, transmission and distribution technologies; or efficient end-use energy technology (LEDs qualify as an efficient end-use energy technology). Applicants should have a project that is market-ready, replicable and would not likely be fully financed on a long-term basis by commercial banks. The DOE loan program is primarily geared toward renewables. LEDs are increasingly being incorporated with renewable technologies such as solar energy, and are helping to make renewable technologies more viable. The efficiency and reduced costs of solar-powered LEDs means they have already started to outperform electrical grid wiring in applications such as road and bus shelter lighting all the way from Boston to Abu Dhabi. The primary opportunity for LED lighting in this federal loan guarantee program lies in its compliance with the efficient end-use category. LEDs use 80% less energy than standard incandescent lighting. Not only that, but the advanced programing capabilities and rapid “on/off” switching of LEDs lend themselves to home automation projects and use in intelligent lighting projects aimed to reduce energy usage. LEDs are more efficient than other light sources because the vast majority of energy they use is transferred into light rather than heat. With an estimated 17% of the total energy used in commercial and residential sectors in 2012 going to lighting, the potential for LED energy savings across the nation is enormous. Initial applications for the federal guaranteed loan programs are due October 1, 2014, along with a $50,000 fee for the first phase of the DOE loan guarantee...

“LIGHT reveals the glories of the external world and yet is the most glorious of them all. It gives beauty, reveals beauty and is itself most beautiful. It is the analyzer, the truth-teller and the exposer of shams, for it shows things as they are.” Edwin D. Babbitt, Principles of Light and Color While interior design plans give plenty of attention to wall paint and floor colors, lighting plays a critical role that is too often overlooked. Color and lighting influence our psychological functioning and well-being on a day-to-day basis, and understanding these influences is important when creating “human-centric” spaces. Designers have been using advanced color knowledge in this way for years, and the customizability of LED lighting now allows them to do the same with light. Let’s take a closer look at LEDs and the psychology of light and color. Humanity’s fascination with color has been with us since the dawn of civilization, with different colors used to symbolize and express various moods in ancient artwork spanning from Greece to Tibet. Color theory can be somewhat subjective, as certain colors elicit varying reactions in individuals based on personal preference and cultural backgrounds. It’s a truly interesting scientific field, and a great deal of thought has gone into exploring the psychological effects of color. One way of comparing colors in the visible spectrum is to divide them into “warm” and “cool” categories. The warm colors include red, orange, and yellow—think of the sun setting on the beach, or maple leaves strewn across the yard in early fall.  These colors generally convey passion, positive energy, enthusiasm and happiness. In contrast, the cool colors include green, blue and purple—think of a solitary walk on a full moon night, or the depth of the ocean sea beneath a sleeping fisherman’s boat. Those colors convey...