By Ginny Skalski

Most people who visit Indian Wells, California, are probably drawn in by the four world class resorts, the spas and the lush golf courses. The resort community in the southern California desert became a retreat for celebrities after Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz opened the Indian Wells Hotel in 1958. Since then, city officials have worked to make Indian Wells a premiere destination in the Coachella Valley.

These days, city officials are keen on sustainability, and energy-use reduction has become a key goal for the city. I had the “tough” job of visiting Indian Wells last month for an LED City^® Council meeting, and while I was there I had the city’s management analyst Susan Weisbart give me a tour of some of the city’s LED lighting installations.

Indian Wells was the first California city to become an LED City. The LED City program helps municipalities speed up the adoption of energy-saving LED lights by connecting them with information they need to make informed decisions about installing LED lights.

One of the first LED lighting installations in Indian Wells involved swapping out incandescent lights that lit the outside of city hall and other municipal buildings with 12 Watt Cree LR6™ recessed lights. It’s a change that city officials say saves nearly $7,000 a year in energy costs. That’s not counting the maintenance savings of not having to replace burned out bulbs, since the LED lights they installed are designed to last 50,000 hours – or 17 years if they’re on 8 hours a day!

The city also has plans to replace the 50 Watt halogen lights illuminating the signature palm trees lining city streets with 11 Watt LED lights. Get this: The city estimates it can save $10,095 in energy costs per year once the project is complete!

Watch my LED tour and interview with Susan to see what Indian Wells is doing to save energy and money:

By Deb Lovig

Most street lights in the U.S. are owned by utilities companies. They provide use of these lights to cities on a sort of leasing system called tariff. The amount a city pays to “lease” the lights is meant to cover the installation, cost of electricity as well as the cost of the light fixture/pole and ongoing and periodic maintenance including replacement when necessary.

In most places, a city may pay a monthly rate per light of $7 to $53 depending on the fixture selected and the cost to service that fixture. Under this lease arrangement, the cost of this off-peak electricity is a small part of the overall monthly rate. Most of the cost goes to pay for the capital investment in the lighting equipment. A few utilities have a flat or average charge per light for all street light fixtures, regardless of the cost of the equipment, the amount of maintenance required or electricity used.

This rate structure has provided investor-owned utilities the necessary vehicle to earn an allowed rate of return, set by the utilities commission in each state, to be profitable and keep investors happy.

So this sexy new LED street lighting comes along and everyone, including the utilities, gets excited about saving a lot of energy, putting a lot less waste into the landfill and saving taxpayers a good chunk of change on maintenance avoidance. However, if LED lighting reduces by 50 percent or more the amount of electricity that will be used and therefore billed by the utility and maintenance costs go down to a bare minimum for the next 10-15 years, just how will the investor-owned utility pay for the higher cost of this new LED equipment, offer an attractive monthly rate to municipalities and make an allowed rate of return?

Progress Energy lineman James LeBlanc installs an LED fixture.

With these key questions looming, most utilities don’t yet offer any sort of lowered rate for LED street lights. And, this has been a major STOP sign for most municipalities that are investigating LED street lighting.

There’s no clear solution at this point but Raleigh’s own Progress Energy Carolina is taking a leadership role in trying to find a good solution or in this case, two good solutions. The North Carolina Utilities Commission and the Public Service Commission of South Carolina just approved a request from Progress Energy Carolinas to offer two new options for reduced rates on LED street lights.

Progress Energy Carolina’s Bob Henderson is quite pleased with this outcome. He tells us that the first option is a bundled all-in-one utility-owned rate where the municipality pays a month fee, like before, which includes purchase of the equipment, electricity used, installation, maintenance and replacement of the LED street light when necessary. The new rate differs from the past in that it is in two parts ─ a fixed basic rate and a variable section. As the prices of the LED fixtures decrease, Progress Energy Carolinas can adjust its pricing accordingly (that’s the variable part) without having to seek commission approval for the rate change.

The second option allows the city to purchase the same approved LED street lights directly from the manufacturer. Cities that qualify can use stimulus funds, grants or low-interest loans to purchase the fixtures and their monthly rate to cover installation, electricity used and maintenance will be roughly half of the cost of the first option. If a fixture replacement is required, the municipality will be responsible for providing another fixture to Progress Energy Carolinas (PEC) to be installed. City-owned fixtures will sport a special label and will be installed on PEC-owned poles. You can see which products are included now in the PEC new rate structure here.

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) folks are providing financial assessment guidance to cities and towns in Progress Energy Carolinas’ service territory using the new LED street light rate structures. Their spreadsheet model can assist municipalities with determining which option is best for them and provide an idea of the payback offered by a switch to LED lighting. The CCI folks have been working steadily along helping the world’s largest cities, like Los Angeles, figure out how to pilot and then purchase and deploy LED street lights. They have put extra effort in assisting the industry with the biggest stumbling block to LED lighting  it costs more money up-front than conventional lights.

If you want to learn more about all this, the Progress Energy Carolinas lighting team is working with the local IES Raleigh chapter to provide a forum (workshop and webinar) April 14. At this event, they plan to share with other utilities and their vendor support personnel the “behind the scenes” details, considerations, experience and passion that went into developing these new rate structures, change-out procedures, specification standards with regard to the roll-out of LED lighting at PEC. Check it out:  http://www.iesraleigh.org/seminarevents.htm

By Deb Lovig

Heavy snow heaped over large portions of the U.S. this winter spurred some seriously negative media attention on the performance of LED traffic signals. Reports of snow covered signals being blamed for traffic accidents in snow storms appeared all over the media.

Some of the folks in participating cities of the LED City® initiative got a little concerned this negative coverage might spill over and somehow affect their ability to move forward with LED street lights. Street lights are a different animal so we mostly tried to stay out of the way of the negative traffic signal stuff.

At the LED City Council Meeting in Indian Wells this week, the question of whether the LEDs should be deep-sixed for not being hot enough to melt the snow on traffic signals came up. Speaking up in defense of LED traffic signals was Bruce Kinzey, who works at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the Department of Energy and was one of the expert presenters at the meeting.

One of his colleagues had the misfortune to be in Washington, D.C., during a recent heavy snow dump. Here’s the photo he took of an incandescent-based traffic signal there.

‘Nuff said. And, if you want to take a look at Bruce’s informative LED City Council Meeting presentation, you can access it here.

By Deb Lovig

The next informational LED City® Council Meeting will be held Tuesday in Indian Wells, CA. For some of us, this will be the first warm, sunny weather we’ve seen since October…. I highly recommend that if you live in the middle or eastern part of the U.S. that you come west to learn more about the concrete and aesthetic benefits of LED lighting for the municipal setting – in Indian Wells.

The purpose of LED City Council Meetings is to share the experience, expertise and excitement of LED lighting as it is realized by cities that participate in the LED City program.  The Department of Energy is also presenting at some of our meetings as well as some local utilities. It’s a jam-packed day of all things LED lighting – geared for the municipal or university.

Feedback on the quality and scope of the information presented at the first two meetings has been extremely positive. And, we offer the opportunity for attendees to meet with LED light fixtures makers who set up demonstration tables at the events.

For more information about these meetings, and to find one near you, visit: http://www.ledcity.org/attend_meeting.htm

By Deb Lovig

From what we see in development right now, we LED industry folks are expecting the arrival in the next 12 months or so of a brand new, better performing crop of LED “bulb” products. Many companies, big and small, are working fast and furiously to bring better quality, longer-lasting and brighter/better color LED bulbs in a variety of flavors into the market. This is important for commercial and institutional use, but it also brings along anticipation for the home market.

My family and friends are asking, “When and why would I buy LED lighting for my home?”

You are the CFO for your household, right? Well, okay so maybe your spouse is the CFO, but one of you puts on that hat and says “let’s consider LED lighting and how it might make sense for our household.” The question is where can LED lighting save you money or pain?

Let’s start with the concrete benefits of LED lighting and how that might guide your switch.

Significant energy savings. A reduction of 40-80 percent is what we are going for here. Paying too much for electricity? Might want to switch to LED lighting for those fixtures you use the most.

Long life. As long as 10-25 years depending on how many hours they are on. Seriously. You’ll likely renovate or tear down and rebuild before you have to change out some LED fixtures or bulbs. That’s why I advocate using the word “fixture” even when the LED light looks like a bulb. You know that vaulted ceiling in your entry way or great room? Might just be the right place for LED lighting, especially if you fear heights.

No mercury. Extremely important for kitchen, food and kid areas of your house. As our good friend Steve DenBaars out at UC Santa Barbara has suggested, a shooting champagne cork unintentionally aimed at that fluorescent bulb over  the island in your kitchen or dining table makes a n-a-s-t-y layer of mercury-tainted glass shards over the area in which you prepare or enjoy food. Last I heard mercury doesn’t mix all that well with broccoli.

Durability. As a mother of two active boys (read: extremely active) I might consider putting LED lights in any fixture that could have a face-to-face meeting with a basketball, shoe or tossed brother. Experience and pocketbook talking here… While I’m on this particular benefit, durability, if you are prone to drop bulbs or fixtures while climbing a ladder, I can attest to the fact that LED lights take a beating and keep on lighting. Myth Proved.

Where would you NOT want to switch to LED lighting in your home?

Our buddy Tom Helbig Jr. up at Madison Area Technical College is moving as fast into LED lighting as he can at the college. He’s also trying them out at home. His new LED light made it painfully clear that his master bath needs a fresh coat of paint. Busted!

What about those eye-ball spot lights aimed at the amazing painting over the mantel that you never remember to turn on unless you are dusting at night (who dusts at night, really)? If you don’t actually ever use the light, you probably don’t need to switch it to LED.

Call me fickle, but that gorgeous Murano glass fixture or okay, Swarovski Crystal chandelier in your grand entry way? NEVER, EVER replace that. Unless of course you break it while changing those tiny little glass bulbs…or you can’t get up the ladder without dropping them. Hey, you can always rent a lift.

By Deb Lovig

A while back I got an email from Jean Ronel, an entrepreneur and visionary based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He and a colleague realized that the one thing that would help so many Haitian communities, even those painfully remote mountain villages running on generator-power, is solar-powered path and street lights.

They got some heavy-duty training and mentoring in the U.S. and set off back to Haiti to try to build solar panels and LED street lights, by hand, that could be affordable and useful for any Haitian community. They ordered up parts from the web, messed around with a few different designs and came up with a great solution at an amazing price.

He sent me some photos – they tell an amazing story. Take a look and be prepared to be humbled and astonished and excited.

We talked to him via telephone a few weeks ago and his team at Enersa, the name of his organization, had grown to hundreds of young people now skilled in the art of handcrafting solar panels and LED lights, attaching them to poles and selling them at the amazing affordable price. Read more about their efforts and see photos here.

Business was booming and cities and villages throughout the island were finding ways to purchase one to three lights at a time. Turns out, a single solar-powered LED street light mounted at a key path intersection can do a world of good for safety, flexibility and transportation of people and goods at night. Has any community in the U.S. EVER considered the purchase of one single street light?

We originally wanted the world to know of Jean Ronel and Enersa and we wanted to rally the LED industry around his efforts. We had big ideas of major media coverage, new funds supporting his effort and the villages he is serving. On the morning of Jan. 12, as we stopped to notice that there is a lot more going on in the world than LED lighting…we started to wonder, then worry.

I emailed Jean Ronel in the aftermath of that first terrible earthquake. “Are you and your team okay? Is there any way we can help?”

Jean Ronel responded, “I was very lucky. I’m OK, my family also is OK. All the ENERSA employees are OK, only the plant was destroyed. We are thinking about how we can restart. Right now it is very difficult, since Gvt does not exist. Every Gvt buildings are destroyed. Thanks you for your help, we will let you know very soon.”

If even one of Enersa’s LED street lights is operational at this time, his vision is true. To reach Jean Ronel and Enersa directly, email  Enersahaiti (at) gmail (dot)com.

By Deb Lovig

We LED folks love our industry and we also dig cool stuff related to LEDs. Setting rockin’ flashlights aside for a moment, let’s talk Ts.

Our friends at UnScrewAmerica.com have just the type of creative genus that desires mention. Visit the site, but more importantly get the shirt: LEDs Rock. You’ll love the look and feel and darned if you don’t receive admiring remarks every time you wear it. Seriously.

And, no, they are not backlit with LEDs. They’re not that geeky…but that might be kinda cool. You can purchase them at toporanch.com, another creator of incredibly cool, genius T-shirts.

Hey, and if you get the shirt and rig it with a white LED or two, send us a photo!

By Deb Lovig

In a meeting recently I was asked what I thought is the “killer app” for LED lighting. Or rather, what needs to happen to get an LED in every grocery cart?

Glad they asked because my 11-year-old had just asked for a project idea. Something that would require him to do research, create a 3D drawing and write a report. Once I recovered from the shock of hearing the word “write” coming from his mouth (he occasionally writes more than three words at a time and isn’t much concerned with punctuation…), I got serious.

All I could think at that moment was, “What would it take to get my mom, our neighbor’s aunt and most high school band instructors to switch to LED lighting?” No hesitation – an LED bulb that screws into a typical Edison socket and provides the same type and amount of light as a 60-watt incandescent bulb.

You can buy LED bulbs in the store and on the Web that at least look like a 60-watt light bulb. Unfortunately, except for a few, they are mostly too dim or bluish, or worse, flicker and then go out for good. I blew one out pretty quickly in a desk lamp belonging to our accommodating CFO.

Lots of companies and inventors are working on this, so my son has plenty of competition. The Department of Energy is so hyped on this task that it is offering up some heavy change in the form the L-Prize competition. The winner comes away with $10 million in awards and purchasing agreements and massive bragging rights. http://www.lightingprize.org/

As for my son? That’s a whole lot of cash so he’s thinking, drawing and making 3D LEGO models just as fast as he can. I’m just glad the LED light bulb has replaced his frustrated attempts to make hovercraft the new Prius.

By Deb Lovig

When we first started talking to cities about LED lighting in 2006, few knew anything about LEDs, so we pretty much started at the beginning: “LED lighting is really efficient, it lasts a long time, it doesn’t contain mercury and it can save a lot of energy and money.” We stated the facts and went on to talk about which applications were LED-ready, how to develop a total cost of ownership business case and how to get a pilot started.

Three years later, we are hearing something a little different. More than a few people we talk with think they know about LED lighting but actually have their facts on LED lighting, well, wrong.

My first recollection of misinformation revolved around the hoaxes Colonel Hogan and crew hatched to flummox the hapless Sgt.  Shultz on Hogan’s Heroes. Sgt. Schultz was regularly led astray with an outrageous story Hogan whispered to him, although Hogan and his crew obviously never succeeded in breaking out of the POW camp.

Yep. I’m implying that you might be given misinformation on purpose. Or, some folks might have made some guesses based on a few truths they do know and gotten it wrong. Either way, we want to help.

Here are a few of the touted facts I’ve heard that are misinformation:

Example: LED lighting is not ready today for street lighting and parking garages because LEDs generate so much more heat than traditional light sources that they have to be in air conditioned sites.

Wrong: LEDs generate far less heat than traditional lights sources and they are working especially well in street and parking lot applications. As a side note, because they generate less heat, you need LESS air conditioning to keep folks in your building comfortable.

Example: LED lights are very hard to install.

Wrong: LED fixtures and bulbs should be as easy to install as traditional light sources. Your installers or electricians should be wowed by how fabulous they are to install and operate. If not, something’s fishy.

Example: LED lights don’t work well in cold environments.

Wrong: LEDs work a whole lot better than traditional lights sources in cold. In fact, they love cold and they don’t need several minutes to warm up to reach full output, either.

Example: LED manufacturers don’t provide warranties on their products.

Wrong: The good ones do. Ask to be sure before you buy. If you can’t get a decent warranty, move on to a different vendor.

Example: We bought a few fixtures from the web and they don’t work very well. Must be the LEDs.

Wrong: Like any lighting product, LED lighting systems must be built with high-quality, high-performance components and must be designed to produce the right color and spread for the application you wish to illuminate.

Stay tuned for my “Don’t Google for LEDs” post… There are many very good LED lights available today and quite a few really bad products. Use our Questions to Ask Chart to help you weed out the bad lights.

By Deb Lovig

As the LED industry grows by leaps and bounds, it’s kinda hard to remember back to the good old days when there were a few really smart guys who were mostly just trying to outgun each other on brightness and efficiency. Back when LEDs were indicator and dashboard lights, and mostly red or yellow, a not-so-mad scientist came along who would make a blue LED bright enough to be useful. Bright enough that others would buy these LEDs in large quantities and start to make blue indicators and dashboards.

 John Edmond is quick to point out that he didn’t know what an LED was when he was hired as the third Cree employee and assigned to make LEDs. That was back in 1987 and a lot has changed since Cree’s performance breakthrough in 1989 that enabled the commercialization of the blue LED. One of Cree’s first big customers for blue LEDs was Volkswagon. They began buying blue LEDs in 1995 for what is now Volkswagon’s signature blue dashboard.

 Today, the blue LED is the foundation for super bright white LED light, which is revolutionizing the way the world thinks about lighting.

 Amazingly enough, Dr. Edmond is still at Cree, still busting through performance hurdles and still loving his work. When they meet John, most people ask him why he still does what he does. He’s got more than 20 years of major accomplishments attached to his name. His kids are off doing their own things. He prefers to spend summers in upstate New York. So, why not cut loose and leave the labs behind?

 “I’m as excited about the state of LEDs as I’ve ever been. We are at the point that we are starting to see LEDs in our offices, on our streets and in our homes. This is what I’ve been working toward for the past 20 some years. It’s just getting more exciting,” says John. “I can now say that I believe we will see 200 lumens per watt from LEDs and I would never have believed that when we first started. It’s just crazy fun no matter where you are in the LED industry.”

Here’s a recent interview with John during which he talks about the early days of Cree and the commercialization of the blue LED: