Loading...There is no better city to have a light show than in Las Vegas, and as the lighting manufacturers, designers and other industry leaders gathered in the city of glitz to check out Light Fair 2008, an invitation was also extended to our own Matthew Walton.
It was incredible. If you’re into lighting design, this is truly a kid in a candy store experience. But while new lighting designs may be sexy, there’s no doubt that a great deal of attention is focused on what these new advancements mean not only to the working environment, but to the building owners’ bottom line.
The role of the electrical contractor is changing. Taking a set of building plans and doing an install is giving way to design-built concepts that throw the door wide open to creative and cost effective lighting system alternatives. It’s a curve that the NECA-IBEW team wants to stay ahead of.
Gregory Kay, President, Pure Lighting
“Why is light important? Well if all the lights went out right now, that’s how important lighting is. Your emotions every day are determined by lighting. A sunny day, how do you feel? So you do this building, and you want people to come in and love it. You’ve spent a lot of money on this building, and lighting is extremely important.”
Lighting is important, and no group of people understands that better than the folks that took part in this four-day series of events, booths and lectures. With over 17,000 attendees, 500 manufacturers, featuring over 1,500 exhibits, here at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Light Fair 2008 has something for everyone.
Those somethings include a vast array of compact fluorescent lights, LEDs, and more. Fun applications are always thrown in, proving that lighting gurus have a sense of humor, too.
Leading the charge of new technologies is the quickly evolving LED technology, featured in a lot of the hottest new equipment just hitting the market. Pure Lighting’s Wall Grazer is just one example.
Gregory Kay, President, Pure Lighting
“This is LED. They’ve come up now with LEDs that are 92 CRI. Nice lumens, these are about 70 lumens per watt.”
LEDs have another advantage – an extremely long life, a fact that can’t be ignored by building owners who want to add measurable to their properties and decrease energy consumption at the same time.
Gregory Kay, President, Pure Lighting
“You’re looking at 50,000 hours lamp life, compared to 10,000 hours for a metal halide. So typically you’re looking at anywhere from 10 to 25 years of lamp life depending on how long. You can leave it on almost 12 hours a day and get 10 years’ life out of it.”
David Singer, Principal, Arc Light Design
“There’s no doubt that white LEDs are a big component of the show, but right now I think they’re in their infancy and there’s more sources than there are applications or fixtures for those applications. But this is the direction it’s going to go.”
Another new application in accent lighting is Light Tape, a thin, flexible cord with light-emitting phosphorus inside that can be used for accent lighting or in safety applications.
Steve Pendlebury, President, Light Tape
“The light tape is using phosphorus and we put electricity on it to cause the phosphorus to get excited and they glow and produce light. So it’s all done through energy, through electricity, but it’s like a giant capacitor.”
It’s not only small companies like Light Tape getting in on the action. Corporate giants light Philips Lighting Company also introduced new lighting solutions during the show, including a metal halide replacement for traditional halogen lighting in department stores and specialty stores.
Susan Bloom, Director of Corporate Communications, Philips Lighting Company
“Halogen has been popular because it gives a nice white light and its price points are conducive to retailers, but actually in the last 10 years or so, ceramic metal halide has found its way into a lot of retail establishments. It’s been very popular because it delivers a beautiful bright white light, and it’s very energy efficient and it lasts a good long time. It makes the customers look good, and it really shows off the customers in their truest form, and when customers are happy and they think they look good, we sell more products.”
Another concern for lighting designers and contractors is the environment, which is increasingly becoming an issue as builders and owners switch to higher-efficiency lamps to save not only money on operating costs, but also to reduce their buildings’ footprint on the natural world. Lithonia Lighting thinks that they have the solution in their Relight System.
Bill Ballweg, Market Development Manager, Lithonia Lighting
“I can revitalize my space, I can get the energy savings, and it’s good for the carbon footprint on the environment. Also, we don’t have the disposal issue that you typically would have when you’re pulling old fixtures out. We all need to take care of our environment.”
Keith Ward, president of EYE Lighting and spokesman for Enlighten America, an initiative by NEMA that aims to reduce energy use and costs in existing buildings, said that the importance of a green education for contractors and builders cannot be overlooked.
Keith Ward, President and COO, EYE Lighting
“It’s really about getting the story out, to educate the market that there are these energy saving products and systems and solutions out there that will provide a very high return on investment for building owners, managers, etc. As a result of that, the values of their buildings increase, they save energy, their operational costs drop. So if you own a building, and I can tell you that you can save 30 to 50 percent or have a 2-year payback to upgrade your lighting and improve your productivity, make your workforce happier, and at the same time increase the value of your building, that’s not a long dialogue. We’ll have that discussion, and you’ll want to know more.”
The building owner’s concerns are at the forefront of the new technology.
John Maisel, Publisher, Electrical Contractor Magazine
“From the owner’s point of view, it all boils down to value-added marketability, sustainability and energy efficiency.”
But at least one person thinks that the banning of incandescent light bulbs by some states as part of this sustainability movement has limited the choices available to contractors and building owners.
David Singer, Principal, Arc Light Design
“I personally think that this is our punishment as Americans for ignoring the fact that we keep our lights on, that we don’t pay attention to energy use. That our punishment is to take away our toy, which is incandescent lighting.”
So what role with contractors and workers play in the future of lighting?
John Maisel, Publisher, Electrical Contractor Magazine
“The contractor is in a position now that very early in the building process, they are sitting down and they are becoming an integral partner in actually setting parameters for building systems, and obviously lighting is a huge component of that.”
Keith Ward, President and COO, EYE Lighting
“Well, I think all the businesses that represent the companies will do better as we try to encourage upgrading lighting systems. I think all the building owners will be encouraged by the fact that they can save money and it’s a tough economy right now. Everybody wants to save money. I think the last piece of it is that it will make the United States, America, a more competitive marketplace.”
The future of lighting is bright, and only getting brighter.
Susan Bloom, Director of Corporate Communications, Philips Lighting Company
“This show has been fabulous this year. We come to Light Fair every year, and this is the industry’s annual forum, the largest one in North America. It is the place to showcase new technology. All of our customers are here, many influencers in the channel are here, and it is absolutely the place to be.”
Seventy percent of all the energy use in this country is used to power buildings. Around 30 percent of the energy needs for every building is for lighting. So lighting is really a pretty big deal.