ALA’s next member forum will be hosted Wednesday, May 15, at 12 p.m., CDT. This forum, designed for manufacturer members, will cover the extended producer responsibility laws related to plastic and packaging, which are becoming commonplace. Rachel Michelin, president, of the California Retailers Association, will lead the forum with a brief presentation, followed by an [...]

Graphene has long been hailed as the greatest material discovery with limitless potential. The reality is that graphene has seen some limited applications in electronics, solar panels, displays, clothing, helmets, bullet-proof armor, aircrafts, and shoes. I’ve written about graphene’s emergence in luminaire heat sinks and housings here. There are two new nanomaterial sheets making headlines: [...]

  The LED lighting revolution has been remarkable, but one of the areas where LED technology has struggled to match legacy sources is ultra-narrow beam angles. Halogen, plasma, and lasers were more ideal point sources for ultra-narrow spotlights. For a time, LED could only get down to about 20o beam angles, and more recently 10o [...]

  Here is a quick summary of 11 acquisitions and one manufacturer closure, in the first quarter of 2024: Kuzco Group acquired Auroralight. Details here. AMS Technologies acquired newLASE. Details here. Meyers EPS acquired Storage Power Solutions (energy storage manufacturer). Details here. Legrand acquired ZPE Systems, Inc. Details here. Environ Energy acquired Prism Energy Services [...]

The following 10 trends in landscape lighting have been compiled from multiple sources. All of these lighting trends can be applied to commercial as well as residential landscapes. Linear Lighting Linear strip lights can be applied to the bottom edge of an overhanging step tread or integrated into hardscape materials. They enhance safe mobility and [...]

Much has been written about the numerous lighting manufacturers that have expanded into EV chargers. A few examples include: Espen Technology, Light Efficient Design, Leviton, and LEDVANCE. So what are the tradeshows for the EV charger industry? One is EV & Charging Expo 2024, held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, today and tomorrow. This show is [...]

  DMF Lighting, an architectural lighting manufacturer of modular LED downlighting systems, has expanded its 2-inch X Series modular downlighting collection to include Cross Beam Total Internal Reflection (TIR) Optics; a 500-lumen Ultra-Narrow light engine module; Pinhole and Hyperbolic trims; and extension collars for installation in thicker ceilings. The uniquely designed Cross Beam TIR Optics reducing glare [...]

  Yesterday’s LightNOW post was about the Design Lights Consortium DRAFT Networked Lighting Control v5.1 standard (DLC NLC5.1). This post is about another NLC industry standard, the Bluetooth NLC standard. In September, 2023, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced the completion of Bluetooth Networked Lighting Control (NLC), the first full-stack standard for wireless lighting control. [...]

  The Design Lights Consortium (DLC) has released their draft of v5.1 Networked Lighting Control technical requirements (NLC5.1). NLC5.1 is a minor revision that contains updates to the policy’s energy monitoring and cybersecurity requirements. There will not be a delisting associated with the policy. Existing listed v5.0 NLC will continue to be DLC listed. Energy Monitoring Updates: [...]