Research

The Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, produced by the Energy Information Administration at the Department of Energy (DOE), provides incredibly valuable information about how commercial buildings use energy and energy-using systems such as lighting and HVAC. If you wanted to know things like, “How many office buildings are in the Northeast?” or “What is the [...]

The National Lighting Product Information Program (NLPIP) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Lighting Research Center (LRC) released its latest publication, Specifier Reports: Streetlights for Local Roads, designed to provide objective performance information on streetlights for local roads in residential areas. Municipalities across the United States have applied for funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment [...]

Residential architects are reporting that business conditions are stabilizing and there is a healthy demand for remodeling and renovation projects. These findings are from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Home Design Trends Survey for the fourth quarter of 2010, which focused specifically on kitchens and bathrooms. The AIA Home Design Trend Survey is conducted [...]

Design firm Clanton & Associates has announced the results of a six-month study analyzing the value and energy savings of a variety of lighting control systems and technologies in typical commercial office lighting control retrofit projects. The overall findings show that wireless lighting control systems offer high energy and cost savings potential compared to conventional [...]

I’m pleased to announce that I have finally completed the long awaited (by my publisher) update to The Lighting Management Handbook, which came out in 1994, with this 300-page book about redesigning existing lighting systems: Lighting Redesign for Existing Buildings. Because light is used to see but cannot be seen, it is often overlooked by [...]

In September, the National Lighting Product Information Program (NLPIP) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center (LRC) released a publication called Specifier Reports: Streetlights for Collector Roads, which provides objective performance information on street lighting technologies including HPS, induction, LED, and pulse start metal halide (PSMH). The streetlights selected for evaluation were recommended in 2009 [...]

Guest post by Jim Brodrick, U.S. Department of Energy t’s been a while since I’ve written about DOE’s CALiPER testing program, and the Round 11 Summary Report was published this week. As always, the results are worth noting. For those of you who don’t know, CALiPER tests a wide range of solid-state lighting products that [...]

The U.S. Department of Energy has completed Round 11 of product testing through the its CALiPER SSL program. Round 11 included five primary focus areas: * roadway arm-mount luminaires * roadway post-top luminaires * linear replacement lamps * high-bay luminaires * small replacement lamps (MR16, PAR lamps, A-lamps, and a candelabra lamp) As a benchmark, [...]

Guest post by Jim Brodrick, U.S. Department of Energy Some of you may have seen a new report on street lighting by the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. A number of people have asked for my comments on that report, so here goes. In a nutshell, the LRC report implies that GATEWAY [...]