Products + Technology

The Venture Lighting Institute is offering a a webinar training series for free starting June 11 through the end of 2009. This online series covers lighting concepts to Venture products. The curriculum is designed towards key audiences such as electrical distributors and lighting designers. The series is offered once a month for a half hour [...]

WAC Lighting showcased two innovative OLED fixture prototypes at Lightfair last month, including an OLED mini chandelier and an OLED wall sconce. The OLED Wall Sconce features six color changeable three-inch OLEDs. The mini chandelier uses eight colorful, transparent, one-inch OLEDs, including a panel depicting the WAC Lighting logo. Each OLED draws only 0.18W; each [...]

The T8 lamp has been around longer than the T5 lamp and is a bigger market, so there are more offerings. Now we are seeing T5 technology diversifying. For example, Philips Lighting Company has introduced a 49W T5HO fluorescent lamp as an alternative to 54W T5HO lamps, ideal for hi-bay applications in retail big box [...]

BEGA/US has introduced the Urban Furniture bollard to provide robust, glare-free, wide light distribution for parks, schools and public spaces. The luminaire uses a 39W ceramic metal halide lamp, operates cool to the touch, and is available in standard BEGA colors: black, white, bronze, silver (and custom supplied on special order). Check it out here.

Lynn Proctor Windle, a contributing editor to Building Operating Management Magazine, wrote an excellent piece on photoluminescent technology as a means of providing emergency lighting in buildings, specially safety signs and path markers. The article is a little dated (March 2005), but clearly summarizes the technology. Titled “Photoluminescent Technology: Reliable Emergency Lighting in Buildings,” you [...]

NEMA’s incandescent and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) indices for Q109 declined 2.4% and 4.6% respectively compared to the previous quarter. The incandescent lamp shipments index showed a decline of 16.9% on a year-over-year basis, nearly reaching the all-time low set during the third quarter of 2008. Since the beginning of 2007, the incandescent index has [...]

The blazing fire is an amazing effect–I was able to see it firsthand at the Sylvania booth at Lightfair, which was showcasing this Traxon product. The video doesn’t quite do it justice, but check it out to get a feel for the special effect: Here's another interesting use of the same product: And another:

Interesting review of Nexxus’ SSL lamp here, written by one of Fast Company Magazine’s technology bloggers. The review contains some errors in its analysis, but it’s an interesting take and shows what non-lighting people are thinking about some of these advancements. In particular, LEDs still have a very high cool factor with consumers.

I recently wrote an article for the April issue of Electrical Contractor, about some aspects of integrating lighting control and energy management systems. This is a hot topic because codes now require automatic shutoff of lighting and demand response is going to grow in importance in the future, but EMS traditionally has not done a [...]