LED's and the upcoming GovEnergy conference

I've spent the last few days putting together the finishing touches on a LED presentation for the GovEnergy conference August8-10th. www.govenergy.com I am happy to be re-teaming with Jimalee Dakin, Visa Lighting to represent a version of our LED presentation from Lightfair 2 years ago. But with LED technology moving at such an incredible pace, there are always new things to add.
 

Some recent additions have included:
On Feb 15, 2011 The Energy Star program announced the first LED retrofit lamp (designed to replace the 60w A19) had achieved full "Energy Star Qualified" listing.

On February 16, 2011, the EPA announced the Energy Star Luminaire Specification V.1.0 to assist in indentifying product that meets a specific set of criteria determined to be acceptable by Energy Star. You can visit the site at www.energystar.gov/luminaires.

February was apparently a very busy month as the ZHAGA Consortium (an industry organization for the standarization of LED light engines) released their first set of standardized specifications for a "Scocketable LED light engine with integrated control gear" on February 11, 2011.

This particular specification describes the interfaces of a downlight engine standard. The specifications are only available to ZHAGA members at this time, but will be available for download by the public at a later date. But the idea of standardization in the LED industry certainly has tremondous appeal and its exciting to hear progress on that front as well. You can check it out at www.zhagastandard.org.

And yet another update references the DOE's 12th round of CALiPER testing. CALiPER stands for Commercially Available LED Product Evaluation and Reporting. Visit www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/about_caliper.html to view the document with the most recent independent tests run on a varied selection of currently available LED product.  I am sure there are more, but these are a few we recently noted and thought were definately worth sharing at the upcoming conference.

A site visit to Pickaway County Library

Last week I had an opportunity to stop at the library and snap a few images of the project. Construction is almost complete on this renovation/new addition.  The project was phased to allow the library to remain open during construction. Submittting for LEED CI certification, the lighting contributed significantly to the energy efficiency of the space with a lighting power density of 20% less than energy code.

    

Color Plotting

Tec is moving up in the technology world. Friday we installed a new Oce Colorwave 600 plotter. The Colorwave is a full-size, full-color plotter with an innovative print system. Rather than ink or toner, it uses a system of wax balls infused with color. When a plot is made, the wax drops into the machine, is melted and applied to the paper. It dries instantly, is durable, water resistant, and brilliant in color. The print head move in a wave pattern, eliminating the lines you see on ink jet printers.

We also bought a large format color scanner.  As engineers finish schematic design markups, they can scan in the drawing and send it to the architect for review. 

This new equipment will expedite some of the processes we have been doing through other means.