Electical Contractor

Lighting choices can affect how we perceive spaces, even the colors of objects and surfaces.

In the quest for a more energy-efficient future, no detail gets overlooked.

As thousands of attendees gathered at the Lightfair International Conference in Las Vegas on May 10, 53 commercial light-emitting diode (LED) indoor lighting products were recognized and awarded in the fourth annual Next Generation Luminaires (NGL) solid-state lighting design competition.

On the May 14, 2012, Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray joined officials from the District Departments of Transportation (DDOT) and Environment (DDOE) to replace the last of approximately 1,360 alleyway lights with new energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) lamps.

On July 14, 2012, Department of Energy (DOE) standards covering many popular incandescent reflector lamps will take effect, eliminating a majority of lamps from the market in favor of more efficient, higher cost alternatives.

As an estimated 5-million-piece market valued at nearly $1 billion in U.S. sales, recessed lighting has been a familiar go-to configuration within millions of professional and residential lighting applications for decades.

Declared to be revolutionary by many industry participants, solid-state-lighting (SSL) is playing a larger role in today’s construction market. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs), in particular, seem to progress month to month. However, actually using LEDs presents a challenge.

The Model Lighting Ordinance (MLO), produced jointly by the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) and the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA), provides a template for municipalities seeking to develop standards for responsible outdoor lighting.

While experimenting with high-frequency current, inventor Nikola Tesla developed an electrodeless lamp, but the concept remained largely unexplored for the next century (except as a novelty lamp in the 1980s).