Practical advice on commercial lighting from LED retrofits to lighting design.

There's a long and heated debate about the use of incandescent light bulbs. We've debunked the myth that incandescent bulbs were banned in the US, but the reality is that efficiency standards have changed the way consumers shop for lighting. 

And with changing efficiency standards come changes in product availability. 

Regardless of your stance on the political side of this issue, we still need light in our homes, offices, schools, gyms, airports –– you get the idea. So, we get regular questions about where to buy incandescent light bulbs or what the best options are for converting to LED. 

We're interested in making lighting easy for our customers, so we've put together a list of the most common places you might find an incandescent bulb along with links for where you can buy either the incandescent product or a compatible LED upgrade. 

With the number of LED options available today, you may feel stuck by indecision when it comes to updating the lighting for your facility. With the advancement of technology, the decision making process has become much more complicated. Color temperature. Color Rendering Index. Lumen output. And the list goes on and on. 

Here are three basic tips to follow when it comes to retrofitting your lighting.

Bo Klune is our Regional Lighting Specialist Manager who oversees the Dallas and Atlanta regions. Bo has many years of experience in the lighting industry –– finding the most efficient energy savings for his customers. Every day we answer countless questions surrounding the topic of energy savings so he's here to help answer some of the most common. Here's Bo with more:

Around this time last year, Philips Lighting and the City of Dubai jointly announced the development of "the world's most efficient light bulb," touting a new LED filament bulb that can reportedly produce up to 200 lumens per watt.

Solid State Lighting Design explained more about the lamps:

The busiest international port of entry in the world is 14 miles south of downtown San Diego, in San Ysidro, California. Every day, more than 20,000 people cross the U.S.-Mexico border through this port, which is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days per year.

When it came time to upgrade lighting, the U.S. General Services Administration –– which manages the San Ysidro property –– was looking to accomplish a few primary objectives:

• Raise light levels for border agents and customs officials as they process visa paperwork, inspect vehicles, etc.
• Increase fixture life rating to limit challenging, costly maintenance atop 125-foot mastheads
• Advance toward goal of net-zero energy consumption at San Ysidro by reducing energy required by fixtures

Energy rebates can be a big boost for building improvement projects, like a lighting retrofit. But is the reward even worth the hassle?

This is the second in our series of articles meant to take the mystery out of savings and payback calculations for lighting. From designers to engineers to executives, lighting projects are more commonly cross-functional decisions.

This article focuses on one of the least-covered questions on savings calculations for lighting projects: How can a lighting retrofit save you money on HVAC costs?

Are you currently retrofitting to LEDs and left with some old lamps? Do you just pile them up in the back of your building?

Hopefully not.

As we move forward in the ever-changing world of lighting, staying educated and sensitive to the environmental impact of energy consumption and use of lighting has been more important than ever before. When you purchase lighting, you may not just be thinking about replacing the lamp that is in the socket, but also thinking about how the new product will impact energy, as well as the environment.

Last year, we published our first-ever LED Buying Guide. We say over and over again around here that our goal is to make lighting easy for our customers, and the LED Buying Guide was published with that objective in mind.

The lighting world has undergone rapid changes over the last decade with the emergence and proliferation of light emitting diode (LED) lighting technology. Just seven years ago, in 2010, less than 10 manufacturers made up 90 percent of the lighting market. Last year, that market share was spread between more than 400 manufacturers, each with its own fluid, iterative product line.

That's a lot to keep up with.

So, how do we make things easier for you?

This is the fourth article in our series exploring savings and payback calculations for lighting retrofits. The complexity of lighting payback calculations can make your head spin and make you wonder what applies to you and what doesn't.

This article focuses on the labor savings that you gain when you switch to long-life lighting products, like LED.