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

Here at Regency we're well aware that lighting can be complicated, that's why here on the Lighting Insights blog we aim to help answer your questions and make lighting easy for you. Not only do we enjoy reading and writing about lighting, but we enjoy finding and watching helpful videos on lighting. 

With Super Bowl LI this weekend, we decided to republish this post, which recalls the power outage debacle during the big game at the Superdome several years back. (Also, as the Falcons fans in our Atlanta office would say, "Rise Up!")

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Remember Super Bowl XLVII a few years back? Even if you're not a football fan, you probably do. The Baltimore Ravens won, Beyoncé played the halftime show, and this awfully-emotive commercial debuted somewhere along the way. Maybe you don't remember any of that. But you probably remember this: the lights went out. 

2016 was a great year for lighting. LED prices continued falling while innovation maintained its sharp upward trajectory.

And now, because it's December, we're starting to see a bunch of superlative lists, ranking the top lighting products of the year. As they come through, we'll feature a few here on the blog.

LED has taken the lighting industry by storm. The price of entry into lighting manufacturing has never been smaller, opening up the floodgates for new, innovative manufacturers with little overhead to introduce a myriad of new products and ideas to the market.

As of Sept. 1, lighting manufacturers are now required to submit all applicable products under a new set of DLC requirement updates which will go into effect for consumers on Jan. 1, 2017. Now, I don’t pretend to think that all of you reading this article know what DLC stands for and why it exists, but it will have an impact on the lighting you purchase. Let’s break that down before we dive into how these changes may impact your lighting.

Warranties are almost always an important consideration in the buying process. Whether you're buying a new car, new tires, or a new stereo, smart buying is knowing what kind of protection you have on your purchase should the product prematurely malfunction. 

Buying lighting is no different, especially these days when more and more buildings are switching to long-life lighting. When you make that purchase, you want to know for sure that your lighting will last you as long as the manufacturer says it will.

But malfunctions happen from time to time. So how can you find that security?

China-based lighting company MLS Co., Ltd. announced Wednesday its purchase of Osram Licht AG's recently-rebranded lamps division, LEDVANCE. 

Can you actually retrofit T12 to LED without changing out the ballast?

The answer is yes. Prior to 2016, there weren't any LED plug-and-play replacement options for T12 lamps from major lighting manufacturers. Now things have changed with a new magnetic ballast-compatible LED tube. 

Last year, Philips rolled out an Instantfit LED tube that was compatible with old-school magnetic ballasts.

Admittedly, commodity T12 fluorescents haven't been manufactured in any kind of large quantity in the United States for a few years now, making them one of the endangered species of the lighting world. Additionally, beginning in 2010, legislation to cease the production of magnetic ballasts –– the functional heart behind T12 lamps –– went into effect.

Our goal here on the Lighting Insights Blog is to offer helpful answers to common lighting questions and to keep you posted on key developments in the industry.