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

The headline of this article might make you scratch your head a little. Schools are essential – and so are the major systems that help create and promote learning environments. How can they become more energy efficient?

Creating a healthy learning environment for students is a top priority, but there may be costs that are out of your control. We understand that's tough to balance.

Hopefully you haven’t experienced this scenario. You buy a new TV. You plug it in. Then a thunderstorm hits, lightning strikes, and zap! There goes your new TV.

You're probably thinking, if only I had plugged the TV into a surge protector.

Linear fluorescent lighting has for decades been the workhorse light source for so many applications, thanks to its long life ratings and relatively efficient use of energy. But the emergence of linear LED technology over the last decade or so has really changed the landscape, making buying decisions for linear applications more complex. 

We get questions all the time about linear lighting. Is it risky to invest in LED lighting products? Are more fluorescent phaseouts ahead? What linear lighting products does Regency suggest?

Earlier this year, the Department of Energy published a report on LED failure that, among other things, found the lifetime claims for more than half of LED products to be inaccurate, or miscalculated.

Why is there so much bad information out there? Are manufacturers just fudging their claims, or are there other pieces to the puzzle?

Well, though we frequently stress the importance of vetting manufacturers, and manufacturer reps, a lot of this bad information just comes down to the industry adjusting to a new, still emerging and evolving lighting technology. That said, we're not here to make excuses for misleading or inaccurate lifetime claims. We're here to make the technicalities behind these inaccuracies understandable, so that you can effectively avoid the risk of getting left high-and-dry with early failures or poor light quality from LEDs.

When I first started working at Regency, I knew little about lighting. I knew what an incandescent light bulb was and who Thomas Edison was. I knew that the lighting that came in tubes was fluorescent. And I knew that LEDs were becoming a thing. Beyond that, pretty much nada.

So needless to say, when I was in lighting training and first heard about high intensity discharge (HID) lighting technology, I had no real framework for what that was or where it was used. It just sounded foreign. And, well, intense.

In our last lighting technology post, we discussed fluorescent technology and how they produce artificial light. After fluorescents came compact fluorescents.

At Regency, we use The Lighting Pyramid to help guide the priorities of retrofit-interested customers. The Lighting Pyramid illustrates the fact that as lighting technology advanced, wattage and lumens no longer have a direct relationship. Today, you can purchase lighting that consumes significantly less watts but produces far greater lumens – you don't always need to consume more energy to produce greater light.