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

Most of the time an LED upgrade involves unscrewing old light bulbs and screwing in new, energy-saving options in their place. Shocker. But if you’re looking to truly optimize your lighting for the greatest efficiency, this may not be the best approach. And it might cost you more money. 

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.

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFL bulbs) first emerged on the lighting market as a more energy-efficient alternative to the incandescent light bulb.

Manufacturers had already started producing linear fluorescents, but the linear tubes did not fit into the same socket as incandescent light bulbs.