The UC Davis Smart Lighting Initiative was established in 2010 to improve the quality and efficiency of both indoor and outdoor lighting on campus. The initiative's primary goal is to reduce UC Davis's electricity use for lighting by 60 percent, based on 2007 levels of energy use. The effort was inspired by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and its call to reduce statewide electricity consumption for lighting by 60 percent or more by 2020.
CLTC communicates and collaborates with the Energy Division of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to provide objective information and expert analysis that may inform the Commission’s lighting-related energy policies, programs and mandates. CLTC supports the CPUC’s Energy Division in its lighting-related goals, initiatives and activities, including the Lighting Action Plan, a near-term implementation guide for achieving the goals stated in the Lighting Chapter of California’s Long-Term Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan.
The undergraduate lighting courses taught at CLTC are offered through the UC Davis Department of Design, under the College of Letters and Science. CLTC Director Dr. Michael Siminovitch teaches Designing with Light (DES 136B), an introductory lighting design course that culminates with students designing, developing and building prototypes of fully functional LED luminaires.
The Core Sunlighting Alliance is a group of leaders in the fields of design, construction, energy-efficient technology development, and energy regulation who are committed to accelerating the commercialization and widespread adoption of core sunlighting systems.
CLTC partnered with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and the California Energy Commission to create Lux, a retail lighting showcase that lets boutique owners see, firsthand, how LED lamps perform in a realistic store setting. The space includes information and demonstrations of LED parabolic aluminized reflector (PAR) lamps, primarily PAR 38 lamps, and smaller multifaceted reflector (MR) lamps, MR 16s, used most commonly for accent lighting in retail applications.
The California Energy Commission sponsors the development and demonstration of energy-efficient, environmentally safe building technologies. It does this, in part, through the State Partnership for Energy Efficient Demonstrations (SPEED), a program that demonstrates innovative lighting and HVAC technologies. The SPEED program is managed by the California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE), which is a branch of the University of California. The California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) is subcontracted by CIEE to develop and implement lighting technology demonstrations.
CLTC is partnering with the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center (EEC) to address untapped efficiency opportunities in the Multi-Tenant Light Commercial (MTLC) building sector. The project is focused on identifying and overcoming the biggest barriers to energy-efficiency retrofits in the MTLC market. More than half of the energy-saving contributions of the team's proposed solutions will come from lighting-related retrofits, as the group hopes to reduce interior lighting energy consumption by 20% and exterior lighting energy consumption by as much as 50%.
