Pacific Gas and Electric Company— California K-12 school districts are in the process of updating and retrofitting the mechanical and engineering systems in their schools, primarily through the implementation of Proposition 39. Improving the efficiency of school lighting is a priority in the effort to increase the energy efficiency of school facilities, due to its relative simplicity in comparison to retrofitting complex mechanical systems.
Smithsonian.com— Nine months in, a family of four adjusts to life in the Honda Smart Home, a testing ground for new technologies at University of California, Davis.
LEUKOS— A new article advocating for high color rendering in consumer lighting products and the policies that support their adoption is now available. The paper is a collaboration between CLTC, the University of British Columbia and the National Research Council of Canada.
The article focuses on the tradeoff between color rendering accuracy and lamp efficiency to show that high color rendering accuracy is appropriate and, contrary to a common misconception, does not intrinsically require greater electrical energy consumption.
Echelon IIoT Insights Blog—In part 1 of this discussion, Michael Siminovitch, Director of the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) and the Rosenfeld Chair in Energy Efficiency and a professor in the Department of Design at UC Davis, talks about adaptive outdoor lighting and the urban fabrics of light.
Electrical Marketing—Smart building control and management system maker Daintree Networks, Los Altos, Calif., has formed an affiliate partnership with UC Davis' California Lighting Technology Center with the goal of advancing lighting controls. Daintree and CLTC will collaborate on efforts to raise awareness about the benefits of networked lighting controls.
LD+A—Researchers in California are developing a standard methodology for conducting field demonstrations to better inform energy codes and standards.
Authors: Cori Jackson, Konstantinos Papamichael, and Michael Siminovitch
LD+A— Core sunlighting is a practical, natural alternative for interior illumination deep within a building. Unlike other solar technologies, core sunlighting involves capturing sunlight at the building envelope, concentrating it, transporting it and regulating its release deep within the building at useful indoor lighting levels, typically only 1 percent of outdoor illumination. Significant electrical energy savings can be realized if the system incorporates automated electric lighting controls that substantially dim or completely turn off the electric lights.
LD+A – Multiple studies have demonstrated the significant energy savings that bi-level, occupancy-based lighting controls can achieve in outdoor applications. These controls maintain recommended illumination levels during occupied periods and automatically dim lights, reducing power by 50 percent or more, during vacant periods.
American Public Media's Marketplace program recently highlighted the California Advanced Lighting Controls Training Program (CALCTP) in a story on "Greening Construction Jobs for Energy Efficiency."
LD+A – Tubular fluorescent lamps comprise 80 percent of the lamp inventory in the commercial sector, or about 1.7 billion lamps, according to a U.S. Department of Energy report. As the lighting industry moves rapidly toward solid-state lighting, three main LED retrofit strategies have emerged for this very large segment of the market: tubular LED lamps, LED retrofit kits and dedicated LED luminaires.
