Swap to greener street lights LED by Sydney

SYDNEY is about to become the first city in Australia to be lit by energy-saving LED lights, with 6450 bulbs to be replaced in streetlights over coming months.The use of LEDs - light-emitting diodes - is expected to halve the amount of electricity required to keep the city lit at night, cutting the City of Sydney's power bill by about $800,000 and saving 2861 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year.The first stretch of new lights have now been installed outside the town hall on George Street, in time for Earth Hour, which begins at 8.30pm tomorrow night.
''Sydney will be the first city in Australia to install the new LED street and park lights across its entire city centre, and joins other major cities such as Berlin, Barcelona, Los Angeles and San Francisco,'' said the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore.Along with London, New York and Hong Kong, Sydney has been trialling the lights for 18 months, as part of an experiment by think tank The Climate Group to test public reaction to the slightly different light qualities of LEDs.
The lights have been installed at Circular Quay, Martin Place, Kings Cross and Alexandria Park.Anderson, PG&E partner to replace 105 streetlights with low-cost LED fixtures.The City of Sydney said its surveys showed 90 per cent of respondents supported the switch to the new lights.There are about 22,000 streetlights in the council area, of which 13,500 are managed by power utility Ausgrid, and the rest by the council.Public lighting is responsible for about a third of the council's energy use and 30 per cent of its greenhouse emissions, the council said.For Earth Hour, lights in most council buildings will be switched off for an hour from 8.30pm.The event started in Sydney in 2007, but has since caught on around the world. Governments in 130 countries have agreed to participate, and more than a billion people are expected to join in."Sydney will be the first city in Australia to install the new LED street and park lights across its entire city centre, and joins other major cities such as Berlin, Barcelona, Los Angeles, and San Francisco," Ms Moore said.
According to the City of Sydney, the council previously participated in an international trial of LED lighting with London, New York and Hong Kong with international environment organization, the Climate Group.GE Lighting Australia and New Zealand managing director, Nathan Dunn said the lighting will save up to 75 per cent of energy compared to incandescent light sources, while lasting up to 25 times longer.

Anderson, PG&E partner to replace 105 streetlights with low-cost LED fixtures

The City of Anderson and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) partnered to recently replace all 105 city-owned streetlight fixtures with new, energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) streetlights.The new streetlights, located along North Street, Stingy Lane, Pleasant Hills Drive, Oak Street, Nathan Street are providing brighter, more natural light to improve nighttime illumination and lowering the city's energy costs. Lights on stretches of State Route 273 were also replaced in a joint partnership between Anderson and the California Department of Transportation.
As a result of this project, the city will annually save $5,716 in energy costs paid by the city's General Fund. The project also earned more than $10,500 in PG&E incentives and moved the city to a lower energy rate, he said. The project will also remove the equivalent of 23,000 pounds of greenhouse gases from the environment, PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno announced."LED lights will offer significant long-term savings," said Jeff Kiser, who also serves as the city's public works director. "The money we save from these LED streetlights will allow us to invest in other important city projects."Hopefully, this is only the first step towards converting all the city's streetlights to LED to further reduce operating costs and advance the city's sustainability goals," said Kiser. "City staff will look for future partnering opportunities with PG&E to make a city-wide conversion a reality."
"PG&E is proud to work with the City of Anderson to upgrade existing street light fixtures with energy-efficient lighting," said Lia White, PG&E's executive manager of energy solutions and services in the northern Sacramento River Valley. "We will continue to collaborate with the city to provide Anderson residents with energy-efficient lighting that improves public safety and helps reduce Anderson's carbon footprint."
Since late 2009, more than 45 northern and central California cities have enjoyed the benefits of PG&E's LED Street Light Turnkey Replacement Service, White said. The program provides a one-stop solution for local communities that want to take advantage of the LED Street Light program to save energy while minimizing the public cost of managing and implementing lighting retrofit projects, she added. By participating in the program, customers are eligible for new, lower energy pricing and utility-provided energy efficiency incentives, White noted.

Finelite Wins Three Product Innovation Awards from Architectural SSL Magazine

Finelite Inc., a leading manufacturer of high performance lighting systems, takes home awards in the general ambient and decorative sconce categories with the High Performance Recessed (HPR-LED) collection receiving a special citation for "Most Unique Product" by Architectural SSL Magazine's 2012 PIA judges. Winners were announced in this month's issue of the magazine and featured products that show the greatest promise in the solid-state lighting arena. Companies will also be honored at LightFair International 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada this coming May.Finelite's HPR-LED collection received an award in the General Ambient category and a special citation for "Most Unique Product" noted for expanding lighting design and applications beyond the conventional.
Judges' comments for HPR-LED: "There are at least four strategies for LED troffers, and this is the only one using mid-power LEDs that are the least expensive and maybe the longest life. Plus there's no heat sink and a 10-year, worry-free warranty is very good." The HPR-LED design uses mid-power LEDs driven at very low currents, yielding a luminaire that runs extremely cool and has a lifetime of over 100,000 hours (L90 lumen maintenance based on independent testing data). Finelite backs this performance with an industry best 10-year warranty. HPR-LED is the first complete indoor LED recessed troffer family (2x4, 2x2, 1x4, 1x2, 1x1, and wall wash).West Branch DDA approves LED lighting for pathway project.The collection has also received prestigious recognition in the Illuminating Engineering Society's (IES) 2012 Progress Technical Report.
Finelite's sleek MURO LED luminaire wins in the decorative/wall wash category with seamless integration of LED T8 lamp technology and provides clean accent illumination for vertical surfaces. The MURO comes in three slim luminaire styles and multiple lengths.The Architectural SSL Product Innovation Awards (PIA) determine and honor the most innovative LED/ solid-state luminaires and fixtures on the market, while also recognizing the companies behind the components that make up these light sources. The PIA program also recognizes leaders in categories ranging from those conducting cutting-edge R+D, to those helping in the development of standards as well as those pushing to make solid-state lighting a truly sustainable technology. Construction Business Media, headquartered in Chicago, is publisher of Architectural Products, Illuminate and Architectural SSL magazines. The company also operates the ArchLED Conference, markets and partners in TheContinuingArchitect.com educational platform, and maintains websites and electronic extensions of its print publications.

West Branch DDA approves LED lighting for pathway project

West Branch Downtown Development Authority's upcoming pathway project is closer to becoming reality after the DDA approved a motion to add 84 energy-efficient LED lights to the pathway at a March 7 meeting.According to DDA Administrator Steve Steinhauser, the lights will be installed along a pathway from "Hamburger Hill" to the M-55 intersection, giving people in West Branch a safe and lighted area to walk on along that stretch of road.Steinhauser said the lighting and pathway construction portion of the project is currently estimated to cost just over $700,000, but a start date is still up in the air.
"We're hoping to get the project started in late summer or early fall of this year," Steinhauser said. "We're going to push to get it done this year."The project has been held up while the DDA was trying to convince the Michigan Department of Transportation to let them complete the project alongside MDOT's 2012 West Branch Business Loop Improvement Project, which will make improvements along the majority of the I-75 business loop from exit 212 to exit 215.
Steinhauser said MDOT told the DDA that the project likely wouldn't be able to be completed in conjunction with the improvement project.While the lighting and pathway construction may be completed down the line, the DDA will be able to complete the proposed addition of two wooden bridges for the pathway during MDOT's project this spring."We voted in February to approve putting in two bridges, one across the Rifle River near the Team Hodges dealership and one across Eddy Creek at the railroad track," Steinhauser said.
Steinhauser said the project has already been contracted to York Bridge Concepts, of Florida, and will begin this spring.With the bridges, Steinhauser said the total estimated cost of the entire pathway project will top $1.2 million."We haven't contracted the lighting and pathway construction out yet, but we will at least be able to get the bridges put in this spring," Steinhauser said. "It really depends on how the MDOT project goes if we're going to get the lights and pathway put in this year. We're optimistic that the entire project can be completed before next winter, but there are still many things we have to get worked out before that happens."By a vote of 6-2, with Jack Benson abstaining, the city council approved the purchase of some 27,000 new LED and induction street lights."It's gonna go from the orange haze that you see, to a daylight color," Lepard says. "And, it'll make it easier on the eyes to see objects and to see people and it should make a big difference."

Nano-imprinted photonic structures improve efficiency of silicon solar

Imec has successfully fabricated crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells including 2D periodic photonic nanostructures made with nano-imprint lithography. The result was an improvement in energy-conversion efficiency, compared to unpatterned cells, through a better absorption of the light spectrum. The technique shows a path to further reducing the thickness of solar cells while keeping the efficiency as high as possible.
The reduction of the silicon wafer thickness from 150μm to 50μm and below is potentially the best way to decrease the cost of solar cells. At imec, we pursue this path through ultrathin-film crystalline silicon technologies. However, if thinner photoactive layers are used, the optical absorption is significantly reduced. This is especially so at the near-infrared region of the solar spectrum. A photon with a wavelength of 1μm needs an absorption depth as deep as 100μm. Losing this part of the spectrum reduces the overall conversion efficiency of the cells.
Recently, the field of photonics has come up with methods to manipulate light through specific structures that are smaller than the wavelengths. This makes it possible to use periodic photonic nanostructures to affect the motion of photons in a similar way as the periodicity of atoms in a semiconductor crystal affects the motion of electrons. But to do so, efficient patterning techniques with nanometer-scale resolution are needed.Intelligent lighting controller measures ambient light and tracks time.imec used nano-imprint lithography to fabricate 2D periodic photonic nanostructures. Nano-imprint lithography is a recent top-down approach for fabricating nanometer-scale patterns. It is one of the best candidates to improve the light absorption while maintaining an acceptable manufacturing cost, but it is currently barely used for c-Si PV applications. The patterning is performed by direct deformation of the resist material through mechanical pressure and a subsequent etching step.
Compared to the standard solar cell texturing by wet-etching, subwavelength patterning using nano-imprint lithography has some advantages. First, there is less material waste upon etching (less than a micron is consumed) compared to the state-of-the-art texturing, where 5-10 microns are lost. And second, diffraction and scattering of light is possible at higher angles due to the dimensions of the nanopattern.Initially, they got a handful of people, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area, buying the lamp, but sales really picked up in mid- to late-February, after they dropped the price (the lamp went through several price drops, but originally went for $250). Crave met with Ellsworth and Duxbury on a Wednesday, and they had 150 lamps to deliver by the following Monday. They received two additional orders during our meeting--three if you include the DIY Kit CNET's Donald Bell bought right on the spot.

Don't Just Change a Light Bulb, Change the System

Forty years ago today the MIT Limits to Growth study was first publicly presented. To honor this prophetic work, the non-profit GrowthBusters project is launching a campaign to raise awareness that human population and industrial economies have outgrown the planet."Think small: Don't just change a light bulb, change your life, change the system." The campaign, led by Dave Gardner, the filmmaker behind the recent documentary, GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth, encourages citizens to pledge to have smaller families, get out of debt, scale down consumption and unplug from a culture obsessed with the false paradigm of endless growth as the key to prosperity. The campaign culminates on Earth Day weekend, April 20-22, with house parties and community screenings of GrowthBusters around the world.
The Limits to Growth study ran scenarios to determine what might happen to population, economies and resources if the trends of the time continued or were intentionally altered in order to achieve a sustainable equilibrium. In the film, Dennis Meadows, who headed the study, recalls, "Our computer-generated scenarios all showed this growth stopping in the early decades of the 21st century, and, I must say, looking back now, it seems that we're right on schedule."The film and campaign encourage all nations and peoples to embrace the end of growth and the beginning of true sustainability. Most world leaders are focused today on restoring economic growth. Many experts believe such efforts are a waste of time, and by further eroding the planet's ecosystems hamper the world's ability to achieve a sustainable population/economy equilibrium. "The sooner we stop trying to relive the binge of the 20th century - powered by easy access to fossil fuels and other resources - the sooner we can get on with the business of adopting a sustainable model for the 21st century," says Gardner.
GrowthBusters is making the rounds of film festivals, community centers, church basements and living rooms. The film features interviews and commentary from such experts as Bill McKibben, Jane Goodall, William Rees, Gus Speth, Raj Patel, Robert Engelman, Herman Daly, and Juliet Schor.Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, declared, "This could be the most important film ever made." The film has been nominated for Best Feature Film and Best Science Communication Film by the Reel Earth Environmental Film Festival in New Zealand. It will screen at the Soho International Film Festival in New York City, the Cosmic Cine Filmfestival in Germany, and the Indie Spirit Film Festival in Colorado.

Intelligent lighting controller measures ambient light and tracks time

Outdoor lighting is usually switched on or off manually with a mechanical switch. Suppose, however, that you do not want to illuminate an area for the whole night. In that case, it would be advantageous to control the illumination more precisely so you can automatically switch the lighting off/on at a prescribed time.A controller can sense ambient light, turn lights on when it gets dark, track a time interval, and automatically turn the lights off at a specified time. In the morning, the process can be reversed. If the ambient light level is under a preset lux threshold at a predetermined time, the system will turn on the light. It will turn the light off when the ambient gets bright enough to surpass the same lux threshold.
It is not difficult to design an intelligent lighting controller that senses and measures the ambient light level with an ambient light sensor (ALS). Equipped with a real-time clock (RTC), the controller also knows when to turn lighting on or off at specified times. The system presented here can be used to control all luminaires that are mains supply operated. The controller’s lux-level threshold is fully programmable in single-lux steps. Controller software is provided in hex format.
The lighting controller in this design needs to measure the ambient light level which is done with an ALS.Solar Light Sculpture Installed in US Park.There are two different kinds of ALS products in the market today: one outputs the analog voltage proportional to the ambient light level, and the other gives the output in digital format. This system uses the ALS with the digital output.The controller needs to know the exact time, so a real-time clock (RTC) is used. To anticipate possible power loss, the time information needs battery backup.
A user interface is needed for setting time and other parameters. The user interface here consists of two 7-segment LED displays and one pushbutton. With a short button press, the system displays time and other parameters. With a long button press, the time and parameters can be adjusted.The system has an auto/manual switch to enable switching the light on or off manually.System power comes from the mains supply. Electricity to the luminaire is switched on/off through a relay. The digital portion of the system is isolated from mains supply.When the system is used in manual mode, the auto/manual switch must be switched to manual. In manual mode, the relay is continuously on and the luminaires are switched on/off using a standard wall light switch.When the auto/manual switch is in auto mode, the standard wall light switch must be switched on so the controller can function. If that wall switch is not on, the controller cannot switch the luminaires on.

Solar Light Sculpture Installed in US Park

A new solar sculpture in a Tennessee park aims to shed light on how solar energy works and encourage sustainability.Industrial grade sheets of recycled aluminum were laser cut and refabricated to create the Seed-Pod solar powered light sculpture in Chattanooga’s Renaissance Park. Artist Deedee Morrison created the 8-by-12-foot work of public art with inspiration from organic forms, particularly the drawings of Ernst Haeckel who discovered, described, named and illustrated thousands of new species.
The Seed-Pod design was inspired by studying organic forms and the geometric principles that determine their patterns and structures, Morrison explains. The solar sculpture artistically represents a seed-pod coming out of a dormant state to form new life. "Solar light sculpture in a public art environment are extremely effective ways to demonstrate how solar energy works and can become an icon of sustainability for a city," Morrison says.
Seed-Pod is a visual display of the power and energy that's available every day from a single solar panel's relationship with the sun. Near the Seed-Pod sculpture is the 18-foot solar tower that, like plants, collects and stores the energy released from the sun. The Seed-Pod and the solar tower are intimately connected in the phenomena of life and growth. The solar tower captures the energy of the sun during the day and the Seed-Pod emits the dramatic stored light at night, giving the sculpture its added dimension.
The SolarTech 125W solar panel's sole function is to convert sunlight into useable energy and transfer that energy through the charge controller to the battery bank. The charge controller scales down the energy produced to the correct voltage (12v) to charge the batteries. The 12V-DC LED lights only require 10 Watts of power each, which when combined only requires about the equivalent power of a single 110-Watt lightbulb.The "Eco-Pole" is powered by two solar collector panels and a wind turbine. Power generated by the solar cells and foam rubber turbine, which sit atop a 25-foot-all aluminum pole, is stored in dual gel batteries. The batteries sit in a secured metal cabinet at the base of the pole. The street lamp is completely self contained. Its 270-watt lamp will light the sidewalk about the length of four cars on either side, according to David Malinowski, business development coordinator for Eco-Poles at SavWatt. The batteries store about five day worth of power for the streetlight.

How solar power could charge up Africa

Sunny countries are often poor. It is a shame, then, that solar power is still quite expensive. But it is getting cheaper by the day, and is now cheap enough to be competitive with other forms of energy in places that are not attached to electricity grids. Since 1,6bn people are still in that unfortunate position, there is now a large potential market for solar energy. The problem is that although sunlight is free, a lot of those 1,6bn people still cannot afford the upfront cost of the equipment in one go, and no one will lend them the money needed to buy it.
Eight19, a British company spun out of Cambridge University, has devised a clever way to get round this. In return for a deposit of around US$10, it is supplying poor families in Kenya with a solar cell able to generate 2,5W of electricity, a battery that can deliver a 3A current to store this electricity, and a lamp whose bulb is an energy-efficient light-emitting diode. The firm reckons that once the battery is fully charged, this system is sufficient to light two small rooms and to power a mobile-phone charger for seven hours. Then, the next day, it can be put outside and charged back up again.
The trick is that, to be able to use the electricity, the system's keeper must buy a scratch card — for as little as a dollar — on which a reference number is printed.Spirit tasting at Chicago Botanic Garden.The keeper sends this reference, plus the serial number of the household solar unit, by text message to Eight19. The company's server will respond automatically with an access code to the unit.
Users may feel as though they are paying an hourly rate for their electricity. In fact, they are paying off the cost of the unit. After buying around $80-worth of scratch cards — which Eight19 expects would take the average family about 18 months — the user will own it. He will then have the option of continuing to use it for nothing, or trading it in for a bigger model, perhaps driven by a 10W solar cell.
In that case, he would then go through the same process again, paying off the additional cost of the upgraded kit at a slightly higher rate. Users would thereby increase their electricity supply — ascending the “energy escalator”, as Eight19 puts it — steadily and affordably. Simultaneously, the company would be able to build a payment record of its clients, sorting the unreliable from the rest.Regular users of one of Eight19′s basic solar units will spend around half that, before owning it outright. Meanwhile, as the cost of solar technology falls, the whole system should get even cheaper. The company hopes to be able to supply users with a new, low-cost and robust sort of solar cell, printed onto plastic strips, within two years.