While being “green” has increasingly become a year-round priority for consumers, Earth Day remains a day that truly puts energy efficiency top of mind. This year, the annual holiday marks a momentous milestone by celebrating its 40th anniversary. In commemoration, North American lighting leader and pioneer in sustainable lighting, OSRAM SYLVANIA, is announcing its 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge to rally and inspire consumers to save a collective 40 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy in the 40 days leading up to Earth Day on April 22, 2010. 

The 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge is designed to show consumers how easy it can be to “green” their lifestyles, their homes, their offices and their communities. Specifically, the campaign challenges consumers to take every day actions that will collectively save 40 million kilowatt hours of energy between March 14 and April 22, 2010. 

”The SYLVANIA 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge was created to encourage a collaborative commitment to our natural resources and remind people that there are a variety of ways to make a difference,” said Jennifer Dolin, OSRAM SYLVANIA manager of sustainability and environmental affairs. “While 40 million kWh might sound like a big number, the small actions we take every day can have a big impact when combined.” 

To put numbers into perspective, 40 million KWh is the amount of lighting used annually in 20,513 homes and is the equivalent of lighting all the homes in the city of Boston, Massachusetts for about 30 days(1).

And it’s not just lighting – simple actions, such as unplugging a phone charger or turning down the thermostat by one degree can mean big savings for both the environment and your wallet. 

Dolin says, “The goals of this campaign are to save 40 million kilowatt hours by April 22 as well as motivate energy-efficient lifestyle practices that go beyond Earth Day.” 

How the SYLVANIA 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge Works 

Consumers and businesses in the United States and Canada are invited to enter their commitment as to how they will contribute to the 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge at http://earthday.sylvania.com. Participants can check the progress of the challenge and how many kilowatt hours of energy have been saved thanks to a real-time online meter. 

The site is pre-populated with several energy-efficiency actions for the home and the office. Participants need only select the actions they choose to take for 40 days, and their energy savings will automatically be tallied. 

All those who take the SYLVANIA 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge will be rewarded with a coupon for $1-off the new SYLVANIA Halogen SUPERSAVER® or a SYLVANIA CFL, valid at participating retail locations in the United States. In addition, one entry each day, for 40 days, will be selected in a random drawing to receive a new SYLVANIA 40 watt replacement LED Ultra light bulb and weekly winners will be selected in a random drawing to receive annual passes to The National Parks system. Finally, a Grand Prize Winner will be the lucky recipient of a carbon-neutral, three-night Disneyland® vacation for four that includes airfare, hotel and park passes. Daily winners and campaign updates will be announced on Twitter @SYLVANIA. 

Paying It Forward to the Next Generation 

To offset(2) the carbon emissions from the Grand Prize Winner trip, SYLVANIA is offering the chance for one lucky classroom to receive a lighting upgrade. This drawing is offered to K-12 educators in a public or private school in the United States and eligible entrants must take the lessons of the “40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge” to their students.

To help, SYLVANIA has provided links to tools for educators to help teach students about the importance and environmental benefits of energy-efficient practices and how easy they can be. 

For more information about the 40 for the Future Earth Day Challenge and SYLVANIA’s innovative and energy-efficient lighting products for the home and office, please visit http://earthday.sylvania.com. Here you will also find online coupons for SYLVANIA ENERGY STAR® qualified compact fluorescent light bulbs, including the Micro-Mini and Living Spaces™ CFLs, and the SYLVANIA Halogen SUPERSAVER® light bulb. 

About OSRAM SYLVANIA 

OSRAM SYLVANIA is a leader in lighting solutions that feature innovative design and energy saving technology. The company sells products for homes, businesses and vehicles primarily under the SYLVANIA brand name, and also under the OSRAM brand.

Originally Announced on March 15, 2010 at http://www.ledsmagazine.com/press/21466

Coming a year ahead of its original plan, this move will allow Toshiba to direct its attention to further promoting LED lighting.

Toshiba Corporation and Toshiba Lighting & Technology Corporation, a Toshiba group company, today marked the end of production of general-use incandescent bulbs, a product which Toshiba was first to manufacture in Japan and that it has produced for 120 years.

Toshiba decided to focus on environmentally-friendly lighting in 2008, and since then has been advancing a transition to new lighting products, particularly LED lighting.

The company will participate for the first time at Light+Building this year (see press release), and says that it is “taking its new lighting system business to the global level,” building on sales in Japan of light bulbs, down lights, base lights and street lights. By concentrating on cutting-edge LED products, Toshiba’s new lighting system business aims to reach sales of 350 billion yen (about $3.9 billion) by FY2015.

The end of general-use incandescent bulb production comes a year ahead of the original plan, and marks the end for a total of 103 products. Toshiba says this should bring down CO2 emissions by 430,000 tons a year against the benchmark year of 2008, when Toshiba manufactured some 20 million units a year.
In 1890, Ichisuke Fujioka, one of the leading engineers at the time, established Hakunetsu-sha & Co., Ltd., one of the companies that eventually merged in Toshiba, as Japan’s first manufacturer of incandescent lamp bulbs. From an initial production of only 10 bulbs a day, production climbed to a peak of 78 million a year, and cumulative shipments to date add up to 4.07 billion bulbs.

Toshiba developed the world’s first ball-type fluorescent lamp in 1980, and subsequently developed smaller, more power-efficient products with longer life, with the result that the production volume of general incandescent lamps has been declining since around 2000. In 2007, Toshiba introduced LED lamps for general use.

Originally Posted on LEDMagazine on 3/17/10

LCD backlights and lighting drive largest growth yet seen in HB-LED market
ROBERT STEELE

Coming out of a year of relatively low growth for the HB-LED market (up 5% to $5.3 billion in 2009), largely due to the worldwide economic recession, the industry is now faced with an abundance of riches. It will come as no surprise to the readers of LEDs Magazine that unprecedented growth opportunities for HB LEDs will be provided over the next five years by lighting applications and backlights for LCD displays (including notebook computers, TVs and monitors).

In 2009, these applications helped to raise the overall HB-LED market from what would otherwise have been a dismal (i.e. negative growth) year, with a combined contribution to the market total of 29%. In 2010 and beyond, these two applications will be the dominant market growth drivers.

Lighting

The market momentum for LED lighting applications slowed somewhat in 2009 (as the overall lighting market declined by 15-20%), but it is resuming with a vengeance in 2010. Although LED lighting still accounts for less than 2 % of the overall lighting market, and still mainly addresses niche applications, growth continues to be robust, at an estimated 31% for 2010.

Many “mainstream” lighting projects are beginning to be addressed by LED lighting. Some of these include major retrofits at retail chains (e.g. Wal-Mart, Starbucks), hotels and casinos, parking garages, and municipal lighting. Energy efficiency is often the major driver, but other attributes of LED lighting such as long life (lower maintenance costs) and improved quality of light are often important factors.

Newly introduced LED replacement lamps and luminaires are showing much better performance than those of earlier generations. They appear to be using better and more efficient LEDs, although this generally means higher prices for lighting products. There is still an issue with low-price, low quality products in the market, but resellers seem to be getting more sophisticated about their offerings, often because of customer complaints and returns.

Backlighting

The use of LEDs for backlighting larger LCD displays (as opposed to small displays for mobile phones, digital cameras, etc.) began in earnest in 2006, when the first notebook PCs adopted them. Although the penetration was initially small (still only about 3% in 2007), it then increased rapidly, exceeding 50% in 2009, and it is projected to exceed 80% in 2010.

Although the first LED-backlit LCD TVs were introduced by Sony in 2005, the market did not begin in earnest until 2008, when Samsung introduced its first mass-market LCD backlit models, then began to seriously ramp up in 2009. Significant volumes were shipped by Samsung, as well as LG and a few other LCD TV makers, amounting to a market penetration of 2.3%. We expect penetration of nearly 15% for 2010, with rapid increases in penetration in the following years.

Although some high-end LCD monitors have been shipped with RGB backlights since 2005, the move to the use of white LEDs for backlighting mainstream desktop monitors began only in late 2008. In early 2009, all major monitor manufacturers announced that all of their new models would use LED backlights, which will result in yet another high volume market for over the next five years.

Overall market growth

The developments discussed above have set the stage for a dramatic ramp-up in the market for HB-LEDs. We are forecasting a market growth of 52% in 2010 to $8.2 billion. Our longer term forecast projects a market growth averaging 30.6% per year, reaching $20.5 billion in 2014. In that year, we project that 56% of the market will be accounted for by backlights for medium-to-large LCD displays (10 inches and above), and 21% will be accounted for by lighting applications.

As might be expected, this rapid market growth will be felt in the unit demand as well as sales revenues. We are forecasting LED unit growth of 44% to 78 billion packaged devices in 2010. Our forecast for 2014 indicates that the unit volume demand will be four times higher than in 2009, exceeding 200 billion units. The demand for GaN-based LEDs will be especially robust, as these are the key components for backlights and lighting. Demand for GaN chips (before packaging) is forecast to grow at more than a factor of five from 2009 to 2014.

Manufacturing capacity

Clearly this will have profound implications for the need for production capacity. Although growth rates of this magnitude have been seen before in the LED industry, the absolute magnitudes were much smaller. For example, from 2000 through 2005, overall unit demand grew by a factor of 4.7. However, the demand in 2005 of 24 billion units was nearly an order of magnitude smaller than that projected for 2014. Thus, the scale of the industry required to serve the forecasted demand will be correspondingly higher.

The most critical manufacturing tool for LED production is the MOCVD reactor. The two main suppliers, Veeco and Aixtron, report unprecedented demand for their reactors, with both companies currently producing at full capacity, and with plans to increase their capacity throughout the year. Fortunately for the LED industry, the production capacity of MOCVD reactors has increased along with the growth in unit demand. In the early 2000’s, typical reactors could process 6 x 2-inch substrates. This later increased to 11 x 2-inch, and then to 21- or 24 x 2-inch. Today’s high capacity MOCVD reactors can process 42- or 45 x 2-inch substrates simultaneously, or roughly seven times the capacity of the early 2000’s generation. In light of this trend, the number of reactors that will need to be installed appears to be more tractable than one might initially imagine.

To meet the projected demand for GaN chips, Strategies Unlimited has calculated, based on our internal model, that 200 additional reactors will be needed this year and another 280 in 2011. This seems well within the capacity of the MOCVD manufacturers.

Shortages and over-capacity

There has been much discussion of possible capacity shortages in the near term and overcapacity in the longer term. Both are possible, but it must be remembered that in this rapidly growing market, timing is everything.

Currently reactor order lead times are about six months, and it takes another 3-5 months to get a reactor installed, running and qualified. Many LED suppliers have had reactors on order since late last year, and are just now getting them running and qualified, while others still have reactors on order. The rate at which these reactors can be installed and qualified, relative to the ramp-up in demand, will determine whether there are capacity shortages or overcapacity, and the situation is likely to be highly specific to individual regions, companies, and product types.

However, the main factor in these considerations is the tendency of LED suppliers to want to capture as large a market share as possible. A situation could develop similar to that in the 2002-2004 timeframe, during the rapid growth of the mobile-phone market. Excess capacity came on line in the latter part of that period, and prices were driven down, at least for the low-performance LEDs such as keypad backlights. If history repeats itself, then overcapacity within the next one-to-two years seems possible. However, as noted above, this may not be the case for all LED types in all regions, especially for the high-performance white LEDs used in lighting applications.

LEDs are already known for being a super energy efficient way to light up a room, but did you know that they might also be a way for you to connect to the internet? That’s right, a group of scientists from Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute have devised a way to encode a visible-frequency wireless signal in light from our plain old desklamps and other light fixtures. Just think – in the near future, jumping on the interwebs might be as simple as flipping on your lightswitch!

While the regular radio-frequency wi-fi most of us use currently is perfectly fine, it does have its flaws. It has a limited bandwidth that confines it to a certain spectrum and if you’ve ever had someone leech off of your connection, you know that it also leaks through walls, which can be helpful if you’re the one stealing internet but not fun when it’s the other way around.

Strangely enough, visible-frequency wireless works by flickering the lights in a room so slightly that the human eye can’t see it. Since incandescent and fluorescent bulbs don’t have the ability to flicker fast enough, it’s LED lights to the rescue. While regular commercial LEDs will do the trick, they do have a limited bandwidth. Luckily, researchers were able to expand the bandwidth by leaps and bounds by filtering out all but the blue light (cool!).

In terms of speed, the Fraunhofer team was able to achieve downloaded data at a rate of 230 megabits per second, which is a record for visible wireless using commercial LEDs and is comparable to high-end radio wireless connections. The team thinks they can double that speed in the near future. We’re really excited about this advance in terms of what it can do for how we connect to the internet but also because it gives us even more of an excuse to choose LED lights over incandescents.

Article Originally Posted on Inhabitat Via ScienceDaily and PopularScience

Retweet and Win

It is important to us to give back to our customers and thank you for your loyalty. We brainstormed how to do this and we realized what’s a celebration without PRESENTS! So we have partnered up with Borealis, a leader in LED solutions, to do a twitter giveaway that anyone can join in.

Whether you have a personal twitter account or one for your business we want you to retweet our blog posts that interest you. This helps show us what you like and to thank you we will reward the two people who retweet the most with Eco-Responsible, LED bulbs. There is no limit to how many posts you can retweet or how many times you retweet the same post! In fact, the more you retweet the better your chances! So keep an eye out for new posts and get ready to compete! May the best twitterer win!

How Can You Enter?

From March 29th to April 12th we will be posting new blog posts several times a day. As we have always done, we will be posting these on our USLP Twitter page. To qualify for the contest all you have to do is follow us on twitter and retweet our posts. Every time you retweet a post you are entered in to win 4 LED Light Bulbs (a $100 value — 2 winners will win a set of 4). There is no limit to how many postings you retweet a day.

Why LED Bulbs?

US Lighting Products is a leading provider in LED lighting solutions. LED light bulbs are gaining more and more mainstream attention as their energy-saving capabilities are being recognized. LED bulbs can cut energy consumption by 83% and they last 10x longer than traditional bulbs. They reduce electricity costs and maintenance fees and promote a greener, more sustainable environment.

The blog content will be mainly about sustainability and LED applications.

So follow us on twitter (USLP) and get ready to retweet. You have nothing to loose and only innovative, useful technology to gain!

Thanks to firm Oppenheim Architecture + Design, Miami Dade College is getting an eye-popping new campus center poised for LEED certification. To be located on Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami, the building is an extruded quadrangle shape that, along with a striking glass and steel exoskeleton, maximizes natural ventilation and public spaces for the students to enjoy. In terms of clean energy generation, the center will have its own wind turbines and solar hot water collectors right on its roof!

Two towers form the top of the structure, allowing for tons of exterior public spaces at both ground and sky level. The center will be approximately 250,000 square feet with a two-level commercial space wrapping the entire base of the building and an open-air campus arts quad on the third level. There will also be a sloping auditorium inside to be used as a venue for various cultural events. In addition to the main public spaces, the towers will also have offices, meeting facilities, an athletic center, a residential area with small studios, one-bedroom rental units and a full service hotel.

In terms of sustainability, the center’s impactful glass facade and steel exoskeletal system allow for lots of natural daylighting, increasing energy efficiency. The building will also have its own wind turbine farm and solar hot water collectors located on the roof to generate power for the center.

Originally Posted on Inhabitat.com by Yuka Yoneda, 03/15/10