fluorescent lighting | Pegasus Lighting Blog

Dropping $98,000 A Year …

Dec 152011

University of Oregon Dropping $98,000 A Year ... … From energy bills, that is. That’s how much the University of Oregon expects to save per year after their lighting retrofit, which is scheduled for early 2012.

Crews will replace 33,000 T12 fluorescent tubes on campus with more efficient T8 fluorescent tubes. The $681,000 project will be subsidized by the Eugene Water & Electric Board, and engineers expect the lights to pay for themselves in energy savings in three years time.

With budget cuts in state universities across the U.S., it’s an exciting opportunity for the University of Oregon to drastically reduce spending on energy and allocate those funds elsewhere.

The campus is also installing new lighting controls and occupancy sensors.

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Update on the Rare Earth Element Situation

Lighting News No Responses »

Dec 022011

PinExt Update on the Rare Earth Element Situation

embrace lumens Update on the Rare Earth Element Situation According to The New York Times, supply is finally beginning to catch up with demand in the rare earth element market.

A few months ago, I posted about the Chinese government’s export restrictions on rare earth elements. The bad news for the lighting industry was that China’s nationwide production cap was causing the price of fluorescent light bulbs to rapidly increase. (Rare earth elements are a crucial component to the process of creating a fluorescent light bulb).

However, it seems that international prices for rare earth elements have fallen since August and are continuing to decline! The timeline for the impact on the lighting industry is unclear at this point. For more information, read this article.

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Challenge: See the World in A Greener Light

Thoughts on Light No Responses »

Nov 222011

PinExt Challenge: See the World in A Greener Light

ccfl main 300x198 Challenge: See the World in A Greener Light Have you ever purchased a CFL? Recycled an aluminum can? Turned off the water while you brush your teeth?

We’re all familiar with basic sustainability guidelines, but when it comes to just how much of a difference one person can make, things get murky.

We’d like to start a dialogue about seeing the world in a greener light. We want to hear your ideas – even if they’re not related to lighting at all. Do you set your thermostat a few degrees lower in the winter? Are you a designer that recommends eco-friendly products to clients? Tweet your answers and ideas to #agreenerlight. Here’s one of ours:

We launched a new section of our website dedicated to the A Greener Light cause. If you’re not on Twitter, you can leave a comment there!

Here’s our #agreenerlight thought for the day:

In the lighting industry, adoption of fluorescent and LED technologies is rapidly growing in the United States. That’s good news, considering that the U.S. is responsible for 20% of electricity used for lighting in the world – even though we only make up about 4.5% of the global population. Fluorescent and LED light sources are both great solutions for lowering energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

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Shopping for Under Cabinet Lighting? Shop by Video.

Lighting Tips No Responses »

Oct 202011

PinExt Shopping for Under Cabinet Lighting? Shop by Video.

We are hard at work adding more Product Spotlight videos to our YouTube channel. If you are in the market for new under cabinet lights, check out these videos to help you get an idea of the different features available in LED, xenon, and fluorescent under cabinet lights.

LED Very Thin Light Bars have a cool operating temperature, an energy efficient design, a warm white color temperature, and a long rated life. Watch the video to see them in action:

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Featured Lighting Project from Ambridge, PA

Lighting Projects 2 Responses »

Sep 142011

PinExt Featured Lighting Project from Ambridge, PA

When a display cabinet has no lighting, it’s hard to put items on – well, display. Archives, photographs, awards, artwork, and memorabilia that are meant to be highlighted tend to simply blend in with the background and get lost in the shadows.

Take this display case, for example. This is the “Before” picture, from the Good Samaritan Church in Ambridge, PA:

archives before Featured Lighting Project from Ambridge, PA

The picture is a bit blurry, but it's easy to see the effect of placing items in a display cabinet without lighting. The shadows from the cabinet's shelves make it hard to tell exactly what is supposed to be on display.

Now, the “After” picture: Continue reading »

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Will the Future of Fluorescent Lighting Be Shaky?

Lighting News 3 Responses »

Aug 112011

PinExt Will the Future of Fluorescent Lighting Be Shaky?

Baiyun Obo Mine Will the Future of Fluorescent Lighting Be Shaky?

A mine in Baiyun Obo, which produces half the world's rare earth elements. Photo courtesy of Treehugger.

Remember our post on why fluorescent light bulbs are becoming more expensive?

Well, the Chinese government is beginning to enforce those export restrictions on rare earth elements. According to an article in Times LIVE, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will now punish rare earth producers that fail to stick to the nationwide production cap.

Enterprises exceeding quotas will have licenses cancelled, and will also face government action if they are caught buying ore from mines that violate government guidelines.

It is unclear whether the production cap for 2011 of 93,800 tonnes has already been met, but a number of plants have closed down.

What does this mean for fluorescent lighting? For a fluorescent light bulb to create light, there must be a phosphor coating inside its glass envelope. While phosphor is not a rare earth element, rare earth elements are a crucial component to the process of creating the light-producing tri-phosphors inside the lamps.

The production cap is meant to crack down on illegal production of rare earth elements. However, since China produces about 97 percent of the global supply, the policy is affecting the production of countless products in the green tech industry that count on rare earth minerals.

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Why Fluorescent Lighting Isn’t Dead

Thoughts on Light 1 Response »

Jun 282011

PinExt Why Fluorescent Lighting Isnt Dead

CFL Why Fluorescent Lighting Isnt Dead Greentech Media published a great blog post yesterday titled “Why Fluorescent Lighting Isn’t Dead.” The post featured the opinions of energy-efficient lighting expert Francis Rubinstein.

We publish a number of articles about LED lighting on this blog, and are probably a little guilty of failing to grant sufficient coverage to fluorescent lighting and how much its technology has improved over the years.

The article is an excellent read. I couldn’t do it justice with a simple summary, so head over to Greentech Media to check it out! In the meantime, here’s an interesting quote I pulled from Francis Rubinstein:

Until research drives the cost of LEDs down substantially, the greatest potential for improvements in lighting energy efficiency will come from combining advanced lighting controls with hybrid [fluorescent and LED] lighting systems, and designing the lighting to fit the space and occupant requirements in which they’re used.

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Cool LED Infographic

Thoughts on Light No Responses »

Apr 252011

If you’ve never checked out GOOD (www.good.is), it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time. It’s an editorial-based media platform. Their infographics are incredible, and they cover subjects ranging from 21st century political assassinations to hand-washing in the US. GOOD’s most recent infographic was on LEDs. See below, and click on the photo for a larger version:

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Celebrate Earth

Lighting News No Responses »

Apr 222011

Earth Day’s the time to take a moment and reflect on what we’re doing to conserve this beautiful planet. It’s the time to think about using more energy-efficient lighting, and not just because it shaves some money off the monthly power bill.

Are you pledging an Act of Green this Earth Day?

Earth Day Network's 2011 campaign

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When to Avoid LEDs

Lighting Tips No Responses »

Mar 302011

Jim Brodrick, head of the Department of Energy's Solid State Lighting Program

Awhile back, we published a blog post called Why LEDs Aren’t Always the Answer. It explained a Department of Energy report that announced LED T8 replacement lamps were very poor alternatives for fluorescents.

There is a good deal of hype about LEDs and for good reason but it’s important to remember this is still a new technology that has its own unique limitations. While there are many good LED applications within high quality products (i.e., barbecue lights, cabinet lights, exit signs, night lights, step lights, recessed lights, under cabinet lights), there are also some poorly-manufactured LEDs fixtures with flawed designs.

The Department of Energy released another report recently about LED replacements for four-foot linear fluorescent lamps (used often in commercial spaces like schools, hospitals and offices). In their words:

Vendors of LED linear replacement lamps claim energy savings and long lifetimes, but testing of currently available products to date does not support these claims.

Unfortunately, LED linear replacement lamps fall far short of fluorescents in light output, color quality, distribution, cost-effectiveness, and lumen maintenance. The DOE recommends avoiding all LED linear replacement lamps for the time being.

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