Category Archives: LED

The LED Light Bulb Has Arrived

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Compact Fluorescent Bulb

After a recent visit to a big box hardware store I had to explain to my 9-year-old daughter why we had to deposit our old compact fluorescent light bulbs in the big blue container with the skull and crossbones on it. I explained that this was a hazardous material and disposing it in here was good for the environment. So without missing a beat she asked, “If that was the reason, why was it safe to use this light bulb in my bedroom?” Great question!

As with most families we stretch our budget to its limit and try to save money where we can. We have only read about the day when a quality LED lamp (bulb) would be available to the masses. So for many of us waiting, we can finally exhale since that day has arrived.

Our family is now on a mission to replace our energy wasting incandescent and toxic compact fluorescent light bulbs to safe, long-lasting LED lights.

Businesses have seen the many benefits that LED lighting provides from saving energy and operating costs for the past few years, especially as the technology has improved and a variety of retrofit options hit the market.

LED Lighting Kitchen

In my own home, if I change my exterior light bulbs, which are on for 10 hours per night, and the interior light bulbs, (extremely high family room and kitchen ceilings) I should have my payback in less than 12 months!

Philips EnduraLED

Due to the long life span of LEDs, I won’t have to chase my family around the house shutting off lights in rooms where no one is sitting, or ask my neighbor to borrow his extremely high ladder to change those hard to reach light bulbs.

Cree LED BulbRecent industry predictions that LED lamp prices would be coming down were realized when a major LED manufacturer matched it’s cost to marketplace need with a reasonably priced, quality LED light bulb aimed squarely at the residential marketplace. Offering a line of LED light bulbs to replace the 40W and 60W incandescent, they have achieved the sweet spot for many household budgets – between $10 and $13.

We can now safely install a truly green product, which is safe to handle, offers a quality light source, all for the price of a combo meal at a fast food restaurant!

For LED lighting solutions, visit the experts at LED Source – 866.900.4533

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Do Your Part On Earth Day With LED Lighting

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LED Source Faces of Climate Change

So what do Earth Day and LED Lighting have in common? To answer this question, we first must understand how Earth Day began.

Earth Day began as a grass roots campaign in the U.S. during the 1960’s and has grown to be a worldwide social and environmental awareness movement.

Earth Day participation has inspired many local and national political policies, including the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of Endangered Species Act.

Today, Earth Day is when we can reflect on our planet, the environment and find ways to become more energy-efficient and reduce our carbon footprint.

Often overlooked, LED lighting can reduce greenhouse gas carbon emissions dramatically. In fact the United States Department of Energy has stated the wide spread use of LED lighting can defer 246 million metric tons of carbon over the next several years. That is because the power plants would burn less fossil fuel to power LEDs over incandescent or fluorescent lighting used today.

For each Earth Day participant who purchases LED lighting for their home or business, the benefits are realized immediately through improved lighting conditions and energy bill savings each month.

The timing for switching to LED could not be better. Recent enactments of the Energy Policy Act have already banned the100W and 75W incandescent from production and the 60W and 40W will soon follow. LEDs also have zero levels of mercury, which is typical for compact fluorescent lamps (CFL). Just imagine all the mercury that ends up in our landfills from improper disposal of these CFL bulbs. By making the switch to LED lighting, not only would less lamps end up in landfill, LEDs are recyclable and contain no mercury.

Recently LED manufacturers have helped Earth Day celebrants become energy efficient by lowering the cost of LED lighting, which can do wonders for Mother Nature. Rebates and incentives, if available, will drive the cost down even further.

So make everyday Earth Day and switch the lighting in your home or business to LED. You will not only save money, you be doing your part in helping the planet.

For more information on LED Lighting, contact the Experts at LED Source.

Earth Hour 2013

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Earth HourEver want to do something nice for Mother Nature? Turn off those lights! Earth Hour 2013 will be talking place Saturday March 23, from 8:30 – 9:30 pm local time. For this symbolic hour, all non-essential lighting is to be turned off.

Initially organized in 2006 and originally called “ The Big Flick” by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to protest deforestation in Africa, but now Earth Hour has gone global and is celebrated from Sydney Australia, to New York City and is supported by 400 Cities and locations on all 7 Continents.

Golden Gate Bridge Earth HourBusinesses and organizations around the globe such as CB Richard Ellis Realty, the National Hockey League, Golden Gate Bridge, Manchester United, Hilton Hotels, Girl Scouts, the UN Environment Program, the International Trade Union, Empire State Building, Philips and Ikea, also do their part for Earth Hour.

Eiffel Tower Earth HourMost cities participate by “Turning off the Lights” and consequently the energy savings documented by participation in Earth Hour has been dramatic. The offset of carbon dioxide by reducing lighting energy has been in the thousands of metric tons. For conscientious citizens participating, Earth Hour has been a grass-roots movement promoting energy efficiency.

Earth Hour teaches us that reduction in energy costs associated with lighting are robust. It has a positive impact on the environment and saving energy is a concern shared by all people of all nations.

Empire State Building Earth HourAlso compelling is the inclusion of Philips Lighting on the list of supporters and endorsers. Philips has initiated a strong push to replace existing lighting around the globe with LED lighting. LED lighting can reduce lighting consumption by up to 90% and translates to a financial reward.

So go ahead turn off those lights during your local Earth Hour time and purchase a few LED lamps for your home or business. Mother Nature thanks you and so will your wallet. Maybe next year we can call this event LED hour!

For more information on LED lighting, contact the LED lighting experts at LED Source.

Would LEDs Have Kept Us In The Light At The Super Bowl?

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Super Bowl Lights OutFor Baltimore Raven’s fans, today is the best day ever winning the Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers 34 to 31. However, it could have easily gone the other way with help from what is now called the ‘Superdome Blackout.’

During the third quarter for more than a half-hour, the lights went out in New Orleans for what is yet another Super Bowl malfunction. For 34 minutes, officials were trying to figure out what exactly went wrong.  Why did the power go out and yet some of the lights were on for half of the stadium? Even the CBS audio for Jim Nantz and Phil Simms went down. Rumors are endless on the Internet from the 49ers causing the outage to disrupt the Raven’s lead to a possible cyber terrorist attack on the power grid.  Even going as far as saying the power was handled by a Venezuelan company called Corpoelec and they deliberately caused the outage. Others just state that Beyonce’s halftime performance was too ‘electrifying.’

Super Bowl LightsOther reports say that the stress on the New Orleans power-grid was just to demanding and simply went out, causing yet another strike against the city still struggling to regain its infamous name since hurricane Katrina. Auxiliary power kept the playing field from going total dark but escalators, credit-card machines and all the concourses were only lit by emergency lighting. Even halftime host James Brown said a ‘power surge caused the outage.’

FBI officials have since ruled out terrorism and New Orleans fire department dismissed any reports that a fire caused the outage so the question remains. Some reports go on to say that a piece of equipment from Entergy New Orleans, the city’s power company, sensed an abnormality in the system and shut itself down as a safeguard. So for now the speculation remains.

So if the power supply required was to great at the Superdome then it lends to ask why did they not use a more energy-efficient light source like LED lighting? Most stadiums currently use 1000-watt metal halide Sportslighters to light their field. LED lighting manufacturers are currently testing fixtures that will lower the wattage to around 250-watts, savings 750-watts per fixture. In addition, the LED Sportslighters are instant-on, thus no longer requiring the warm-up time of 15 minutes that is associated with the Sportslighters of today.

Let’s hope that next year the Super Bowl will make a statement and move towards LED lighting and keep us in the light instead of the dark.

For more information on LED lighting, visit the LED lighting Experts™ at LED Source.

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Nothing Out Of Pocket For LED Lighting

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LouMan MoneyI know it sounds a little “pitchy” but in fact, this is 100% a true story. Our company has recently started a finance program appropriately titled “LouMan Money®” in order to fund Lighting Solutions for our commercial clients. LouMan Money® provides not only the financing for lighting products, but will also include all design, install and even disposal or recycling costs for the products being removed.

So what does this all mean to you? I am glad you asked!

Lets say we use our fancy analysis tool, the Lampinator®, to figure out what you’ve got  for existing lighting and what LED products we’ll put in to replace it. For the sake of this example, lets say that we determine we are saving you $10,000 / year with an initial cost of $20,000 in product, installation, etc. So, that’s pretty easy math, right? $20,000 will take exactly two years to reach “payback”. Then, we can dig a little deeper and calculate ROI (Return On Investment) based on the expected life of the state-of-the-art LED products. Lets use 10 years for the sake of this example. So how does the math look so far?

  • Investment: $20,000
  • Annual Savings: $10,000
  • Payback Period:  2 years
  • Life of new LEDs 10 years

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LED Lighting LED SourceSo based on the above, your eventual ROI (not including rate increases, inflation, etc) will be (savings) 10,000 X (life in years) 10 – (Investment) 20,000 = $80,000. Yes, it’s true. In 10 years, you will have earned a profit of 80,000 on your initial investment of 20,000. Sure, some will say “but what if those products don’t last the full 10 years”… well, even though the rating on the lamps may be as long as 20+ years, lets say they ONLY last the 5 year warranty… you’re still looking at a $30,000 profit on the 20,000 investment.

The argument then can only be “well, we’ve been through a rough 5 or 6 years with this crazy economy. For our business to put $20,000 into lighting products, when our lights are working perfectly makes little sense to us”. I understand. Trust me, in my own businesses, it’s hard to justify investments in anything other than staff and inventory.

The answer is this. “Invest someone else’s money!” This is where we come in. LouMan Money® allows our clients to pay for the entire project, from start to finish, with other people’s money. We match the payment closely to the savings, then give you all sorts of options on what you want to do. Lets say for example:

  • Project Total: $20,000
  • Monthly Savings:  $833
  • Down Payment:  $0
  • LouMan Money 24 mos: $891
  • LouMan Money 36 mos: $612
  • LouMan Money 12 mos: $1,726

So, using this example, if you pay for the lights over 36 months, you’re seeing Positive Cashflow from month 1 of $221 from the very first month. You’ve paid nothing out of pocket, there are no personal guarantees (in most cases) and only the LED lighting serves as collateral. Yet, you are realizing savings month one!

You also have options to pay for the lights in a shorter, or sometimes even a longer period. The flexibility is there.

LouMan Money® offers so many more benefits including easy application process, the availability of master lines (allowing you to approve multiple locations at once, but ship only as needed), and much more. Heck, we can even easily finance governments and municipalities! The goal is only to provide as many businesses as possible with better lighting solutions, improving the world and your bottom line while we do it.

For more information on LouMan Money® or LED lighting products, visit www.LEDsource.com or call (866) 900-4LED (4533).

Know The Features Of LED Lamps

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Knowing the Key Features of different LED lamps is crucial in making the right choice when making a purchasing decision.

Most LED lamps feature low-wattage, which translates into energy savings. When compared to a traditional bulb, many LED lamps are an average of 20-40 times more efficient and uses up to 75% – 85% less energy.

The energy savings are clear when using LED lamps but how long will they last? One of the key features of LED lighting is that many will last 10 to 20 years before needing replacement. When compared to traditional incandescent bulbs only lasting around 1,000 hours and compact fluorescent (CFL) lasting an average of 5,000 hours, LED lamps last an average of 50,000 hours and even then, the LEDs don’t burn out. They only lose intensity and will operate around 70% of the original light output and could last many more hours.

OK the saving and life-span seem very good but do LED lamps carry any warranty? If you are buying LED lamps from high quality manufacturers like Cree, Philips Lighting, Lighting Science Group or Toshiba Lighting, on average these companies will warranty their lamps for 5 years.

I hear that CRI is important. What does it mean and what should I look for? Color Rendering Index or CRI is a quantitative measure of the ability of a light source to reproduce the colors of various objects in comparison to a natural light source. Getting the correct CRI is very important for some applications like Photography, TV Studios or Cinematography. The CRI on many high quality lamps is between 85-90. This translates into the human eye actually seeing the TRUE color of the object being lit. The CRI on most traditional light sources can be as low as 25-50, with High Pressure Sodium lamps being the worst culprit at a CRI of around 25.

When doing an LED lighting retrofit, why is Color Temperature important? Knowing which Color Temperature to match for an existing project is critical. When LED lamps are installed, there does not need to be any surprises with a totally different Color Temperature than what was there previously. Color Temperature is often shown with a “K” (kelvin) beside a number which is the temperature that radiates light of a comparable hue to that of the light source. Lower white temperatures (2,700-3,000K) are considered Warm colors and Cool colors (5,000K or over) often produce a blueish white color. Use warm color temperatures in public areas or in a home and cooler temperatures in offices or warehouses.

While knowing the features of LED lamps can be a bit confusing at first, it is a much better way of getting the exact lamp you need for your project.

For more information, contact the LED lighting Experts at LED Source – 866.900.4533

What Do LEDs Have In Common With Diamonds?

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Many people wonder why the price of LED lighting products vary so widely.  Why can I pay so little for some LEDs (Christmas lights, inexpensive flashlights, etc.) and so much for lamps and other lights?  It is simple, just like diamonds; LED lights come in many different grades.  The highest graded LED lights are what many of the leading name brand manufactures such as Philips, Toshiba, Color Kinetics, Lighting Science Group, Cree, EcoSense and Coemar, use in their fixtures and lamps.

Sometimes the reason for LED lamps and fixtures being more expensive is that these LED lighting manufacturers all use very high quality chips and back their products with multi-year warranties.  Many inexpensive manufacturers will offer sub par LED chips and offer a nice long warranty on their lamps, but good luck trying to get a replacement out of a foreign company with little or no representation here in North America.  You’ll never have an issue with a valid warranty replacement for any product from these manufacturers. In fact, as one of the largest LED lighting distributors, LED Source® works very closely with each of these manufacturers to support their warranty programs.  Many of the lamps we carry have a 3-5 year warranty and our fixtures carry a 2-5 year warranty.

Another advantage of using LED Source® is that we stock our warehouse full of LED lamps, fixtures, strings and almost anything related to LED lighting.  Although we don’t carry Christmas lights or Car accessories, we have everything else to light your home, commercial space, restaurant, school, stage, church or warehouse.  This enables us to provide cost-effective and fast lighting solutions for a wide variety of clientele.   We can sell products to an ESCO, a contractor, and a home or business owner – just about anyone. While some LED lighting companies only focus on one segment of the market, the LED lighting Experts here at LED Source®, cover a gamut of market segments. This enables us to help almost anyone.

Just like there are many different cuts of diamonds, there are many different manufacturers making LED lighting products. Let our experts guide you through the maze in selecting the right product for your specific project. Contact an LED Source® sales representative today. We know how to make your lighting really shine.

Incandescents Aren’t The Only Bulb Being Phased Out

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As many of you know incandescent light bulbs are going the way of the dinosaurs, extinct. It started with indoor floodlights and at the end of this year; 100-Watt incandescent light bulbs will no longer be available.

Many people are not aware of another important date – July 14th, 2012. This will mark the end of another commonly used light bulb, both the T12 and the T8 fluorescent tubes are being discontinued. The 4-foot T12 and the slightly skinnier 4-foot T8 are two of the most commonly used bulb in America. You probably have a few in your home right now. These are the same lamps that offices, schools, kitchens and garages all use. The government set these new guidelines for some of the fluorescent tubes that weren’t meeting the new requirements and therefore will be discontinued.

What does this mean for you as a consumer? Simply put, the cost of these tubes will be going up. When you walk it to the hardware store and ask for a four-foot tube you probably get a F34/T12/CW, the most commonly used fluorescent today. However, on July 14, 2012, you will be forced to buy the more expensive deluxe model, the F34/T12/CWX, and it will cost you an additional $3.50 more per lamp.

The reason for this change is the government’s new standard for requiring all four-foot and two-foot fluorescent tubes to have a Color Rendering Index (CRI) over 80.  What is CRI? It is the method for describing the effect a light source has on the color appearance of an object – the higher the CRI the better the light. Typically fluorescent tubes for common household and office spaces had a CRI of 70. The government sees it as using the same wattage and getting a better light, making the 80 CRI tube more energy-efficient. The 80 CRI tubes have always been available to buy, but unless you were a photographer or displaying jewelry, you would have had no reason to spend $5.95 on a 4-foot tube when the 70 CRI tubes are 99 cents at your local hardware store.

What does this mean for the LED industry? With the price of LEDs going down and the price of fluorescents going up, the Return On Investment (ROI) will be that much faster. LEDs have no lead or toxic mercury and there are no disposal costs. LEDs also last at least 5 times as long as the best quality fluorescent tubes. This means you won’t be changing bulbs and ballasts ever again once making the switch to LEDs. Another added benefit is that your maintenance costs drop dramatically.

Currently available as an alternative to the T8 fluorescent tube is the Philips EnduraLED T8 Tube. It is 40% more efficient than the traditional T8 tubes and does not emit any UV rays. Philips even backs it up with a 4-year warranty on the lamp.

With an LED lamp available for almost any retrofit project, the future for LED lighting keeps looking brighter and brighter everyday. Don’t you think it’s time to make the switch?

For more Expert information on LED lighting, visit the LED Source website at www.LEDsource.com.

Educating Consumers On LED Lighting

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With LED lighting being the buzz word out in the marketplace, many still do not fully understand much about it. With all the different brands, specifications and quality concerns, what is the consumer suppose to do?

It is up to each of us in the industry to help further educate consumers on the benefits of LED lighting on a daily basis.

Recently I had the opportunity of listening to a Bloomington, Indiana, radio show called “House To Home” hosted by Nancy Baldwin. In this particular episode, she interviewed businessman, Hugh Kremer, who is president of the local LED Source franchise. Hugh was very informative and really helped to explain in general terms the benefits, savings and what LED lighting means to both consumers and businesses alike.

I have attached the audio files here to you can listen to the show in its entirety.

LED Source Hugh Kremer seg1

LED Source Hugh Kremer seg2

For more information on the show, visit the House To Home website.

For more information on LED Source or LED Source Indiana, visit www.LEDsource.com

Did You Know This About Light Bulbs and LED Lamps?

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  • There are approximately 4 billion light bulb sockets in the U.S. This includes both residential and commercial. Source.
  • The U.Ss purchases about 2 billion residential light bulbs a year or about 5.5 million bulbs a day. Source
  • More than half (61%) of Americans are not aware of the legislation to phase out incandescent light bulbs. And 84% of people, ages 18-24, are not aware of the legislation. Source.
  • The U.S. spends approximately $71 billion a year in electricity on lighting. That is 22% of the total US electricity bill. (2006) Source.
  • LED lights can have a lifetime of 50,000 hours or more in continuous operation. Depending on how many hours-a-day they are operating, that can be anywhere from 6 to 7 years to as many as 20 to 30 years. Source.
  • LED lighting can save up to 85% of the electricity used by incandescent bulbs and up to 50% of electricity used by fluorescents. Source.
  • Rapid adoption of LED lighting in the United States over the next 20 years would reduce electricity demands from lighting by one-third, eliminate 258 million metric tons of carbon emissions, eliminate the construction of 40 power plants and create financial savings that could exceed $200 billion. Source

For more information about LED lighting and the phase out of incandescent bulbs, feel free to call one of our lighting experts at LED Source: 1-866-900-4LED [4533]