As LED technology matures, it’s being embraced in a way unlike anything before it. The diodes last longer and draw less power than other light sources. Technical benefits aside, LEDs can also be implemented into unconventional forms much more easily than incandescent and fluorescent bulbs. Get ready for some crazy lighting designs.
Although there are some wonderful industrial features, such as the way the lamp moves along the X and Y axes, Jake Dyson’s LED lamp design is actually built around the concept of maximising the lifespan of the LED light. Spanning the length of the horizontal bar is a copper heat pipe which takes heat away from the LED components, the most common life shortener of the diodes.
When you have a newish technology, why not revisit an old form? Switch lighting’s beautiful bulb is all about easing us into the future. Not only it fit in a standard socket and emit a light comparable to incandescent bulbs, the form is something familiar to us all, which makes change easier to accept.
Can you imagine shoving a bunch of tiny incandescent bulbs in Rux’s tree-inspired Stickbulb lamp? Anyone interested in the current trends of furniture design will surely appreciate the angular lines of this one.
One of the best things about LEDs are how flat you can make a light fixture and still have it emit a sufficient amount of light. Peter Stathis’ Symtra Lamp may not be paper thin in its final form, but each of its panels show what LEDs can be compressed down into. Light wall, anyone?
OLEDs are to LEDs what human beings are to neanderthals. Simply put, it’s an evolution of the technology, which has added benefits, such as the ability to more easily fit in a flexible form factor, exemplified by Gergo Kassai’s Motion Lamp.
Because LEDs use considerably less power than other light sources, a solar panel is actually a realistic way to power a lamp. Ikea’s Sunnan lamp is a perfect example as to how one goes about creating a product for normal humans that’s also tech-forward and good for the planet.
Zwei21′s strips the lamp down to its most essential components, using a spidery wire attachement to prop the light up and letting a couple of extra power outlets hang off the fixture like a hydra. The LED-specific tech may not be anything innovative, but the fixture does get bonus points for its tasteful use of copper.
Brent Summers, Director, Americas Enterprise Support Services, Ernst & Young, stated that the company was striving to reduce its carbon footprint over the past few years and this lighting would help in its commitment towards the environment. Five Times Square is aiming for Energy Star rating.
The office of Ernst & Young at Times Square has about 650,000 useable square foot with more than 5,500 employees, who use the lighting system significantly. To decrease the energy use of this building, JAS consulting coordinated with One Lux Studio and Philips Lightolier Energy Service Group to achieve sustainable goals using energy-efficient products and identifing utility rebates to lower its costs by 13%.
Customized LED fixtures were designed by the team, who coordinated with the local labor union to install the lighting systems across the building’s private offices, conference rooms, open and common areas.
Zia Eftekhar, Chairman of Philips Lighting North America, stated that after evaluating the return on investment, Ernst & Young observed that the new lighting systems deliver improved light quality, offer better control over energy usage, and reduce maintenance. They also minimize their impact in the environment. He added that they were able to acheive sustainable goals in light quality while working with JAS consulting and One Lux Studio.
Ernst & Young LLP usually helps its clients save energy with their sustainability strategies, but this year, the firm will be saving big itself with energy-efficient lighting from Philips. The global professional services leader enlisted the help of JAS consulting, Philips Lightolier Energy Services and lighting design firm One Lux Studio, to retrofit 32 floors of its US headquarters in New York City with LED lighting solutions from Philips. The new lighting will not only save the company close to $1 M per year in energy and maintenance costs, it also will cut its lighting energy use by roughly 2.9 million kWh per year and reduce its CO2 emissions by approximately 2 million pounds annually.
"Our lighting project is helping us to deliver on our commitment to environmental stewardship," said Brent Summers, Director, Americas Enterprise Support Services, Ernst & Young LLP. "Over the past few years we have been able to reduce our carbon footprint from energy. This new lighting system will add an even greater reduction. Five Times Square is seeking an Energy Star rating, and the lighting work will be a large part of our application."
Ernst & Young LLP's Times Square office lighting system is heavily utilized by its more than 5,500 employees. With its traditional lighting system, the approximately 650,000 Useable Square Foot, Class A office space consumed roughly 6.2 million kWh annually.
JAS consulting worked with the Philips Lightolier Energy Service Group and One Lux Studio to find a suite of energy-efficient products that significantly decreased the building's energy use to meet Ernst & Young LLP's sustainability goals. The team designed customized LED fixtures, assessed lighting control systems and coordinated with the local labor union to ensure a smooth installation of lighting systems throughout the building's open office areas, private offices, conference rooms and common areas. The team also identified utility rebates that allowed Ernst & Young to lower its upfront costs by more than 13%.
"Ernst & Young has looked at the return on investment for their new lighting system and has seen that it gives them better light quality, a lot more control over their energy usage and reduces maintenance, making good business sense," said Zia Eftekhar, chairman of Philips Lighting North America. "More and more forward-thinking businesses are looking at the long term value of their lighting investment and realizing that LED technology can lower their environmental impact and their electricity usage. Working with partners such as JAS consulting and One Lux Studio, we can ensure that we meet our customer's light quality and sustainability goals with long-lasting, green technologies."
In total, the new lighting system will reduce Ernst & Young LLP's lighting-related energy and maintenance costs by more than 50% a year and its annual lighting energy use by 54%. It has also improved the facility's quality of light. Many energy upgrade projects focus on wattage reduction only, but One Lux Studio approached the project from a qualitative and aesthetic standpoint.
"The facility was designed to achieve a 'timeless' aesthetic, and we needed to make sure that any energy measure we implemented maintained this aesthetic," said Stephen Marguiles, president of One Lux Studio. "Luminaires that were commonly used when this project was originally designed were not necessarily very efficient. The new equipment optimized LED and flourescent efficacies, as well as ensuring light levels were 'right sized' for each space type. Best of all, the design team fast-tracked construction to ensure that the lighting work affecting the tax departments was completed by January 2012--just in time for the beginning of tax season."
A recently completed distributed energy project at the large, 4,000-inmate Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California, ties together power from fuel cells, solar panels, wind turbines, and diesel generators—all located at the jail—to form a microgrid that can operate independently of large, centralized power plants. The system keeps the power on when storms take down the grid, which is essential for safety at the maximum security facility, and it’s saving the jail about $100,000 a year.
The jail microgrid is one of the largest and most advanced in the United States. It’s the latest example of an emerging smart-grid technology that’s providing a cleaner, more reliable, and, in some parts of the country, significantly cheaper alternative to the conventional grid. “In many cases, it has a very nice payback, with our without subsidies,” says Michael Clark, president of Fort Collins, Colorado-based Encorp, which recently installed the software and equipment needed to manage the jail’s microgrid.
Microgrids also provide new ways to use solar and wind power. Ordinarily, the intermittent nature of such power sources makes them a challenge for utilities. By integrating them with batteries and other sources of power, they can provide a reliable boost to conventional power supplies to help utilities meet peaks in demand.
Microgrids are a step beyond either emergency backup systems or stand-alone solar-panel arrays. They use special software and power electronics to integrate multiple sources of power and energy storage to provide electricity around the clock, even when the sun isn’t shining or regulations limit the use of diesel generators.
In the case of the system at the jail, Encorp has installed networked controllers—the size of large computers—at each source of electricity, including a large array of thousands of batteries, as well as at the point where the jail connects to the grid. Coordinating power from diesel generators, solar panels, and other sources of power also requires equipment that can adjust the frequency and voltage of the power they produce.
Clark says Encorp has developed algorithms to help the system get the most out of each power source. At the jail, where the system is connected to the grid, this includes responding to the needs of a utility. If the utility experiences a large spike in demand, the microgrid can respond by selling excess power to the utility.
At certain times, it makes sense to use the system’s ability to temporarily decrease power consumption at the jail for things like the air-conditioning or lighting to create more excess power to sell to the grid.
The first customers for microgrids are businesses and organizations that can’t afford even short power outages—such as jails, hospitals, data centers, and military bases—or remote areas that don’t have access to the grid. They make economic sense in places such as California, where electricity costs are high and regulations on backup generators are strict. But they could soon make sense in more places as the cost of renewable energy and large-scale batteries decreases, and as advanced controls and power electronics make them more efficient.
A 20-story office tower on Congress Avenue soon will feature an amenity deck with an outdoor terrace and indoor executive lounge, a $3 million "green roof" upgrade that will be a first for a downtown Austin commercial high-rise, the building's owner says.
The landlord, an affiliate of Lehman Brothers Holdings, said the renovation of 816 Congress will consist of a 12,300-square-foot outdoor terrace, plus an adjoining executive lounge on the 15th floor for tenant business meetings, employee breaks and private functions. The lounge will have a bar and catering area.
Now under construction and scheduled to be finished in late September, the project also will include three smaller rooftop terraces on lower floors.
Lehman's Ashish Gupta said the green roof "will not only serve as a signature amenity for new and established tenants at 816 Congress but will also be a one-of-a-kind feature in the Austin skyline."
"We will capture the essence of Austin by transforming previously inaccessible and utilized areas into dramatic terraced green spaces designed with sustainable considerations and surrounded by unobstructed views of the Capitol, University of Texas and Congress Avenue," said Gupta, the senior investment professional at Lehman in charge of managing the firm's office investments, including its Austin holdings.
Austin-based STG Design and DWG are creating the green roof for the 433,000-square-foot building, which was completed in 1983 and sits at Ninth Street and Congress, two blocks from the Capitol. The building is about 80 percent leased.
Daniel Woodroffe, president and founder of DWG, an urban landscape architecture firm, said the project represents a paradigm shift for office buildings, locally and nationally.
Although green roofs increasingly are part of the design of newer office buildings, "for an existing building like 816 Congress to renovate to this level, with this magnitude of green infrastructure, is as far as I know unique in the country. I don't know of anything of its kind," Woodroffe said.
While a principal with TBG Partners, Woodroffe led the design of the 10th-floor outdoor deck at the 56-story Austonian, Austin's tallest building, and worked on 816 Congress' plaza renovation and cafe addition in 2008. That same team, which is now with DWG, will work on the 816 Congress renovation, Woodroffe said.
New area buildings that have green roofs include Austin City Hall downtown and the Palisades West office complex in the Westlake area, which has a landscaped area atop a garage.
At 816 Congress, elements of the green roof will include recessed LED lighting, custom concrete pavers, lightweight precast concrete benches and patio seating, and a railing made from frosted ecoresin, a recycled product.
"Everything has a sustainable angle," Woodroffe said, and will either be a recycled product or have the ability to be recycled in the future.
A key element will be the low-maintenance water plan. Native and adaptive landscaping will be watered with condensation generated by the building's air-conditioning units and collected in a 2,000-gallon tank. About 182,000 gallons of water are expected to be collected annually.
Woodroffe said green roofs have a "profound impact" on roof and building temperatures.
"It's impossible to say what the energy savings will be, but there will be savings," Woodroffe said.
The deck will reinforce the building's standing "as one of the premier class-A buildings in downtown Austin and will be a real draw for companies looking to grow their businesses in the heart of one of the nation's strongest economies," said Andrew Smith, vice president of Thomas Properties Group, which leases and manages 816 Congress.
The energy company has built a pavilion next to the Olympic Stadium, where sports fans will be able to pose for souvenir photos next to virtual versions of British cycling champion Victoria Pendleton and French swimming champion Yannick Agnel.
Another activity will see fans use hand pedals or show off their best dance moves on a special dance floor to power thousands of LED lights.
A Tomorrow’s World-style zone will showcase futuristic energy saving products designed by some of the world’s leading research and design institutes, which could soon become part of our everyday lives.
EDF worked with building contractors Nussli and architects Schmidhuber and Kaindl on the project. The pavilion will open to the public on July 27, and will remain open between 9am and midnight throughout the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Gareth Wynn, EDF’s director for London 2012, said: "Electricity is so fundamental to our daily lives and yet most of us take it for granted. We want visitors to the EDF pavilion to be entertained but also to understand a bit more about the remarkable engineering, organisation and creativity that means for so many of us electricity is always there when we need it."
Hubert Blanquefort, director of the EDF pavilion project added: "The EDF pavilion is intended to be a real visitor attraction that will entertain, inform and inspire people. We have designed the building to be modern and sustainable and throughout the experience we have tried to make the best use of up to date, energy efficient technology."
EDF sponsors 36 athletes from across Europe, including British medal hopes Victoria Pendleton, rower Katherine Grainger, kayaker Tim Brabants, rower Tom Aggar, and swimmers Liz Johnson and Ellie Simmonds.
Let's start on the roof of the East Manatee Family Health Care Center. Thin, flexible solar panels soak up the sun's energy and help offset the facility's power usage. They work well with the building's reflective roof surface and everyone who enters the center can see first hand, the real time output and savings of the solar system. It was cloudy today, so it's not running at its potential, but is still generating power. Since it was installed in late 2010, the system and other improvements have saved $6,000 in energy costs.
"With the money we save from that, we're able to send that back into the system, into the organization where it can be reverted to quality of care for the patients to improve, to increase, to enhance it wherever we can, so the patient gets the best and ultimate bang for their buck," says Manatee County Rural Health Services Director of Facilities/Operations Christopher Mullinex, Sr.
In the facility's 15 bathrooms, they've installed motion activated lights so they're only on when someone is using it and the sink, toilet and paper towels are all hands free, saving water and making it a healthier environment as well. Outside, energy efficient LED lighting is saving the center money as well. Mullinex hopes to implement these green products in as many centers as possible.