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Governor Schwarzenegger applauds
energy-saving efforts
Indian Well City Hall INDIAN
WELLS, CA,
JANUARY 14, 2009 — Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE), a market
leader in LED lighting, announced that Indian Wells,
California, has joined the LED City® initiative, an
international program that promotes the deployment of
energy-efficient LED lighting. The city has converted much
of the lighting in City Hall, the
Emergency Operations Center and
the Public Works Maintenance Facility to LED lighting.
Indian Wells is home to several world-class resorts and is
internationally recognized for hosting high-profile golf
and tennis events.
“It is initiatives like these
that have made California a world leader in energy
efficiency,” said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I applaud
the City of Indian Wells and the University of California,
Davis for promoting the kinds of energy-efficiency measures
that California needs to meet our aggressive goal of
33-percent renewable energy by 2020.” 
Indian Wells meeting room
All circular recessed lighting
in the buildings was converted to the Cree LR6 LED light,
reducing electricity consumption by 80 percent. The City of
Indian Wells plans to evaluate LED lighting for other
municipal lighting applications to further increase its
energy savings.
“The City of Indian Wells takes
being green seriously,” said Mayor Larry Spicer. “We are
known worldwide for our extraordinary landscape and pristine
environment, and we make stewardship of these resources a
top priority. The recessed LED lighting we have installed
throughout our municipal buildings cuts our energy
consumption for those lights by 80 percent and is targeted
to last for 12 to 25 years, significantly reducing the time
and money we spend changing and tossing away
bulbs.”
“We collaborated with Southern
California Edison for these initial LED lighting
installations,” noted Greg Johnson, Indian Wells city
manager. “They gave us a directive to save energy. We
conducted an initial evaluation of many different efficient
lighting solutions, and the Cree LR6 LED recessed light was
far superior to the others.”
About LED City
The LED City is an expanding
community of government and industry parties working to
evaluate, deploy and promote LED lighting technology across
the full range of municipal infrastructure to:
* Save
energy
* Protect the
environment
* Reduce
maintenance costs
* Provide
better light quality for improved visibility and
safety.
According to the U.S. Department
of Energy, 22 percent of electricity used in the U.S. powers
lighting. In a world with soaring energy prices based on the
availability and control of fossil fuels, and with growing
concern about sustainability of the environment, a
revolution in lighting is long overdue.
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PORTLAND REPLACES 1000 TRAFFIC INTERSECTION SIGNALS WITH
LED LIGHTS, SAVING MILLIONS OF KILOWATT-HOURS PER YEAR
SUMMARY
The City of Portland has replaced all red and green traffic
signal incandescent light bulbs with energy saving LED lights
(Light Emitting Diode modules). 13,382 incandescent traffic
light bulbs were replaced with LED modules, which save
approximately 4.75 million kilowatt-hours per year. This is
equivalent to enough energy savings to power over 350 Portland
homes each year. The replacement to LED lights saves the city
of Portland $335,000 annually in signal power costs.
WHAT IS IT?
There are three principle advantages to replacing municipal
traffic lights with LED lights:
- LED modules represent an 83% to 88% percent reduction
in energy consumption over standard light bulbs.
- LED modules are brighter and they emit light more
evenly, making them more visible in foggy conditions.
- LED traffic lights last for 100,000 hours, compared to
incandescent bulbs that last only 8,000 hours because their
filaments burn out. Replacing traffic bulbs is not only
expensive but inhibits traffic flow. Burned out lights are
hazards, thus reducing traffic safety. LED lights avoid
these scenarios all together.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
- Prior to the development of the LED modules, the City
of Portland utilized incandescent light bulbs for their
traffic signal indications. While these light bulbs were
rated for heavier duty than the typical household light
bulb, the City had to replace all light bulbs at once every
two years. ‘Group relamping’ required a two-vehicle
maintenance operation: one-bucket truck and one
traffic-control pickup. The bucket truck consisted of a
crewmember elevated inside a bucket to the height of the
traffic signal, while the traffic-control pickup followed
suit with a warning sign. Roads are not actually closed off
but traffic does slow down. This process is expensive and
time consuming.
- In October of 2001, the City of Portland’s Signal and
Street Lighting Division hired an electrical contractor,
E.C. Construction, to perform the LED conversion program.
Installing the new LED lights requires minor modifications
to the signal head to accommodate the LED modules. Because
an incandescent light bulb sits within a base that is
surrounded by a reflector, both the base and the reflector
had to be removed for the installation of the LED module.
The exterior of the signal head stays exactly the same,
only the interior is altered to position the new bulb.
- By February 2002, the contractor had installed 13,382
LED modules in only 4 months. Each 142-watt incandescent
light bulb was replaced with a 17-watt LED module and each
59-watt incandescent light bulb was replaced with a 10-watt
LED module.
- The conversion project cost the City of Portland
approximately $2.2 million US dollars. The project received
$715,519 US dollars in energy incentive rebates from local
power utilities.
- The City of Portland came up with an innovative way to
finance the program. Because the City’s Signal and Street
Lighting Division is a public agency and therefore cannot
collect tax credits to help fund its programs, the Division
partnered with Dooling Lease Management Corp. The private
leasing company agreed to finance the program and was thus
entitled to receive an Oregon State energy tax credit of
$500,000. Essentially, the City of Portland leases the LED
lights from Dooling Lease Management Corp. The City pays
off the lease in monthly installments of $30,000. The lease
will be paid off by August 2007.
NEXT STEPS
- The current LED modules are reaching the end of their
useful life, which is typically 7 years. The City
anticipates replacing all traffic signals with new LED
lights in the fall of 2007. The new LED modules will be
more efficient than the existing LED modules, using about
75% as much power.
- Future replacement projects will cost less because the
cost for LED modules is approximately 50% less today than
in 2001.
- The City is not replacing the yellow incandescent
indications because the energy savings does not cover the
conversion cost. Also, because yellow indications are only
activated briefly during each signal cycle, the overall
savings potential is not very high.
APPLICATION
- A city can implement this program via it’s own City
agency or by hiring an electrical contractor such as
Portland did.
- Innovative financing mechanisms can be applied, such as
partnering with a private company that agrees to fund
program.
- The conversion program will save ‘group relamping’
costs and off-hour call-out costs for burn out lights
because of the increased life of the LEDs.
New Manhattan office tower demonstrates how to cut energy
usage dramatically with advanced lighting system.
As the free flow of cash slows for corporate America and
the call for green corporate behavior rises, a new
Manhattan office tower stands as a stellar example of how
companies can build smart to save both money and
energy.
To reduce America’s appetite for energy consumption, it
makes sense to attack the biggest sources of the problem
first. With office buildings and other commercial
structures — all ravenous users of electricity —
the place to start is the lighting. Go
into any office building and, according to the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (the independent statistical and
analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy),
it’s lighting that accounts for the largest source of
electricity usage, more than HVAC or office equipment. The
federal agency says lighting alone accounts for 44 percent
of the typical office building’s electricity consumption
(and about 56 percent for educational buildings).
But anyone who encounters The New York Times Building, a
dazzling 52-story Renzo Piano design in Manhattan, will
find this formula turned on its head. Ingenuity and the
Times Company’s commitment to sustainability have delivered
stunning results in lighting energy efficiency.
At the beginning of the project, after examining the
lighting options on the market, the Times Company’s
building team began to ask questions and conduct research
on how lighting could be accomplished more efficiently.
This research led to the Building Technologies Department
at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where, after much
discussion, the Times Company began to pursue a dynamic
lighting system that would allow departments to set their
own light levels and would allow artificial light to be
used as a supplement to daylight. In so doing, the team
constructed a replica of the southwest corner of the new
building and conducted rigorous testing of competing
technologies and products to decide which would best meet
the building’s lighting needs.
Ultimately, the Times Company selected Quantum total light
management, designed and manufactured by Lutron Electronics
Co., Inc., to control and manage the lighting for its new
headquarters.
“We designed our building to use 1.28 watts per square foot
of lighting power. With Quantum, it’s using only 0.38 —
that’s 70 percent less,” says Glenn Hughes, director of
construction for The New York Times Company during the
design, installation and commissioning of The New York
Times Building. “The energy savings is stunning.”
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