Our website is back live! Over the past week we had some technical issues, but the site is back. We apologize for any inconvenience this caused you over the past week. Our hope is to use the website to provide accurate and detailed information on our products and LED lighting technology.
Thank you for your patience.
Josh
TweetWith summer in full swing, we hope our customers enjoy some much deserved rest and relaxation. One of the most popular spots for me is a little beach in North Carolina. Nothing beats sun, sand, and water with the family. While on the road this week, I thought about the importance for quality of outdoor LED lights and fixtures. Particularly in the nuts and bolts of the operation.
What am I talking about? Let’s say you have an ocean side city replacing their streetlights with LED light bulbs retrofitting current fixtures. For example, replacing 150W HPS lamps with energy efficient 28 watt LED streetlight bulbs. If the screws on the light bulbs are not 316 grade, the bulbs will rust at the ocean in a short amount of time. While it hurts me to think about December, the same thing can happen in the winter with exposure to salt and spray from the plows up north.
With all LEDs, quality is king. Buying an outdoor rated product with 316 grade stainless screws protects the crucial components of the bulb, like the driver and diodes. Make sure for any streetlight bulb application your manufacturer provides quality components for the fixtures.
Enjoy summer everybody!
TweetOh NO! My CFL just broke all over the kitchen floor. What do I do?!
Compact fluorescents, those curly cube lights, have hit the world by storm. While more efficient than incandescent lights, they contain harmful elements like mercury. What this means is, if you break one, you have just exposed a hazardous waste to your home. The easiest way to prevent this is to not have LED lights not CFL lights, but just in case you happen to have a CFL in your home that burns out or breaks please follow these steps per EPA recommendations:
If you have read the above recommendations from the EPA and think, wow, CFLs can be dangerous…we agree. There isn’t much mercury in a CFL light, but it’s there. Everybody should follow the above steps if a CFL breaks, but the reality is most people probably don’t know the risks in a broken CFL. The best prevention is to not have any CFLs. LED lighting provides an energy efficient and safe solution for residents. Please dispose of old and broken CFLs properly and contact Green Lighting LED if you have any questions.
TweetLEDs are the most energy efficient light source on the planet. Like any other new technology, people are very skeptical about investing their hard earned dollars. Yes, LEDs last 10 to 15 times longer than other bulbs, and yes they use 70 to 85% less energy, and yes, they are warranted unlike their incandescent and fluorescent counterparts. Yet people still do not want to invest the money. So what gives??
LED products are not as cut and dry as your normal filament bulb. There are heat syncs, color temperatures, beam angles, base types, different diodes, dimmable and non-dimmable versions, and so on and so forth. This is truly a technology based light source as opposed to normal filament and fluorescent options. So it is easy to see how one could feel overwhelmed by the LED idea. But we aim to please, by educating everyone and anyone looking to learn about LEDs.
For example, one of our employees, Mike, has been telling his relatives about LEDs since he started here. Now we can only imagine that after hours of countless persuasion and detailed comparison, one of them decided they’d better jump on the LED bandwagon and purchase some LED products. Mike couldn’t be happier and thought this would be a perfect way to really show people how much they could save.
Mike had his mother replace some bulbs in her home. Granted she had already converted the house to CFLs, so she thought the saving really couldn’t get any better. Proving her wrong became Mike’s mission. She purchased 5 of our 6 watt dimmable R20 bulbs to replace five of her 23 watt CFLs. Now we wanted to see what kind of savings could be achieved within one month.
So the bill came in, and low and behold, it was lower, much lower, than the month before. How much lower you may be asking? A whopping $16.76 lower! Score one for the LED team.
Does Mike’s mom understand the details of an LED driver? No, but she does understand that LEDs saved her money compared to compact fluorescents. I guess we’ll end with our motto, asking; When will you start saving?
TweetElectronics and weather don’t mix. Imagine buying a brand new computer, taking it out of the box, and leaving it in the backyard. Come rain, sprinklers, pets, dirt – just leave it alone. Then, try to take it back to the store. (Spoiler alert: they won’t take it back and you’ll be out lots of money, so please don’t try this at home.)
LED lights are high tech and have electronic components. Very few retrofit LED bulbs have sensitive components sealed. We offer a full product line of waterproof LED lights IP rated against dust and water spray. They still should not get dunked in water, but work great outside and exposed.
A waterproof and non-waterproof LED PAR20 from Green Lighting LED.
The above photo shows a waterproof LED PAR20 (top) compared to our standard LED PAR20 (bottom). Look closely between the heat sync on the non-waterproof style and you’ll see some exposed wires. Those wires connect to the LED driver and, if exposed to the elements, can permanently damage the bulb. On the top, everything gets sealed tight and the LED diodes are completely protected from the elements.
There is give and take to the technology, which is why most LEDs aren’t outdoor rated. Customers lose rated life by going to a outdoor rated bulb (20,000 hours vs 50,000 hours). The bulbs still last over 10 times the life of halogens, but half the rated life. The waterproof bulbs have a less thermodynamic heat sync, shortening the effective life.
Many of our standard lower powered bulbs (G4s, MR16s) work great inside protected landscaping fixtures, but those fixtures must protect the bulb come rain or shine. Above all else, make sure any exposed LED has an IP rating in the 60s. Protect your investment and only use LED lights as directed from your supplier.
TweetCree diodes continue to evolve, and we monitor their development ensuring our customers receive the best value for their dollar. Currently, our products use a mixture of Cree XP-E and MX-6 chips. The XP-E, a relatively new technology, is a smaller chip which allows better heat sinking. This diode has effectively replaced the old XR-E diode, our bread and butter during 2009-2010.
Cree XP-E Diode
The Cree MX-6 works primarily with A19 and wide angle products, but has not been as popular because of lens restrictions. The XP-E and MX-6 diodes are a few dollars cheaper than the XP-G, a high light output alternative.
Cree XP-G LED
We primarily use the XP-G for streetlight bulbs and fixtures. The technology rapidly changes and we stay on top of the developments so our customers have the right chip for the right application. Always, quality at a fair price remains our primary objective. Not all LEDs are created equal, even with Cree.
As an LED customer, ask questions! It’s never a bad thing to ask suppliers which diode goes into your product and why. From the right beam angle to the right price, a lot goes into that decision.
TweetThe color white comes in many different shapes and sizes. Think about daylight white – it starts real warm and yellowish, turns very cool (in degrees Kelvin, not centigrade) , and then warms up again during sunset. What about paint – have you ever tried to pick out the perfect white for the new bathroom? Eggshell, semi gloss…you name it!
Lighting isn’t all that different. ‘White’ can vary from a yellowish to bluish hue. Before LEDs you were stuck with the color temperature of your everyday light bulb. Incandescent & halogen bulbs are a yellow, soft white. Many residents prefer a soft white and don’t like the pure or cool white CFL lights.
LED MR16 Light Color Temperature Comparison
Finally, we have a choice. LEDs come in warm white, pure white or cool white. Check out this photo of four different MR16s from Green Lighting LED. On the left hand side is a very warm, soft white matching an incandescent bulb (2700K). Second from the left is another warm white option matching a halogen light (3200K). The third bulb over is close to a fluorescent tube at 4500K and finally our cool white bulb shines a cool, bluish-white (6000K).
That doesn’t mean LEDs are perfect, either. Each diode has a slight variation on the color temperature. With a high quality diode, this isn’t noticeable, but ‘cheapies’ or even quality 5mm (DIP) diodes have wide color temperature ranges. Warm white could be 3000-3500K. Pretty wide difference in color temperature there. SMD diodes from a quality manufacturer like Cree have a much tighter range (150 or so degrees). It’s important to understand about the variations in diodes because this directly affects pricing of products. This is one of the many reasons we strongly recommend Cree SMD diodes and use the XP-E as a standard chip for many products.
In the photos here, we used our standard Cree diode to make a color temperature comparison. We used our 9 watt MR16 LED for the photo.
Which color white do you prefer? Do you go for the warm, fuzzy feeling of a warm white or the clear, crisp illumination of daylight white? Take a look at the photos and let us know what you like!
TweetWe just attended Green Buildings NY 2011 in New York City. This two day expo was for anyone looking to become more energy efficient (whether in a business, residential or commercial setting). Our friends at Bulbtronics invited us as exhibitors to showcase some of our newest LED products. We would like to thank Michael for inviting us to another great event.
Green Buildings NY brings key decision makers of the Building Construction industry under one roof. In comparison to LEDuctation5, Green Buildings NY was a big step up. During day one, the event had more people show up in the first 4 hours than LEDucation5 did all day. We ran out of business cards shortly after lunch…
It was clear from the beginning that people are becoming more and more interested in LED technology. The crowd seemed eager to learn about the newest products, what they were capable of, and how much more they benefited over their fluorescent and incandescent counterparts. We were happy to educate anyone and everyone who inquired about LEDs.
Other eco-friendly products were on display. These included restoration products, water conservation, low-impact building materials, recycling products and services, green design and construction services.
We are looking forward to attending again next year and if your thinking of attending, whether it be as an exhibitor or and attendee, we would definitely recommend it. One could easily see all this event has to offer in one day, just wear a comfortable pair of shoes and remember to bring extra business cards.
TweetOne of our most popular products are LED tubes to replace fluorescent 4′ tubes. They cut energy use in half and have over twice the life of standard T8s. One of our coolest projects currently involves dimming LED tubes on a production line…but that is for a future post. This post is about installing LED tubes in fluorescent fixtures. Please enjoy the following directions:
We recommend having an electrician or professional do the installation. It is relatively simple, but better to be safe!
The following are the steps for standard, double end power installations:
For single end power installations, complete the following steps:
Most of our tubes fall under the double end power installations (except for our MXS series tubes). For more information, please refer to our installation guide attached.LED-Tube-Installation-Guide
TweetWe attended LEDucation5 presenting Green Lighting LED products. One of our distributors, Bulbtronics, graciously invited us to the event. First of all, we’d like to thank our friends at Bulbtronics for letting us show off our new products! Here’s our thoughts of how the day went:
A few thousand people came through ranging from New York residents to sales teams from the big 3 (GE, Phillips, Sylvania). The focus of the event was a series of seminars on the developing LED technologies. Three keys will be important in the LED industry over the next few years:
The show was great, but tiny in comparison to the LED lighting this year in Germany and China. Still, Lightfair in Philadelphia will be a more direct comparison this Spring. We certainly will be back next year and recommend interested parties to attend.
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