In case you haven't heard there's a Presidential primary going on. Right now, and I'm sure for a few more months to come Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are slugging it out to see who gets to compete against President Obama in November. With our very slow economic recovery still weighing voters minds every candidate is proposing ways to increase jobs here in the US.
As a humble lighting designer I have my own jobs bill, OK maybe not a bill, but a sketch of a bill. I all it "The Creating the best Lit Nation on Earth to make more Jobs and Increase our Energy Independence Act." It's based on a recent DOE report showing how much energy the US uses through lighting. In total we use about 700 tera-watt hours of electricity through light sources - about 20% of the total US energy consumption. We can reduce that total, create jobs and make the nation more sustainable by taking up the following actions.
Create a Federal Loan Program for Cities and States to Upgrade their Public Lighting. The majority of our public lighting is High Pressure Sodium, Mercury Vapor or Metal Halide. We can radically improve our exterior lighting and spur innovation by fostering the retrofit of our street lighting with LED heads that produce the same quantity of light with better color and less energy consumption. States can pay the loan back with the energy savings created by the new lights. This could potentially create thousands of jobs across the country.
Expand and revamp the L-Prize Program. The L-Prize program was designed to spur innovation within the lighting industry to create an energy effiecient alternative to the 60 watt incandescent lamp. Thus far the contest yielded one new product that could change everything. The Philips L-Prize winner is set to hit the market this month. We should expand the program to go after linear fluorescent sources, which make up a huge amount of our lighting consumption.
Make all Federally Owned Buildings LEED Certified by 2020. Rather than mandate specific retrofits, the government should mandate that all federally owned buildings are LEED certified. Open up the design and build process to bidders from around the country and mandate the products used are made here in the USA. You'll be employing architects, lighting designers, general contractors and factory workers across the US. These buildings are a net investment over time as they consume fewer resources and reduce the public energy burden. If the program is successful, expand it to include state owned buildings.
Partner with Lighting Designers and US-Based Manufacturers on Public Lighting Projects. Here's the idea. The Federal, State and Local governments open up small pieces of land that are currently unused to lighting designers. Designers compete to design the space pro-bono and US lighting manufacturers sponsor the build by providing the products and covering the cost of labor to install it. Not only do you create some jobs in the local economy, but your promote lighting and lighting design as ways to improve the built environment, spurring investment from private business in their own property.
There are lots of other things we could do like re-work the minimum luminance level requirements written into many building codes and more rapidly reduce the power density requirements to improve energy effieciency, but I thought we could stick with the carrots on this bill and save the sticks for when the economy is stronger.
So GOP candidates and Mr. President. If you're reading this, feel free to steal liberally from this idea. I don't need credit, I just want to see us design better lighting and create a more beautiful country. We can do it.
The Department of Energy has released a comprehensive report on the state of lighting in the US. It breaks up lighting energy use by light source type and market segment.
Some Key Points:
Lighting makes up about 19% of Total U.S. Energy use at 700 terawatt hours.
Over the 10 years about a billion more lamps went into active service from roughly 7 billion to over 8 Billion.
U.S. Lighting has gotten more effiecient in 2001 we averaged 45 lumens per watt in 2010 it was 58 lumens per watt. This is attributed mostly by the reduction of incandescent lamps in favor of CFL and better linear fluorescent technology.
Two things really jumped out at me.
First, roughly a quarter of all US lighting is still incandescent, mostly in the residential sector.
Secondly, LED barely registered on the overall chart in 2010. The potential for a vast improvement in sustainable lighting is remarkable.
When this report is released again in 2020 I imagine the two major trends will continue to...more demand for light and increased efficiency. Take a look at the summary report.
I've been thinking through several projects this week and when I think of inspiration I keep going back to the most beautiful light I can think of, natural sunlight. I'm trying to draw on natural forms in some of my upcoming work to make the spaces I light feel more alive, more real and more interesting. Stay Tuned.
Perhaps I sound like a broken record. I don't care. In the age, of rapidly hanging light sources and rapidly improving technology it's imperative that you test everything. Color, consistency, brightness - you need to look at everything yourself. In this day and age the cut sheet is just the beginning.
There's this photo that's be circulating around the internet of office lighting that is meant to replicate the sky. The idea, as I understand it, is that LEDs change color behind a lensed ceiling and the minor variations are meant to replicate the sky. People are supposed to feel happier and healthier as they work.
Here's the photo:
Now don't get me wrong. I applaud any effort to make our work environments more pleasant and it does seem that there are some really interested programming breakthroughs on this project. But I highly doubt working under this ceiling will make anyone feel like they are working under natural light. Here are some photos I've taken recently outside. I think they're all pretty solid examples of of what I mean.
Notice a few things:
Shadows - We create shadows in natural light, shadows create contrast, contrast creates interest.
Darkness - Natural Light allows for darkness. Darkness gives us a sense of time. Shifting light and shadow help too.
Reflection - Natural light in all of its subtle hues bounce off clouds and grass and building and puddles and windows and make all kinds of interesting textures. Texture feels real.
So while this seems like it might be a cool ceiling effect, I think it largely misses the point. What makes the sky so amazing is that it surprises us, it changes throughout the day, and it allows us to fill in the blanks of darkness.
This is a topic I come back to frequently here on the blog, but I think it's a worth it. There are no rules when it comes to deciding color temperature...only judgement calls.
The lighting moment we are in means you are likely to have multiples types of light sources in a given space. When everything was incandescent, we really didn't have to worry about color temperature. But increasingly, our world is made up of multiple types of light sources. Halogen, Fluorescent, ceramic metal halide, decorative incandescent and LED are all part of mix and will all have their own native color temperature. Throw sunlight into the mix and you have another (shifting) color temperature to deal with.
In many architectural applications this variation is OK. Color temperature is simply a mathematical translation of the variations of white light. Variety is not only acceptable, it's desirable. Except, of course, when it isn't. In retail applications, or when displaying art for example, the color temperature of your key light needs to be optimal for the subject you're lighting. This could mean augmenting daylight, it could mean mixing light sources so as daylight shifts during the day, your light sources compensate. In short, there are no rules anymore.
The old rule was - if color is important, use halogen and halogen only. Halogen is a dimmable source, it's full spectrum it has a relatively warm color temperature and a 100 CRI rating. While those are all stark benefits, lets talk about some drawbacks...
Mortality Curve - the mortality curve of halogen is steep. Once you hit the midway point of the rated life of most halogen sources you see a deep dive in color temperature and in brightness. In a retail application where the lights are on anywhere from 8-12 hours a day this means lamps die often. Now imagine for a second you have a row of these halogen lamps lighting a series of clothing racks. When the first lamp dies and is replaced it's at the top of it's mortality curve - it's coolest and brightest. But it's sitting next to a lamp in the middle of it's curve not as bright, not as cool - so much for consistency.
Variance - there is a myth running around that halogen light sources are completely consistent when it comes to color temperature. While they are more consistent than LED in point source applications, they are not infallible. In testing I was personally a part of, I measured variance of 100 degrees kelvin from three identical halogen lamps. Honest manufacturers will tell you that there is an unavoidable inconsistency from lamp to lamp.
No agreement with daylight - Daylight is rarely 2950 degrees kelvin. It typically reads more in the 4000-6000 degree range. Halogen light looks yellow in the midday sun. So if you're spot lighting a mannequin in a room flooded with daylight, you've "turned the clothes yellow."
The answer? Mockups, testing, and more testing. If color is critical to you, then you must, must, must test your light sources in their given application so there are no surprises.
Agree? Disagree? The comment section or the facebook page await.
When you do industrial gigs you tend to walk the fine line between theatrical art and architectural installation. That's a thrilling challenge because you design lighting that is temporary and creative like a theatrical installation but it's expected to have the impact of a finished architectural design.
There is, of course, a downside to working on projects like these. You hardly ever have the time, money or infrastructure necessary to execute exactly what you'd like to do. Moreover, you often discover these limitations in the field "but you said we had 100 amps of service. I'm only seeing 40..."
Confront these limitations as soon as you encounter them and be very upfront with your client. At the end of the day the calendar is the calendar and you can't generate more watts with fairy dust and happy thoughts. Explain the limitations. Then work and round them to make something amazing and move on.
I spent the end of last week and yesterday lighting a showroom for a men's fashion brand. I won't reveal which brand, but it's a high end menswear brand and the showcase I was lighting involved suits, shirts, sweaters, deep, rich fabrics and subtle, important colors.
The showroom lighting was insufficient to display clothing, as I mentioned in a previous post, the fluorescent uplighting was the wrong color and poor CRI and it completely dominated the room. The contrasting track-mounted wall washer fixtures were much too warm and they were complimented by track-mounted spot fixtures which weren't punchy enough. The lighting played by all of the conventional rules. Tracks for flexibility, wall washers since product would be on the walls, spot lights to highlight specific products. I'm sure someone heard that the room would be used for office work so they decided 3500k fluorescent uplighting would be a simple inoffensive way to accomplish this. The reality is a design that is inoffensive, but totally wrong for the tasks the room was intended to serve.
Which brings me to the point (finally, I know) of this post. As a client, you should demand mockups of every design element you care about. If you're using a lighting designer (or other specifier) they should be able to bring in the exact light sources and fixtures they intend on using and be able to show you a mockup of the application they had in mind. What will this fluorescent lamp do to the fabrics? What will it look like in the daylight? Will these spots be punchy enough from 9-12 feet away? Do these wall washers punch correctly? Are they the look and feel I want? Simply by looking at the options prior to installing them permanently many of the missteps in this design could have been avoided.
Lighting more so than other design elements is difficult to express in a rendering. Sure you can display the relative intensity of the light in the space, perhaps where the light falls and doesn't fall. But there is no substitute for a mockup, when you can see the real light with your own eyes you know definitively if it will work for you and you can provide real feedback from a solid starting point. Lighting is often described in mushy terms that are easy to misinterpret. Mockups can help firm up those terms in a way makes sense to everyone involved.
Regular readers know that this blog is dedicated to sustainability and lighting design. But every now and then I take a break to share something I think is pertinent. Many Americans will have a day off for the national holiday celebrating Martin Luther King today. I thought I would share a brief clip of his final public speech, his words then and now should guide us as citizens.
