Long Beach Airport is working on getting greener as it updates it’s facilities. The $140 million Airport Modernization Plan will include rehabilitation of the Airport’s historic 1941 terminal, the addition of photovoltaic panels, LED lighting and electrical power to each aircraft parking position.

Water saving urinals are being installed in the historic terminal building. These are expected to save nearly 1,000,000 gallons of water annually. Solar panels will be installed at locations around the airport in an effort to offset electrical usage. The photovoltaic panels will help decrease the Airport’s dependence on external electricity.
All taxiway lights are being converted to LEDs. The LEDs taxiway lights are brighter and use less energy then existing lights. The LED taxiway lights also have a longer estimated lifespan, seven to 10 years compared to one year for current incandescent bulbs. In addition to taxiway lighting, Long Beach Airport also retrofitted their interior office lighting and retrofitting perimeter lighting and walkway lighting with LED lights. 1,000 watt perimeter lights will be replaced with 237 watt LED lamps while 115 watt LED lights will replace 400 watt perimeter lights. The Airports walkways will have 125 watt and 75 watt lights replaced with 22 watt led bulbs. The new LED lighting will greatly improve illumination while drastically reducing energy use and maintenance costs.
You can make energy saving improvements to your facilities with LED lighting. Look for areas around your home or business that have lights that are on for 4 or more hours a day. Entry way lights, kitchen and living room lights or driveway lights are a good place for homeowners to look. Parking lot lights, office lights and underwater dock lights should be checked by businesses.

Teachers an students at Sonning Common Primary School in Reading UK,have a bright future ahead. The school outfitted classrooms with LED lighting over the summer break and is now seeing significant savings in lighting bills because of it. The switch to LED lighting will cut the schools energy use by more than 26,000 kWh annually, saving them over 5,600 GBP ($8,800) a year. The lights cost the school 16,690 GBP giving them a payback time of less then 3 years from savings in electricity costs alone. When you consider maintenance savings, the LED lights last 55,000 hours compared to 15,000 hours for the lights they replaced, the payback time is even less. Underwater LED pond lights can help you save on you outdoor lighting costs. Just like Sonning Common Primary School, you’ll see significant savings on your power bill and you won’t have replace bulbs every year.

Growing Bigger Chickens With LED Lighting

Research done by an Arkansas based LED lighting company shows that poultry farmers who switch lighting in there poultry houses to LED, will not only see lower energy bills, but larger birds as well. Next Gen Illumination, Inc., a Fayetteville, AR LED manufacturer conducted the test by fitting two poultry houses with there NGI AgLED lights and two other houses on the same farm with either CFL, cold cathode, or incandescent bulbs. Each house was monitored for energy usage, bird weight, feed intake, and food conversion. The data was collected over 3 consecutive flock cycles. The average house on a farm has 6 flocks per year. Energy usage was monitored
by Ozarks Electric Cooperative Utility Company and showed an 82.4% savings in kWh vs. incandescent lights saving $983.40 per house per year. The total weight of the birds in relation to the amount of feed used to grow that weight of bird also increased by 8.52% in the poultry houses that used the LED lights. On average, farmers can expect to earn an additional $4,366 per house per year by switching to LED lighting.
Adding LED lighting around your home or business can save you money in energy bills while beautifying your property. LED security lights can help protect your property and underwater LED dock lights can increase safety along your waterfront.

CSA Group, a not-for-profit membership association testing products to North America, Europe and Asia standards is expanding its LED light testing laboratory in Alpharetta, GA. The company has moved from it’s 8,000-square-foot testing facility, to a state-of-the-art 30,000-square-foot testing laboratory. The expansion will help CSA keep up with growing demand caused by government standards for energy-efficient lighting being enacted this year. The new standards phased out 100 watt light bulbs on January 1st of this year, 75 watt bulbs can use no more then 53 watts as of 1/1/2013, 60 watt bulbs can use no more then 43 watts and 40 watt bulbs no more then 29 watts as of 1/1/2014 The Alpharetta lab will test and certify LED lights, light fixtures, studio lighting, track lighting, household lamps, flashlights, fluorescent lamps and incandescent lamps. The facility will also test LED car lights, underwater LED boat lights, airport runway lights and LED lighting used by the military. CSA is investing millions of dollars in new testing facilities and hiring hundreds of additional employees in Alpharetta and around the world to keep up with increased demand for energy efficiency qualification and verification services.

Algae Farm is a Woodlands, TX based company developing the processes and systems used for the indoor cultivation of high yield algae. The algae will be used for the production of oil, residual biomass and algal biomass used in nutritional supplements, cosmetics and renewable energy.

Algae are traditionally grown in shallow outdoor ponds using sunlight and fresh or salt water. These open ponds have large surface areas allowing sunlight to easily reach the algae in the shallow water. Open ponds are considered desirable because they are less expensive to operate than indoors bioreactors. These open pond algae farms have had significant problems however. Local low lipid algae strains invade the ponds and dominate the weaker high-lipid algae causing lipid production to suffer. Inconsistent weather conditions can also reduce algae yields. An enclosed system, or bioreactor, solves these problems but at a much higher cost. A bioreactor is a device used to grow the algae indoors. Clear cylinders are filled with water and algae, then exposed to a light source. Expensive lighting drives up the costs of growing the algae in this way.

Algae Farm has recently switched from growing algae under fluorescent lights,  to energy efficient LED lighting from LumiGrow. LumiGrow LED grow lights offer adjustable red, blue and white color blends to meet the precise spectral requirements of different algae strains. This boosts algae crop yield while reducing energy bills. Algae Farm expects to save $400 thousand in electricity costs the first year, and will continue seeing savings in electricity and maintenance costs for the 10-year lifespan of the lights. The reduced costs will help Algae Farms grow the algae at a cost much closer to that of outdoor ponds.

Powering The Future

Algae Farm hopes to produce enough algae biomass and oil, at a low enough cost, to make it commercially viable to be used in nutritional supplements, cosmetics and more importantly, biodiesel, gasoline, ethanol and jet fuel. Biofuels from algae have been shown to be one of Americas best hopes for becoming energy independent. Many companies already have the technology to produce transportation grade biodiesel, ethanol and jet fuel from algae oil. A California based company, Sapphire Energy, has developed the technology to produce gasoline  from algae oil and Exxon Mobil Corp. has invested $600 million to develop the technology.

LED lighting is quickly proving itself to be the fastest way to energy independence.  According to the report, ‘Energy Savings Estimates of Light Emitting Diodes in Niche Lighting Applications’, from the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, “Indoor general illumination applications have the greatest potential … to save substantial amounts of energy. If these four general illumination applications switched entirely to LEDs, a potential of 133 TWh per year of electricity could be saved, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of over ten million typical U.S. households.” “If outdoor white light applications switched entirely to LEDs, a potential of 131 TWh per year of electricity could be saved, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of over 10 million typical U.S. households.”. Switching to biofuels derived from algae  could save this country even more.  Using LED lighting to grow the algae indoors in a controlled environment has the potential to keep yields high and costs low. If given the proper funding and government support, biofuels from algae could begin to greatly reduce America’s dependency on foreign oil within the next few years.
Underwater LED Boat Lights from Shadow-Caster will help you conserve energy in the one place you need it the most. On your boat. Light up your boating life with underwater LED lights.

High Tech Lights LLC of Honolulu, Hawaii is moving it’s manufacturing factory from mainland China to Las Vegas. The factory will manufacture indoor and outdoor LED lights, spotlights, streetlights and replacement fluorescent tubes. The 10,000-sq.-ft. facility will employ 150 workers with and average salary of $20 an hour. The new factory is expected to generate $1.6 million in new taxes for Nevada over the next 10 years and pump $198.1 million into it’s economy. High Tech Lights is teaming with The Silver State Works Program to hire qualified unemployed workers for many of the new positions. Many of the top LED lighting companies design and build there lights right here in the United States. Cree, Lighting Science Group and Shadow-Caster Underwater LED Boat Lights are all built here in the USA.

The city of Champaign, IL is looking at LED streetlights as a way to reduce it’s energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions.Champaign owns and leases 4,770 streetlights with a yearly cost for electricity of around $400,000. In 2010, the streetlights accounted for 51% of the cities total electric bill. If the city were to replace all of the sodium-vapor streetlights now in use with LED streetlights, it would slash it’s cost to keep the cities streets lit by two-thirds. Champaign is evaluating the almost 100 LED streetlights already installed to see if the savings in electricity is enough to offset the upfront costs of the LED’s. LED streetlights cost 4 times as much as sodium vapor streetlights. The city is also looking into government grants and rebates from local power companies to help offset the initial costs of the LED lights. While the upfront cost of the LED streetlights seems high, long term savings in the cost of electricity and reduced maintenance costs make the LED’s less expensive over there lifetime. LED lighting an excellent choice for applications that require the lights to stay on for long periods of time or where they are battery powered such as commercial buildings or underwater LED boat lights.

When Maple Leaf Life, the news blog for Seattle’s Maple Leaf Neighborhood, asked local residents to give there first hand opinion about new LED streetlights being installed throughout the neighborhood, they got it! At the present time, there have been 20 comments left about the new LED’s. While there are a few minor complaints, the overall reaction to the LED streetlights is positive. Here is a brief recap of the comments left showing what residents like and dislike about Seattle’s new LED streetlights.
Likes
Brighter, cleaner light. (‘Looks like the moon’) 9
Lights the road better 6
No light pollution (Glare in windows) 2
Uses less energy 7
Low maintenance 3
Safer (See objects/people better) 5

Dislikes
Light to cold and bright 7
Hard to tell headlights from streetlights 3

You can get the same energy savings, low maintenance and added security for your boat or dock with underwater LED lights from Shadow-Caster.

A Tucson, AZ based furniture retailer is expecting to save $268,000 a year in energy and maintenance costs by switching to LED lighting. Sam Levitz furniture is replacing 5,000, 90 watt halogen spotlights with 12-watt LED lights in four of its furniture showrooms. The switch to the long lasting and energy efficient LED’s will save the furniture chain $3.1 million over the expected 12 year lifespan of the lights.

The new LED lighting in the Sam Levits showrooms will not only save the furniture retailer $162,000 yearly in lighting costs, the cool burning LED lights have made it possible for each showroom to raise it’s air conditioning thermostat by four degrees, saving the retailer an additional $80,000 in cooling costs. The long lasting LED lights will save the furniture company even more in maintenance costs. A Sam Levitz showroom typically runs its lights for 12 hours a day. They were replacing the old 90-watt halogen lights every four months. The new LED lights are expected to last 12 years. Additionally, the MSI iPAR lights used in the Sam Levits showrooms did not require the replacement of light fixtures or any additional equipment. The iPAR lights were a one for one replacement, simply screwing into the same light fixtures used for the halogen bulbs.

Boating enthusiasts can improve the WOW factor of there boats and save there battery with LED lights. Shadow-Caster underwater LED boat lights will get you noticed by illuminating the water around your boat in any of five great colors without depleting your battery.

The goal of any lighting source is to produce light with a color rendering index, or CRI, that closely matches that of the sun. Light sources with a high CRI produce light that reproduces colors more faithfully, allowing objects to look more natural. Intematix Corporation, of Fremont, CA, announced that it has developed a remote phosphor blend for use with blue LED lights that produces a CRI of 98. This breakthrough will allow lighting manufacturers to develop LED lighting products that will reproduce truer colors for applications such as photography, museums, retail stores and grocery chains.