I cannot tell you how many times I have had to explain this situation. Many LED lamp suppliers are twisting facts to suit what the market is asking for. The market is desperate to replace MR16’s with something that will save energy and last longer. The facts are however different in reality. please see the chart below for full comparisons. Seeing is believing. Get a sample and you will see what they are “TRYING” to do. The amount of light from these 6watt replacements is only equivalent in a small area. It is like a flashlight, if you focus the beam, it will be bright, but in a smaller area. This is not an equivalent in any way to the actual MR16’s.    Secondly they only consume 6watts, 95% of all the track lighting and over 60% of the recessed lighting sold in North America requires a load of 10 watts minimum to operate because the electronic transformers will flicker. This means that this little lamp would only work in a situation where you need a tiny spot accent, using a fixture with a magnetic ballast.    We have fixtures in LED that are high performance, however to be equivalent and we mean “EQUIVALENT” the ratio is a MINIMUM of 2:1 at the moment.  The conclusion is that LED’s are right now at about 50 lumens per watt, the new MR16 IR lamps are currently at 24 lumens per watt. This means that in order to replace a 50watt MR16 you need to have a 25watt LED lamp. There is no way to fit a 25watt LED into a MR16 container

Rarely do we see something new and refreshing that can be used in an hospitality situation. These two new pendants are elegant, simple and just so darned quiet, that they can fit into any architecture. Purists can celebrate that these lights will integrate in the barest of environments and provide unique lighting effects for dining atmosphere. please visit www.buschfeld.de for more of their products or download these cut sheets.Pin Pin SuspenionQuad Long 

Bartco came up with a fantastic mini pendant for all those specifiers in need of a minimalist pendant with very little budget. This versatile and cost effective pendant can either be used as a direct or indirect light and can be done in standard white or architectural silver.Many custom colors and lengths available upon request and makes this fixture a GREAT addition to our line.

• Suspended in the air, Rondelle gives the mysterious allure of a space station with its fifteen floating polycarbonate disks.There are four color options; bright orange, smoked grey, violet and deep amber.The fluorescent light source is centered from top to bottom within a structure of 14 crystal ribbed spacer rings.The hidden metal support has a polished chrome finish as does the conical canopy and metal tube detail containing the electronic ballast.Swag Option Available 
• This light is quite a different direction from the “Murano Style” of Leucos, but shows their progressive nature and we look forward to seeing new products like this in the future

After 3 months of detailing and construstion the new TPL Light studio is now open. Please come and see us at 121 Logan Ave, just south of Eastern ave.

Featururing a 3000 sf “shadow design ” studio as well as our new 5000 sf warehouse.

This is one of these “gotta see” places for lighting design ideas,

For those asking yes there will be a party soon!

If you are looking for a way to connect to many of the industry’s great party “Go-ers”, this event was the place for you. 4 nights of public and private events staged in the worlds “largest lighting studio”, proved to be exaustive at best.

However if you were looking for examples of the best the world has to offer in new and innovative lighting, it may have not have been your best choice. Many of the worlds top manufacturers did not exhibit at the show, however there seemed to be many “clandestine” “private sute viewings”. The show content seemed to many as a regional asian show with a few “true blue” North American manufacturers on the floor. The show has been lagging behind over the last few years and this year’s lack of key exhibitors is a testament that Lightfair International needs a serious Overhaul.

Having spent 3 days in Frankfurt, I felt that next show (2010) I need at least 5 complete days to absorb what the “actual world” has to offer. I spent an afternoon at the Vegas show and was glad many friends had organized events that made the networking woth the trip.

Is it the fact that the show is every year and many North American manufacturers cannot justify the expense? Have many manufacturers decided to do targeted trips for specifiers and bring them to their factories? Has the quality of the show truly scared top specifers away?

I look forward to LF2009 in NYC, it is a day trip and I can easily get home quickly if need be. In the meantime I am hearing many good things about the HD show as well as NeoCon.

Any comments?

If you have visited either Frankfurt or Milan lighting trade shows, the name Viabizzuno is always one of the top names in  fixtures  “for” lighting design.  This international company  is present in many of the European and international design magazines. Late last year Viabizzuno (we call it VBO) made a commitment to integrate their entire product line into North American standards and getting their collection certified for use in both Canada and the USA.It is a long process, however they have pre-engineered many of the products and as of March this year a great deal of progress has been made.  Many top name lighting designers and architects are using their products and Viabizzuno is providing certified and 120v products to site all over North America.TPL Lighting is proud to be the Ontario partner along with thier initial launch in : Montreal, Washington DC, New York, Philladelphia, Miami, Houston and Los Angeles. Construction has started on the first North American Viabizzuno “Space” and we hope it will be ready mid July 2008.We would like to thank many of our enthusiastic VBO fans for working with us to make this dream a reality.

For once an intelligent response to the banning of the incandescent light bulb. Please view and comment in the blog 

The renowned lighting designer Ingo Maurer is the first to use organic LEDs (OLEDs) from OSRAM in a function table light. The light, known as “Early Future”, is being produced as a limited edition. It works with tiles straight from the laboratory and demonstrates the enormous potential of OLEDs for future applications as eye-catching illumination and design elements. Read the rest of this entry »

GE Global Research, the centralized research organization of General Electric, and GE Consumer & Industrial, today announced the successful demonstration of the world’s first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting devices.  This demonstration is a key step toward making OLEDs and other high performance organic electronics products at dramatically lower costs than what is possible today.

OLEDs are thin, organic materials sandwiched between two electrodes, which illuminate when an electrical charge is applied. They represent the next evolution in lighting products. Their widespread design capabilities will provide an entirely different way for people to light their homes or businesses. Moreover, OLEDs have the potential to deliver dramatically improved levels of efficiency and environmental performance, while achieving the same quality of illumination found in traditional products in the marketplace today with less electrical power.

“For businesses, architects, lighting designers and anyone interested in pushing the envelope to achieve increasingly energy-efficient lighting — and vastly expanded lighting design capabilities — today marks the day that viable, commercialized OLED lighting solutions are coming into view,” said Michael Petras, GE Consumer & Industrial’s Vice President of Electrical Distribution and Lighting. “We have more work to do before we can give customers access to GE-quality OLED solutions, but it’s now easier to envision OLEDs becoming another high-efficiency GE offering, like LEDs, fluorescent or halogen.”

The development of this low cost roll-to-roll manufacturing process has the potential to eliminate the manufacturing hurdles that currently exist in preventing a more widespread adoption of high performance organic electronics technologies such as OLED lighting. The few organic electronics products on the market today are made with more conventional batch processes and are relatively high cost.

GE, as part of its ecomagination initiative, has made substantial investments in OLED research that has resulted in world records for OLED lighting device size and efficiency.  In 2004, researchers were able to demonstrate an OLED device that was fully functional as a 24-inch by 24-inch panel, which produced 1,200 lumens of light with an efficiency on par with today’s incandescent bulb technology. This was the first demonstration that OLED technology potentially could be used for lighting applications. Since then, GE has more than doubled the level of OLED efficiency using device architectures that are scalable to a large area and can be produced cost-effectively. 

The efforts to increase the efficiency and performance of OLED lighting have coincided with the development of a low-cost, roll-to-roll process for manufacturing these devices. The ultimate goal of GE’s research program is to introduce OLED lighting products to market by the year 2010. 

Source: GE Global Research http://www.ge.com/research/ 

For more information on OLED technology: 

http://www.ge.com/research/grc_2_9_1.html