ledsblog.com

A proposed law failed to pass last night in Madison Wisconsin that would make all landlords use led light bulbs or fluorescent light bulbs to light common areas. They were worried about bulb costs and disposal of the bulbs. Well, most landlords end up paying to light those common areas and why they were worried about a up front cost is beyond me.  Its evident that they did not do their homework and do a complete study. Yes, the led light bulbs would be an upfront cost.  They would have payed for themselves though.  I ran an energy savings calculator on ten of the Super Vision SaVi R38 bulbs and here were the results.

Number of lamps: 10 lamps
SAVI LED lamp rated life : 50,000 hours
Incandescent lamp rated life : 2,000 hours
Cost per SAVI LED lamp: $155.00 dollars
Cost per standard incandescent lamp: $1.00 dollars
Operating hours per year: 8,760 hours
SAVI LED R38 wattage: 13.20 watts
Standard incandescent R38 wattage: 65.00 watts
Energy cost per KwH: $0.080 dollars
Labor Cost per Hour: $20.00 dollars per hour
Average time needed to replace one lamp: 7 minutes
Number of workers needed to change lamps: 1 workers

 Total Savings over the life (5.71 years) of one SAVI LED R38 Lamp For the number of lamps you specified (10 lamps) you will save a total of $2,750.33 by replacing a traditional incandescent R38 bulb with a SAVI LED R38 over the life of one SAVI LED R38 lamp.So, you can obviously see that landlords would save $2750 for every ten bulbs over the course of three years. Thats about $900 in savings a year in energy use and replacement.  This shows you that people do not understand the real cost savings in using led lights.  As far as disposal goes, led lamps are much safer than disposing of fluorescent and regular bulbs because you do not have to worry about glass breaking and chemicals that are inside fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. Led light bulbs are much more environmental friendly.

There are always a lot of questions when it comes to white led light bulbs.  The typical user goes to Ebay and think they find great deals on MR-16, GU10, Par 20, Par 30 or E27 based bulbs.  They are disappointed when the receive the bulbs because they do not get the light output they desire or the light is too blue.  Additionally, we hear the bulbs burn out to fast and they are not warrantied at all.  There are a ton of led light bulbs on the market and it is really confusing to consumers what to purchase. 

Right now on the market, Color Kinetics Intelliwhite and Super Vision SaVi led bulbs are the only commercial grade bulbs with good light out put, two to three year full replacement warranties and control over the color temperature. I warn you though, you will get what you pay for.  Color Kinetics and Super Vision SaVi led’s cost a lot, but both companies stand behind their warranties and also have detailed lighting specifications with candle power and lumen output information.

 You can find Color Kinetics Intelliwhite bulbs at ledneonlight.com at a real low price and Super Vision SaVi Led’s at trinorthlighting.com which is the only site that sells SaVi online. Over time, the bulbs will pay for themselves though, so I suggest you look into them.

Recently there has been some news that Color Kinetics should either be a buy or hold with a target price of $25. Being experienced in the led lighting industry I would say its a definite buy and you should consider holding the stock. Color Kinetics is very smart as a company with the way they patent led products. With a bunch of other manufacturers paying Color Kinetics for licensing agreements, Color Kinetics continues to grow their cash fund. They spend a lot of money in Research and Development each year to expand their offerings.

I checked today and it was trading at $18 a share and I would say you should invest in this company for the long term. As the led market grows, so will Color Kinetics. Eventually we might see GE try to purchase the company as the industry moves towards replacing the average incandescent light bulb with led light bulbs. So you should consider holding on to this stock for the long run.

Color Kinetics is a good investment, you should consider purchasing their stock.

Recently, we received a call from a person who had issues with rope light that they purchased from a seller on Ebay.  They thought they were getting a real deal from the seller on a 150 foot spool of white led rope light for $199.  The rope light had actually melted and caused a small fire and luckily the person was at home, saw the small fire break out and quickly put it out.

After an investigation we helped the person determine that the cause was due to manufacturing.  After a little more digging on the seller on Ebay we also determined they were purchasing the rope light from a manufacturer in China who was not following proper UL listings and was not making the rope light to UL/CE standards.  We promptly reported this to Ebay and I am sure Ebay is investigating this.  We also told the person to file reports with their local fire marshal as well so a full investigation can start.

 Recently we have seen a wide variety of non UL listed items pop up on Ebay.  So please be on the look out for items like this.  The easiest way to spot this is by looking at the pricing and seller.  If a price looks too good to be true, it probably is.  Purchase lights from a company who regularly sells lighting products and has experience.  If the seller has a lot of feed back, do not assume they know the products they are selling.  There are a lot of people on Ebay who just make a few dollars not really knowing what they are selling and the potential dangers.  Most led rope light should retail from $200-$300 for 150 foot spools of the colors red and yellow.  Blue, white and green should retail between $300-$700 for 150 foot spools.

 Remeber, a licensed electrician should always install the rope light to make sure that building code is followed and UL listings are adhered to. If you decide to purchase non UL listed rope light, install it yourself and not follow local building codes and fire starts, you may be held responsible and home or business insurance may deny your fire insurance claim.

Super Vision International recently decided to change their name to Nexxus Lighting.  In December Super Vision sold more than $9 million dollars of stock to private investors and planned on using the money to execute a new business strategy.  This is a very interesting move on their part.  As a distributor of Super Vision Products, we have not seen much of a change at all from our end. 

Their pool lighting products and commercial products are a strong market but the sign lighting division is not doing as well at all due to stiff competition of Chinese companies led lights.  They are in the process of moving their corporate headquarters to North Carolina and its production facility to a new location in Orlando Florida.  It will be interesting to see how the company will operate with the heads of the company in one state and the body of the company many miles away. 

 Super Vision is starting to gain a larger market in the United States in fiber optic lighting as we have witnessed, but the led lighting products are typically too expensive for the end user.  Lighting products are selling at a much lower cost from Chinese competitors right now.  The down side of the Chinese companies are their warranty work though and Super Vision should concentrate on extending their warranties for their products to three to five years instead of two.   Super Vision has a great system for warranty issues and by pushing an expanded warranty program, the few hundred dollars extra a customer would spend might be well spent.

Hello, my name is Jeffrey Beach and I am the President of Tri North Lighting, Inc. and I am just starting this blog about led lighting products and my personal thoughts on the products and how they can be used in various applications.  I will also be writing my personal thoughts about different companies products as well as news on companies.  I will be posting a few times a week to this blog.

As far as experience in this industry, I am very in tune with it.  I currently own and run Led Neon Light and Tri North Lighting. My two companies sell products for a wide variety of companies and specialize in fiber optic light and led lights.  We have been in business for three years now on line and 5 years in total.  I am very in touch with the business to business and business to consumer sales in the led market place and work with clients each day on different projects.

So I hope you all enjoy this and I will try to post daily.

Jeffrey Beach

President

Tri North Lighting, Inc.