Lux Award Winners 2014.

The lighting industry's top manufacturers, most daring clients, innovative technologies and most awe-inspiring installations were honored last week at the Lux Awards 2014.

The ceremony took place in East London in the Troxy with nearly 1,000 lighting proffesional attendees making it the biggest ever lighting awards event in the UK. 

This year's Lux Awards winners included some amazing innovations and  top class projects.

Winners were chosen in 16 categories including the brand new international category, as well as retail lighting, industrial lighting, interior and exterior luminaires, innovations in the areas of light sources and controls, and the coveted Lux Person of the Year category. The chosen few were presented with a unique trophy made of recycled lamp glass.

Last weeks blog explored the lighting project of Sainsbury's nationwide and the lengths that Sainsbury's were going to to meet their energy saving targets. Now the awards have all been announced and presented with Sainsbury's winning not one,  but two awards. 

Sainsbury's won the Retail Lighting project of the year at the Lux Awards 2014. The judges commented that, 'it would be hard to see another retailer bettering this project, the supermarket chain has clearly put enormous thought, time and attention into its LED lighting roll out.' . You can watch a video about this project below.

They also won the Client of the Year award, the judges said that, 'The supermarket chain boasts probably the most knowledgeable and experiences end user lighting team in the UK.' 

Lux winners were also Debenhams for the best outdoor lighting project of the year and Philips for the best outdoor luminaire  as well as many others. 

Sainsbury's Uses LEDs Nationwide.

Sainsbury's has been considering LED technology for about seven years, first for their refrigerator lighting and later on for feature lighting and car parks. Overtime as the LED technology has developed, the supermarket giant has been considering it for more and more applications. 

Last year was a huge advancement of this. Sainsbury's opened its first all LED store in a brand new hypermarket in Leek, Staffordshire. This store consumes about 60% less energy for lighting than comparable stores thanks to the GE 'Blade' fitting, Nonetheless, this is still only one store.

However as of this year, Sainsbury's has made LED lighting the norm and the store in Leek is no longer going to be an exception.

Paul Crewe, Sainsbury's sustainability boss says the energy-efficient lighting is 'one of the most important technologies that we have introduced over the last three years.' All the major supermarkets have been dabbling with LED lighting but the scale of Sainsbury's decision and the sheer amount of attention that they are paying to lighting, makes it a cut above the rest. 

Simon Waldron, who joined Sainsbury’s last year as electrical engineering manager, says: ‘My role is to make it 100 per cent LED. But the real challenge is to go LED while maintaining look and feel. Customers are used to walking into a Sainsbury’s store and recognising the brand, and a change in lighting is a big visual element that could impact that.’

Sainsbury's  has already built five new stores that are using 100% LED lighting, and replaced traditional lighting in over 100 more. By the end of the year a total of 100,000 LED fittings will have been installed across the Sainsbury’s chain, reducing electrical load by 56 per cent (so far). The new lights are expected to pay for themselves in less than five years. 

As a result of the project, Sainsbury’s has made its way on to the Lux Awards shortlist in three categories: retail lighting, recycling, and client of the year.

The company’s lighting team has picked LED equipment from a range of manufacturers to come up with systems for new stores, old stores, big stores, little stores and everything in between. The project covers not just sales floors but also cafes, car parks, petrol stations, offices, back-of-house storage areas and distribution centres.

And to make sure each solution was exactly right for its needs, Sainsbury’s has in many cases developed products in tandem with its lighting suppliers, or requested custom versions of existing products. Dextra supplied a bespoke flat panel, GE developed its original 'Blade' product specifically for Sainsburys in addition to a semi-recessed version.In addition to this, JCC supplied its SkyTile LED panel in a previously unavailable colour temperature. ‘We don’t just take the first product we look at in a catalogue,’ says Waldron, ‘we work with manufacturers to come up with the ideal solution for each area in the estate. Generally we don’t take no for an answer. That’s not being arrogant, but we can always push manufacturers to come up with non-standard solutions that work for us.’
Sainsbury's massive LED lighting upgrade is part of a £1 billion energy-saving project known as Project Graphite – a reference to the carbon emissions that it aims to prevent.

The supermarket industry is more than competitive ever due to the rapid rise of cheaper stores such as Aldi and Lidl. Sainsbury's is hoping that a more sustainable approach and all the benefits that are attached to it. The team have calculated the total cost of owning the LED fittings for their whole lifetime, not just how many years it will take for the lamps to have paid for themselves.
Sainsbury’s aim is to achieve a 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, compared with a 2005 baseline. And because it’s building more supermarkets at the same time, the reductions at each site will have to be significantly higher than that.

The new Sainsbury’s that opened in the centre of Wolverhampton in July is a prime example of what’s being done. The £60 million, 6,700m2 store contains LED luminaires from Dextra, GE, Holophane, JCC, Nualight, Philips, Thorlux and Zumtobel (as well as plentiful daylight through the skylights). It uses about 60% less energy for lighting than a comparable store with traditional lighting.

Its a long while since LED light fittings were recognisable by the grid of glary blueish dots. When choosing manufacturers for this project, Sainsbury’s insisted on four key elements, the first of which was that there be no compromise on the current look and feel of the fittings. The other things suppliers had to offer were energy efficiency, no component replacements for 10 years, and proper recycling of old luminaires.

One area where Sainsbury’s has been particularly clever is the attention is warranties, working with each manufacturer to get the correct warranty to make sure that minimal maintenance would be required for the life of the fittings. Sainsbury’s writes its own warranties with manufacturers, usually asking for five-years’, covering both labour and parts.

Sainsbury's worked with the recycling scheme Recolight, which our sister company, Lightsave Fuller Read, also works with. By the end of this year Sainsbury's will have recycled over 220 tonnes of old lamps and louvres.Whilst recycling their old lamps they are also refurbishing over 60,000 luminaire carcasses that would have otherwise been sent to the scrap yard. 

If you want to follow in the footsteps of Sainsbury's and replace your lighting with energy saving LEDs, please go to our website, www.theledspecialist.co.uk. We stock GE and Philips lamps, two of the companies that were involved in this vast energy saving project as well as many others.

Start your own energy saving project now with the Led Specialist!

The Sistine Chapel Illuminated with LED lights.

If you ever visited the Sistine Chapel you will remember the strain you felt in your neck and eyes when trying to get a proper glance at the beauty of Michelangelo's ceiling. Strain no longer. The Vatican recently turned on fifty new luminaires with over seven thousand LEDs inside that bring a new light to the masterpieces in the ceiling such as The Creation of Adam and The Last Judgement.
The new lighting brings the amazing art work into full, clear and colourful view. 
Prof Antonio Paolucci , director of the Vatican Museums said that, 'We want to honour the 450th anniversary of Michelangelo's death by providing new lighting for his work.' 
They have definitely achieved that, and the artist would probably be very proud of the project which was led by Osram, which has said that the new LEDs provide ten times the brightness of the lights replaced, whilst causing energy consumption to reduce by ninety percent. 

Martin Reuter, the senior technical project manager at Osram commented that the most difficult part of the two year job was 'to prove that the light was not harmful to the art.'  In order to achieve this the company did not use phosphor-coated white light, but instead used a mix of blue, red and green LEDs.Osram tested this by sending original pigments for the ceiling, which Michelangelo completed in 1512, to Hungary's Pannonian University, who after a year, gave the all clear. This meant that now the light is much kinder and gentler to the paintings. 

Other partners involved in the project were Barcelona's Institut de Recerca en Energia, which investigate the energy reductions and Rome-based lighting designer Faber Technica. 

The European Commission helped fund the partners (the money did not go straight to the Vatican, as the Vatican is not part of the EU). The parties have not revealed the full cost of the project. But the results speak for themselves, as the photo above shows. 

Watch the video below to see more! 

Number of Lights in Average Home Doubles!

The average British home is now smaller than ever, but despite this the average amount of lights in the home has doubled in the last decade. In 2004 the number of light sources in the average home was fifteen but now it has rocketed to over thirty. The survey done by Homebase has shown that we are illuminating our homes with more spotlights, wall lights, pendants and other lamps.

Homebase suspects that our decreasingly shrinking living spaces means that people are choosing to spruce up their homes with decorative lighting as lamps are a more fashionable and functional way to accessorize your home

Lighting buyer for Homebase, Pamela Collard commented that, 'People are certainly being smarter with their lighting and noticing what a huge impact lighting can make to how a room both looks and feels.'

Updating lighting was found to be more popular with renters over home owners, especially those who want to make their home more like their own but are unable to make the permanent changes or redecorating or hanging pictures.

Updating lighting was found to be most popular with renters, especially those who want to make their home their own but are unable to make more permanent changes by redecorating or even hanging pictures.

It might be wise with all these lights in your home to switch to LED light bulbs,which aswell as looking good and illuminating your home will save you money on your energy bills. The more lights in your home that you can replace with LEDs the more energy and money you save. To see our full range of LED lighting please go to www.theledspecialist.co.uk

Philips declare a loss after announcement of lighting split.

Philips has posted a £81 million net loss on its third quarter earnings only three weeks after its announcement of intentions to split from its lighting division.
Philips has blamed this loss on slowing markets in China and Russia and a £290 million patent law suit in its healthcare division.
Comparably,lighting sales declined 1% Year on Years but LED based sales increased by 28%. This was counteracted by a 14% decrease in overall conventional lighting sales. The LED lighting division in Philips now represents 40% of total lighting sales, compared to 30% this time last year.
On the 28th September, the dutch giant made public its decision to split off its lighting business to focus on its high margin consumer and healthcare divisions. The separation will result in the creation of two new companies, Lighting and HealthTech, but these will both continue to use the Philips brand.
A Philips spokesperson for Philips has denied that the announcement of the split was to distract shareholders from the disappointing third quarter losses, 'We are talking about two separate things', stated the spokesperson, 'One is the strategic announcement to do something that we think is in the best interests of both entities of the business. And the results are a snapshot of something that we do every quarter as a listed company you have to.'
They continued, 'As our CEO said, we're not satisfied and if you look at the numbers it's clear that you cannot be satisfied. But having said that, if you look at the numbers there are lots of incidents in there. If you exclude those, we do see some improvement in the underlying business.'
The growth in LED sales and the considerable fine for the Philips healthcare division might seem ironic given Philips has decided to move away from lighting to focus on healthcare.

The Physics Nobel Prize 2014 Awarded for the Invention of Blue Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)!

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 has been awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, Shuji Nakamura, "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources." 

The Nobel prize is awarded for an invention of the greatest benefit to mankind, the invention of the blue LED has fundamentally transformed lighting technology, red and green LEDs have been around for some time but without the blue LED, a white light could not have been created.

The first ever blue LEDs were made by the Nobel Prize winning trio in the early 1990s, enabling a new generation of high energy bright blue light, the basis for the new era of light bulbs. In addition to this, the development  of colour LED screens that most of you probably have in your televisions at home and your smartphone currently in your pocket.

The winners of this groundbreaking invention succeeded where everyone else had failed, in the industry and in the scientific community. They will share prize money of £0.7 million between them and will also be added to the prestigious list of 196 other Physics laureates recognised since 1901 when the Nobel Prize was first established.  Professor Olle Inganas, a member of the prize committee commented that this invention "would make Alfred Nobel very happy".

LEDs (literally) outshine traditional incandescent and fluorescent lamps, delivering better quality of light as well as a reduction in energy consumption. This improvement is as simple as this; traditional lighting whilst converting electricity into light  creates a wasteful mixture of heat and light whereas LEDs convert electricity directly into photons of light. 

One fourth of the world's electricity consumption is used for lighting purposes, so the LEDs contribute to saving the Earth's resources. Materials consumption is also diminished as LEDs last up to 100,000 hours, compared to 1,000 for incandescent lamps and 10,000 hours for fluorescent lights. 

To make your contribution in saving the Earth's resources please visit http://theledspecialist.co.uk/ and see this revolutionary invention light up your home and your planet. 

Wembley Stadium Arch Illuminated With Colour Changing LEDs.

Thorn Lighting has rejuvenated the lighting on the arch of Wembley Stadium with a colour-changing LED lighting system in order to provide intense colours and moving light effects.

The new system has been designed for Wembley Stadium sponsor and digital communications company, EE and will be visible on the London Skyline. The lighting system can be programmed to change colours for national holidays, football matches and other special events.

Managing director of Wembley National Stadium, Roger Maslin, said "We can now use the arch to make big, bold and entertaining statements which can be seen right across London. With so many lighting scenes the possibilities are fantastic. From the St George's Cross and team colours to highlight goals for big games, to solid and moving colours for event lighting, to the corporate colours of our sponsor EE and charity partners, the lighting is transformational and exciting." Maslin is certainly thrilled with this exciting new venture, which is sure to make an outstanding impact on the illumination of the stadium.

Senior lighting designer at Thorn Lighting, Pat Holley, who created the lighting design scheme commented that, "The arch's lighting system consists of a dynamic floodlight with red, green, blue and white LED chips. Fifty per cent of the LED chips are white and the remaining are equal quantities of red,green and blue." Thorn also designed and created a custom bracket to allow the existing fittings to be used which sped up the entire process significantly.

Kevin Stubbs, UK technical manager, reported that, "Importantly, Wembley wanted the new 'whiter' LED white to match the white achieved with the old metal halide system. We therefore had to tune the LED white to achieve this consistency."

The Arch itself is the longest single span roof structure in the world, standing at 133, tall with a span of 315m and a diameter of 7.4m. It is so large that it could fit the London Eye beneath it and can be seen from as far as 13 miles away on a clear evening, so look out for those colours in the London skyline!