If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

By CHRISTIN ERAZO

South Florida News Service
Originally Posted: Friday, July 30, 2010

 

Bedonna Flesher, owner of Nature’s Table Café in Wellington, recently discovered she could save energy by using LED lights, so she replaced the halogen bulbs used for accent lighting at her restaurant.

“The light bulb went off,” she said, referring to her new discovery.

Flesher said the halogen bulbs cost the restaurant $2,000 a month in electrical bills. “The bulbs were so hot we had to keep the AC low,” she said. “These new lights are cooler and are also good for 20 years while the halogens only lasted four to five months.”

LED, which stands for light-emitting diode, works differently from an incandescent light bulb that uses a filament to light up. Unlike the traditional light bulb, LED uses an electrical conductor and photons that do not allow the bulb to burn out.

Flesher first heard about LED white lighting in April from a director of retrofit sales at LED Source, a Wellington-based distributor of LED lights.

LED Source, which opened in 2005, has become the leading distributor of LED lights for brands such as CREE, Color Kinetics and Toshiba. The company is a national and international supplier of LED lighting and specializes in full-scale evaluations and retrofits in the commercial industry, serving department stores, municipalities and businesses.

Marcel Fairbairn, president and CEO, said that LEDs will eventually dominate the lighting world.

“Regular bulbs will be phased out by 2014 because they will become inefficient,” he said. “LED watts use 10 times less energy and fade, but never burn out.”

Fairbairn, who was born in Canada and now lives in Wellington, has been familiar with color LED lighting used in concerts and in stadiums for several years since starting his first Internet company Gear Source in 2002.

Working with this new technology spurred the idea for LED Source.

The business started as an Internet company, but then branched out into consulting, becoming a source of information for those who had questions about LED lighting. The business currently occupies three small offices in Wellington at 3101 Fairlane Farms Road.

“We grew rapidly as people clamored to have their questions about LEDs answered,” Fairbairn said. “So we had to expand and hire more people.”

The company, which made $6 million in 2009, and is projected to make $10 million this year, is 98 percent commercial, selling primarily to large and small businesses. Fairbairn’s next step is to franchise LED Source locations, which he anticipates will produce $250 million for the company in the next five years.

LED Source is not considered a “green” company, but the bulbs offer efficiency in an energy strained environment.

“Energy is going up rapidly, and electrical grids are busting at the seams,” he said. “They have to manage the amount of electricity, and this new lighting helps slow down the growing pain.”

Fairbairn sees no downside to converting to LEDs other than the initial cost. He assures his clients that the bulbs pay for themselves in energy savings.

The company recently retrofitted a Wellington fire station, which cost $12,420.

Eric Hansel, director of retrofit sales, said the energy savings of using the LED lights would total $3,133 annually. The total project would be paid off in less than four years.

Originally posted 2011-03-20 13:43:07. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

FPL downplays the impact of lighting on electric bills, with a page on its Web site that says “lighting is not typically a major user of energy in most homes [the average cost is $70 a year].” An energy calculator on the same page shows it costs $64.80 a month to burn 15 100-watt bulbs 12 hours a day. Comparable lighting produced by CFL bulbs would cost around $15 a month.

I went around my house the other day and counted 33 incandescent bulbs.

Forget the mall. This holiday season, I’m headed to the hardware store.

Michael Mayo’s column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at mmayo@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4508.

From Sun Sentinel - 12/21/08

President-elect Barack Obama has talked about turning the White House into the Green House and making energy efficiency in federal buildings and public schools a top priority.

“Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that,” Obama said in a Dec. 6 address. “We will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy efficient … by replacing heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs.”

Light bulbs? I had this picture in my mind of Obama and Al Gore standing on ladders, fiddling with every fixture around Washington, D.C.

I mean, how much can really be done by changing light bulbs?

Turns out a lot.

Just ask Giacomo Dresseno, longtime chef-owner of Primavera Restaurant in Oakland Park. Facing an economic downturn in a business with a slim profit margin, Dresseno decided to do something when his FPL bills climbed to nearly $3,000 a month last year.

He went green, switching hundreds of incandescent bulbs to the latest in Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs. He also got rid of some inefficient refrigerators.

The bottom line: His latest electric bill was $1,400, a 50 percent drop from its peak.

“It’s saving me $15,000 a year,” Dresseno said as he showed me the new lighting around the restaurant.

That’s a lotta pasta.

“It seems like a lot of work, but it’s not,” Dresseno said. “The technology is there, and it’s not that expensive.”

The only drawback: CFL bulbs contain a small amount of mercury, so if the bulb breaks it can be a hazard and a hassle.

Dresseno said he has spent less than a thousand dollars on the upgrades, an investment that paid for itself in less than a month. He showed me the new bulbs in the kitchen, with eight fluorescent fixtures drawing only 64 watts each, compared to 240 watts used by the old ones.

He showed off the women’s bathroom, where 45 watts’ worth of LED bulbs does the job that 480 watts of incandescent bulbs used to do.

Dresseno spoke about the ripple effects. “Feel this,” he said, as he unscrewed an LED bulb with his bare hand. It was warm to the touch, about 120 degrees, but it didn’t burn like an incandescent bulb. All those bulbs producing less heat means the air conditioning doesn’t kick on as much.

So maybe there is something to this, something simple and concrete most businesses and homes can do right now without installing expensive solar panels or building a windmill on the front lawn.

“I feel like it’s politically correct, it’s the right thing to do,” said Dresseno, originally from Lake Como, Italy. “And it puts more money in my pocket and less in FPL’s.”

Now that’s change we can believe in. Saving the planet is one thing, but getting revenge on our favorite utility by denting FPL’s bottom line should make this irresistible for South Floridians.

Originally posted 2009-04-18 09:29:31. Republished by Blog Post Promoter