Heard at the conference: Exclusive. Must credit EdisonReport. GE Lighting’s Paul Morse is retiring after 36 years. RJ Darling will take his place beginning October 1.
- Ed Smalley, Chair of the IES Street and Area Lighting Committee kicked off the conference. Below are a few highlights:
- Jeff Lieberman, artist and scientist from Plebian Design gave the keynotes. Most keynotes at these shows are a bit boring. His was not. Lieberman hosts Time Warp on the Discovery Channel and presented “The (Confusing) Ways of Light.” The session was very thought provoking.
- Paul Mercier, IES President stated that 35,000 people received education from IES last year.
- A Lifetime Service Award was presented to Dennis Coker, Valmont industries.
- Nashville Mayor Karl Dean welcomed the group and spoke of Nashville being the new “it” city.
- Sean Tippet of Silver Spring spoke about networking luminaries and said theoretically, an LED could last 100 years.
- Sean Harrington of Sensity Systems stated that there are 30 billion lights globally. His goal is to turn lighting into a sensing platform, primarily because it is connected to power 24/7. The labor to install sensing devices into roadway luiminaries can be paid by the energy saved with the LED system.
- Jim Frazer, Gridaptive spoke about connected vehicle technology. Technology exists today to send 100+ message types, including speed, direction, location, rain, and ven a light sensor. Essentially each car will be a photocell beginning with 2020 models.
- Ed Ebrahimian is the Director of Bureau of Street Lighting, Dept. of Public Works, City of Los Angeles. 154,000 fixtures have been converted to LED. In 2009 the average LED fixture produced 42 lumens/watt and the city paid $432. In 2013, the lpw is up to 96 and the cost has dropped to $141. LA has over 400 different styles or roadway lights and is the second largest streetlight program in the US, with 6500 miles of lights. In addition, LA is considering adding lights to rails on bridges—eliminating poles. One of the most exciting opportunities is the new consumer App for Iphone/Android systems. Residents can stand under a defective streetlight and report the type of outage with their smartphone. They will receive a text message once the light has been repaired.