By HDK / Published on Wed, 2009-09-09 06:41
Over the last few years a lot of test and full scale intelligent street lighting installations have been installed both in Oslo as well as other municipalities. The experience gained and the developed skill within the field has opened the way to a rapid increase of the market. The technical challenges are not all solved, but the systems can demonstrate high quality performance although there have been some challenges to overcome.
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Appliances & Lighting
By HDK / Published on Tue, 2009-06-09 11:32
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Wed, 2009-02-25 11:26
On Lake Victoria in Kenya OSRAM has launched a unique project for producing light away from a permanent power supply. At a specially constructed solar station (OSRAM Energy Hub) the local people can recharge batteries for energy-saving lamps, luminaires and other electrical appliances, such as mobile phones, at low cost and without damaging the environment. Off Grid solutions are the way forward for developing and emerging countries that cannot afford to set up a permanent power supply network. The market is huge. 1.6 billion people throughout the world live without electricity.
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Wed, 2009-01-28 19:50
Inês M. Lima de Azevedo, Climate Decision Making Center, Engineering and Public Policy Department, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Fri, 2009-01-09 10:00
Year: 2006
Policy Status: In force
During 2006, the South African national utility
Eskom distributed more than
7 million CFLs to replace incandescent bulbs. Generator of
95% of South Africa's electricity, Eskom initially procured 300,000 CFLs for free distribution near Johannesburg to test the feasibility, cost-of-distribution and actual load reductions of the measure.
Encouraged by the energy savings, the utility procured a further 2.7 million CFLs for distribution to low-cost housing areas in South Africa. These areas were identified by the Network Planning Department as areas with existing or impending capacity problems, and the distribution is still being carried out by various ESCOs in the country, with the help of unemployed local residents.
To address the rolling black-outs disrupting Cape Town during 2006, Eskom is sourcing an additional 5 million CFLs for distribution in the Western Cape area. Approximately 50% will be distributed on the same basis as the 3-million project referred to above, and the remaining 50% will be offered to middle-and-high income consumers, through traditional retail outlets, but at a greatly reduced (i.e. subsidised) price. Normal retail prices at present are about USD 1.40 and the subsidised price will probably be around USD 0.80 cents.
Eskom is wholly owned by the
South African government.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Sat, 2009-01-03 10:00
Year: 2008
Policy Status: In force
On 17 June 2008 the New Zealand government launched its Efficient Lighting Strategy, aiming to reduce lighting energy consumption by 20% by 2015.
The target is to be acheived through a number of actions, including:
- supporting the uptake of efficient, affordable lighting technology
- phasing out the least efficient lighting products by setting minimum energy performance standards.
As part of the Strategy, the Government announced that it will next year ban incandescent light bulbs. These will be phased out starting at the end of 2009, to make room for more efficient and cost-effective light bulbs. The Electricity Commission is subsidising a number of these more-efficient light bulbs, making them cheaper to buy.
The first lamps to be subject to MEPS, from October 2009, will be the general lighting service (GLS) lamp (the common, pear-shaped incandescent light bulb) less than 150W.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Sun, 2008-12-21 10:00
Year: 2006
Policy Status: In force
New Zealand's Electricity Commission has agreed to support the installation of up to 3 million energy-saving CFL bulbs in New Zealand homes by end of June 2007.
Drawing the Electricity Commission Levy that consumer pay to their electricity retailer, the the Commission has set aside NZ $3 million to invest in residential energy-saving bulb campaigns throughout the country.
For the country, it is more economic to invest in energy-saving bulbs than producing electricity. According to the Electricity Commission, the energy-saving bulb programme costs New Zealanders around 1 cent per kilowatt hour, relative to the 6 - 8 cents per kilowatt hour price of producing electricity to light inefficient bulbs.
Working in partnerships with other organisations, the Commission subsidises the retail purchase price of the energy saving bulbs. Marketing of the campaign is being undertaken by the partner organisations with some funding support from the Commission.
A total of 12 energy-saving bulb promotions ran throughout New Zealand between October and December 2006. This equated to replacing around five standard bulbs with five energy-saving bulbs in every second home. This target helped to:
- save enough electricity to power up to 30,000 homes a year;
- cut New Zealand annual residential power bills by about $45 million;
- substantially reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that result from the use of electricity;
- reduce landfill, since CFLs last substantially longer than regular incandescent lamps.
The Commission estimates that installing three million energy-saving bulbs saved enough electricity to avoid emissions of 170,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
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By Bryony Samuel / Published on Tue, 2008-12-02 14:43
This new webcast, prepared by Laborelec for Leonardo ENERGY, discusses the basic principles of artificial lighting, light sources and armatures in relation to energy efficiency in lighting systems.
View webcast (14 minutes)
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By Hans De Keulenaer / Published on Tue, 2008-11-25 17:40
The workshop Contribution of Domestic Appliances to the Integration of Renewables and DER will be held on Tuesday 9th December 2008 from 14:00 to 18:00 in the Hotel Palais de la Mediterranée in Nice, France as a pre-conference workshop to the 3rd International Conference on Integration of Renewable and Distributed Energy Resources (www.conference-on-integration.com).
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Wed, 2008-10-29 10:00
Year: 2008
Policy Status: Planned
As part of a plan to
phase out incandescent lighting, the Ministry of Finance announced the first stage of the plan, to
subsidise 50 million low-energy bulbs onto the market.
Subsidies will be
indirect, with efficient bulbs sold to consumers at a
discount and companies reimbursed by the government for the shortfall. Individual shoppers will pay half of the price agreed by manufacturers and the government, while businesses will pay just 30 percent of that price. Preference will also be given to the most efficient bulbs for government procurement.
The government has already named 13 companies, including the Zhejiang Sunshine Group, to produce the first batch of light bulbs.
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By Stefan Fassbinder / Published on Fri, 2008-10-24 13:59
The Australian Government wants to ban the use of incandescent lamps. The German Minister for the Environment approves and is thinking of taking up the idea. Replacing an incandescent bulb by a compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) does indeed save around 75 % of the energy consumed. But how feasible is it to try and replace all existing incandescents by CFLs? Are today’s CFLs up to the job, or are technical improvements still required? And what about the alternatives? Are there any other light sources of equally high-efficiency as CFLs but without the disadvantages?
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Fri, 2008-10-24 09:00
Year: 2006
Policy Status: In force
In August 2005, Natural Resources Canada proposed amendments to Canadian efficiency standards for fluorescent lamp ballasts that would harmonize Canadian ballasts with the efficiency requirements of the US Energy Star Program. In addition to this harmonization objective, NRCan had proposed several efficiency upgrades in March 2005, including:
- repealing the effective date requiring all ballasts to comply with the regulations regardless of date of manufacture
- addressing the BEF for ballasts operating with energy saving lamps
- revising the cold temperature exclusion
- adding an exclusion for dimming ballasts.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Thu, 2008-10-16 09:00
Year: 2006
Policy Status: Superseded
The
EnerGuide for Existing Buildings provides
Energy Retrofit Assistance (ERA-I) funding for retrofit implementation projects, offering grants for costs related to management, materials, labour, monitoring and tracking, staff training, awareness and for other retrofit implementation projects in buildings. Measures for
efficient lighting, the building envelope,
motors, controls, heating, ventilating,
air conditioning and other energy-saving projects may be eligible for grants.
Grant beneficiaries can receive up to
$7.50 per gigajoule (1 GJ = 277.8 equivalent kilowatt hours) of annual energy savings or up to 25 percent of eligible costs to a maximum of $250,000.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Fri, 2008-09-26 09:00
Year: 2007
Policy Status: In force
On 20 February 2007, the Australian Environment Minister announced the phase-out of all yellow incandescent bulbs by 2009 to curb greenhouse gas emissions implied by inefficient bulbs' electricity requirement. The policy promoted CFLs to replace incandescent lightbulbs.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Sat, 2008-09-20 00:00
Year: 2005
Policy Status: In force
In 2005, Australian governments and the Australian lighting industry committed to a target of reducing the energy consumption of lighting by 20% by 2015.
Greenlight Australia provided a framework for reducing energy consumption from Australian lighting over the ten-year period.
Greenlight Australia covered the major lighting technologies with the exception of low pressure sodium and induction lighting. Given the size of the Australian lamp market, the plan did not consider options which relied on driving new development in lamp technology and focused instead on lamp substitution and technical development of control equipment and luminaires and improved lighting design. The plan covered lighting in the residential, commercial, industrial and public lighting sectors, and excluded vehicular, indicator and special use lighting.
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Mon, 2008-09-08 09:00
Year: 2006
Policy Status: Planned
As planned in Portugal's State Budget 2007, a tax on inefficient incandescent lightbulbs will fund the purchase of carbon emission credits for use in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme and in compliance with Portugal's emissions target under the Kyoto Protocol.
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By Stefan Fassbinder / Published on Wed, 2008-09-03 18:32
Incandescent lamps are cheap but tend to have short lifetimes. The light emitted by incandescent sources is perceived as particularly pleasant because these hot radiators generate a continuous (or full) emission spectrum. But this very fact means that they waste much of the electrical energy supplied to them. Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are actually the least compact of all the various lamps commercially available at present (Figure 1).
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By Angelo Baggini / Published on Mon, 2008-08-11 09:00
Year: 2007
Policy Status: In force
Many of the major energy-using products are globally traded goods and therefore to realise its goal of raising product standards, the UK Government has made a commitment 'to promote international cooperation on product labelling and standards':
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