It’s reported that the event - solid-state lighting symposium, organized by DTE Energy, which is held on Nov. 17 at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, featured exhibitors and speakers from Michigan LED manufacturers that have completed LED street lighting projects like Ann Arbor, Royal Oak, Lansing, and Battle Creek.
As we know, LEDs, which are more energy-efficient and longer-lasting than traditional incandescents, still face significant cost barriers to wider acceptance. Wally Czarnik, principal energy manager for DTE, said costs per thousand kilo lumens for traditional bulbs range from 30 cents for incandescents to about $3.50 for compact fluorescent lights. That number jumps to $134 for solid-state lighting such as LEDs. DTE is helping the U.S. Department of Energy evaluate commercially available solid-state lighting products and has installed products from several Michigan companies in its facilities, Czarnik said.
"There's a lot more acceptance coming down the pike," said Bob Hahn, general manager of Lumecon, the municipal-lighting division of Relume Technologies that retrofitted street lamps in downtown Ann Arbor. The Oxford-based company recently outfitted a one-story parking garage at 735 Forest, a green building in Birmingham, with LED lighting. Hahn said the system should use less than half the energy and last at least five times longer than the metal halide bulbs traditionally used.
According to Dave Simon, president of Troy-based ilumisys, LEDs are presently 15 percent more efficient than fluorescent light tubes, a number that should soon jump to 40 percent. Price points, while still largely cost-prohibitive, are rapidly dropping while performance is increasing. They're going to be at this same conference in four years laughing a bit at the pricing points he think.
Ferndale-based Midwest Circuits began as a manufacturer of printed circuit boards in 1995 but has moved into developing LEDs after watching the former industry move overseas. The small firm has done street-light installations in Lansing, Royal Oak, Wyandotte and Bay City, among others, and plans to hire as many as 15 workers next year, said Jay Patel, vice president. They see the market is here in LED industry, he stressed.
Hahn pointed out one factor weighing in favor of LED manufacturers in the state, are green-building LEED standards that award points for sourcing building materials from within 500 miles to limit the need to transport them over long distances. That's why a lot of the LEED people are looking for something local.
