Strategies in Light: Day 1

I attended the first day of meetings at Strategies in Light and found them very informative. Below are my raw notes from the sessions:

Tuesday, Tom Princince, CEO, Digital Lumens

Customers don’t want to be first with LED or last with CFL or HID
Digital Lumens has 500+ installations in 3 years
Industrials spend $0.50 to $1.00 per sq ft annually in lighting.
Goal is to convince customers to migrate from a fixed cost of light to a service cost.
4 to 5 year paypack is a tough sell; controls and rebates can move payback to 2 years.
Using intelligence with a 175,000 sq ft warehouse and replacing MH 1000, KWh was reduced by 95% with a $75K in energy savings. (95% is a bold statement and I am not sure I buy it. Princince claimed the savings was from multilevel occupancy, daylight harvesting, scheduling and LED efficiency.)
Digital Lumens expects to be the next big lighting company

Tsutomu Schimomura, Founder and CTO of Neofocal Systems

This gentleman spoke to an audience of about 500 professionals wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Sunglasses rested on top of his head holding his bangs out of his eyes. Unfortunately, this is all I remember about his presentation.

Rich Green, Senior Vice President, Products and Technology Enlighted, Inc,

Basically the technology consists of many sensors and an RF device that speaks 15.4.
Sensors stream data to a central point. Can make predictive reports and backward reports about space utilization.
Because they are powered by the light themselves, there are no wires and no need for separate power. Installation is nominal.
Each sensor is placed approx. 100 square feet apart.. One plugged into every fixture, even existing fluorescent.
No site survey required. Goal is NOT to see how few sensors you can use as with traditional product.
Don’t really need a server because the sensors are adaptive and work on their own.
Sensors measure energy, temperature, and occupancy
Cist is about 1/3 the cost of competition when site surveys and commissioning are included
Simple and reliable. If one sensor stops, you only lose 100 sq ft.
Only 6 skus in the company.
61% sav in warehouse, 71% savings in work center in Oakland;
They know who is where and when which is good for security.
Direct sales force in global 500. Moving to reps and distributors as product matures.
Getting employees engaged is helpful. Saved 40% initially in 35,000 sq ft office, and an additional 30% savings when the employees were engaged.

Vrinda Bhandarkar, Director of Research, LED Lighting, Strategies in Light

LED Market Drivers:

Price decline due to large overcapacity in chip manufacturing in China.
- Slow TV growth helped cause overcapacity.
Tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster—strong demand driver
Need for energy conversation
- Global warming
- High marginal cost of energy generation
- Financial crises and ensuing financial stimuli
- Growth of emerging economies

Replacement lamps grew fast in Japan after Tsunami.

Japan dominated market for replacement lamps.
- 50% of downlights in Japan are LED

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