New York City To Get LED Street Lighting. Why not Youngstown?

[jay]

Thanks for all the information.  If these LEDs are made in this country, the installation in major cities would really be a boost in employment for this high tech industry.

This idea should be taken to the appropriate committee of Youngstown City Council.

[Towntalk]

There seems to be at least two different styles of street lights to choose from, (1) a traditional style and (2) a style similar to what you see in filling stations and service plazas.

I kind of like the more traditional sytle that they show on their web site.

I would really like to see a price list.

Here's the spec sheet

http://www.cree.com/products/pdf/XLamp%20High%20Power.pdf

[irishbobcat]

Cree Inc. NASDAQ: CREE is a Durham, North Carolina based, American corporation which manufactures semiconductor materials and devices. After the recent market turmoil, CREE now commands one of the highest trading multiples (highest P/E) on the Nasdaq stock exchange. It was formed in 1987 by researchers from North Carolina State University. Materials products include silicon, silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride. Device products light-emitting diodes (LEDs) made from their materials for a variety of uses, as well as power supply chips, motor controllers and microwave radios. The wide band gap semiconductors are suitable for high voltage or high power or high temperature operation. SiC is used for high power electronics, largely due to having a very high thermal conductivity. Two directors of Cree are John Palmour and Chuck Swoboda.


Cree's high-power LEDs, XLamp 7090 XR-E Q4The company's silicon fabrication line in Sunnyvale, California is closed, and the company is now focusing on wide band-gap technologies.

The company holds the record for the most efficient White LED with a prototype that can produce 161 lumens per watt when 350mA of current is applied, more than 10 times what an incandescent (normal) light bulb can produce. [1]Cree's competitors include Nichia Corporation, Osram Opto Semiconductors, Philips Lumileds Lighting Company and Seoul Semiconductor. Cree is also facing increasing competiton from low cost Taiwanese LED manufacturers such as Epistar and Everlight.

[Towntalk]

As Jay asked, where are the LED's manufactured?

You said: "Research Triangle Park-based Cree will be providing the components for Ann Arbor's transformation", but you didn't say where the LED's were manufactured.

It sounds to me that Research Triangle Park is R&D (research and development) outfit and doesn't do actual hands on manufacturing.

Here are links that deal with both. This may answer Jay's question.

The Research Triangle Park

http://www.rtp.org/main/index.php?pid=151&sec=1

Cree Inc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cree_Inc.

Cree Inc. web Site

http://www.cree.com/

[irishbobcat]

Ann Arbor, Michigan is getting them, and they will be produced in North Carolina at Cree....can you say New Green collar Jobs???

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The latest locale to join Toronto and Raleigh in the LED City initiative is none other than the home of the Wolverines, which recently announced plans to replace about 1,400 street lights with light-emitting diodes. The city is claiming that it will be the nation's first to "convert all downtown street lights to LED technology," and it's hoping to save around $100,000 per year in doing so. Not surprisingly, Research Triangle Park-based Cree will be providing the components for Ann Arbor's transformation, and it sounds like it'll take a couple of years before the $630,000 project is actually completed. Hopefully, it won't take quite that long before the Maize and Blue can topple Ohio State again.

Dennis Spisak Mahoning Valley Greens

[jay]

Are these LED street lights made in the United States?

[ytowner]

We don't have any money?

[irishbobcat]

New York City To Get LED Street Lighting
Written by Jerry James Stone
New York City's Department of Transportation has tapped the Office for Visual Interaction for testing LED street lighting around the Big Apple. If successful, all of the city's 300,000 street lamps could one day be made up of LEDs.
Of course, LEDs are just plain awesome! Their power consumption is much lower than that of standard bulbs. Heck, even lower than that of CFLs.
But the OVI contract doesn't only replace the current high-pressure sodium lighting, but also introduces a whole new lamp pole as well. While I am a fan of LEDs, I am quite fond of the Gotham-styled lamp poles. Keep your paws off, OVI!
Okay, maybe the new poles aren't so bad. The poles will be between four to six feet, and have up to 100 LEDs each. They will have four light sources per pole, and can create different light patterns. The light footprints can be tailored for parks, street corners or mid-block.
The city will begin testing with a mere six poles, and the testing period will end by fall of 2009. But even if the city approves the highly-efficient lamps, it's likely they won't roll out 300-thousand new lamp poles all at once.

Maybe the "Light-up" Youngstown Campaign should include donations that specifically go to LED lighting for downtown....

Dennis Spisak

Mahoning Valley Green Party
Ohio Green Party

www.ohiogreens.org

www.votespisak.org/thinkgreen/