The 2009 Greenbuild Conference and Expo is now over. The conference ended on Friday, November 13 in Phoenix, Arizona with 28,000 attending various activities over a four-day period. Carol Browner was unable to present the closing plenary speech on Friday; another Obama Administration official, Nancy Sutley, was sent as her replacement, who is also involved in the White House climate change initiative. Due to this conference’s close proximity to Solar Power International and the more advantageous emphasis of that conference over Greenbuild, many major photovoltaic solar panel companies did not attend.

However, Suntech Power Holdings, one of the top photovoltaic solar panel manufacturers, which is based in China, had a booth in the Exhibition Hall at Greenbuild and announced after the conference that it would be building a solar panel manufacturing plant in the Phoenix area. This would be the first major one of its kind in the Valley of the Sun. Suntech will be able to capitalize on the state’s new corporate solar tax credit, which begins in January 2010. The exposure of Phoenix hosting this year’s meeting was definitely a plus, as Phoenix Mayor Gordon announced a brand-new zero-down residential solar installation program, entitled Solar Phoenix, during the opening plenary event. This program, a collaboration among the city of Phoenix, APS (Arizona Public Service), National Bank of Arizona and SolarCity, is expected to allow up to 1,000 Phoenix homeowners to adopt solar power by the end of 2010. More information about the program is available at this reference site.

Solar and light-emitting diode (LED) technology are two applications of the field of materials science and engineering that branch into green construction, since both areas offer energy cost-savings. In the case of solar energy companies, not all target the typical green building market since some are focused on utility-scale projects and plants. Moreover, solar cell building power sources operate only outdoors, whereas LED light fixtures are designed for both indoor and outdoor usage, which increases its applications for green building, and subsequently LEED rating points, even though natural day lighting is the preferred option wherever possible. However, LED or solid state lighting is an emerging technology highly oriented towards commercial and residential buildings. It is less mature than the solar industry from both an operations and commercial perspective, since LED light fixtures are still a relatively new application in comparison to solar panels for buildings. In addition, there are significantly less high-brightness LED chipmakers than solar cell providers. Thus, Greenbuild was a more advantageous event to showcase innovations in solid state lighting; as a result, three of the top LED chipmakers including Nichia, Cree and Philips exhibited at the trade show.

All three of these companies also produce light fixtures, as numerous chips are necessary for large-scale area lighting applications. In addition, numerous other LED fixture providers, whom are customers of these major chipmakers, showcased both indoor and outdoor products including: Beta Lighting, Cireon, CRS Electronics, Eclipse Lighting, General Electric, Hilux LED Solutions, Hubbell, Inovus, Insight Lighting, Kim Lighting, LED*Waves, Lunera Lighting, Renaissance, Satco, Sol, SolarPath Sun Solutions, and Sylvania, as well as several additional ones listed here. Since there are only a few major high-brightness LED chipmakers in the industry, more overall product ingenuity, design, commercial application innovation is necessary for differentiation among fixture companies, as it is more difficult to boast about inherent benefits based on chip performance.

The holy grail of the solid state lighting industry is to develop a cost-competitive screw-in replacement for the incandescent bulb. Therefore, earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced its Energy's Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prizes competition, or L Prize, which seeks an LED alternative to the common 60-watt bulb. Sixty-watt lights account for 50 percent of the domestic incandescent market; if they were replaced by LED bulbs, the U.S. could save enough electricity per year to light 17.4 million households and also keep nearly 6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the environment. Philips is the only entrant thus far and was demonstrating its prototype at the largest solid state lighting booth located in the Greenbuild Expo Hall. If Philips wins the L Prize, it will claim a cash award and federal purchasing agreements worth about $10 million. Philips' LED bulb emits the same amount of light as its incandescent equivalent but uses less than 10 watts and lasts for 25,000 hours or 25 times as long, while also being significantly more efficient than compact fluorescent light bulbs that are primarily produced in China. Recently, it was announced that this product was rated the #3 top Best Inventions of 2009 by Time magazine and has been repeatedly mentioned on CNN.

The DOE has set price guidelines for the winning L Prize: $22 (incandescent replacement) the first year the bulbs are on the market and $14 and $8, respectively, for the second and third year, including discounts to consumers. Thus, the prize is calling for a cost-competitive solution and not just a technical masterpiece, as current LED bulbs on the market are approximately 2-3 times as expensive. In addition, the DOE is promoting U.S.-based manufacturing for the award-winning selection. For example, 75 percent of the LED must be assembled in this country or packaged here, or the majority of the LED's die or chip must be manufactured domestically. Furthermore, the solid state lighting industry has received a significant boost from the Recovery Act- both from a research and development funding, and sales perspective associated with energy reduction initiatives for government buildings.

Greenbuild 2009 was definitely the place to be last week for LED lighting companies to showcase product innovations.

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