Detroit’s NextEnergy Puts Spotlight on Advanced Lighting Technology

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In an effort to educate more architects, engineers, building managers, and developers about energy savings, Detroit-based NextEnergy is hosting a conference next week aimed at advanced lighting products, services, and solutions.

“There’s a huge cost-value proposition with advanced lighting,” says Josh Brugeman, director of energy efficiency at NextEnergy. “If you retrofit your building with this new advanced technology, it equals a lot of energy savings for you. He says LED (light-emitting diodes) light bulbs last a lot longer (10 to 20 times) than traditional light bulbs. Beyond energy savings, there are a lot of operational and maintenance savings associated with the longer life of the bulb.

The daylong event in Warren at the Electrical Training Center on Dec. 3 also aims to “connect the dots” in the industry, which has several informational gaps and educational barriers, Brugeman says. For business owners who maintain a building, a lack of knowledge could lead to poor project quality or missed savings, he adds.

“Traditionally, we’ve known light bulbs to be a fairly standard product,” Brugeman says. “But with the recent proliferation of LEDs coming into the market, that’s changing.”

Also referred to as solid-state lighting, or SSL, within the industry, LEDs have gained traction over recent years. While effective, the technology isn’t as simple as its predecessors. Contractors, for instance, are required to know some pretty complex software programming, which has been “a game changer,” Brugeman says.

Featured keynotes will be delivered by John W. Curran, president of LED Transformations and representing the U.S. Department of Energy, and Eric Haugaard, director of product technology at CREE Inc.

The conference will be held from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Electrical Industry Training Center, 22777 E. 11 Mile Rd. in Warren. Tickets are $75. For more information or to register, visit nextenergy.org/malc.