On back-to-back days – July 8 and 9 – Acuity brands announced the release of two new LED products that are capable of replacing existing, less energy efficient lighting technologies. With the introduction of the 7-inch LED Versi Lite™ flush mount luminaire from its Lithonia Lighting® division, and the 25W 2000-lm PAR38 lamp, Acuity has brought to market two indoor LED lighting products that are easy to install, provide energy saving solutions for home and commercial use and offer long-term cost savings.
Versi Lite
The dimmable flush mount Versi Lite offers a new option for lighting hallways, closets, bathrooms and work areas. Offering an 84 percent reduction in power consumption compared to a standard 60-watt incandescent flush mount, the new Versi Lite has an expected service life of 50,000 hours.
The Versi Lite also boasts some impressive specifications and abilities across numerous categories. Its sophisticated microDRIVE technology eliminates the need for an LED driver and enables the connection of up to 60 LED Versi Lite luminaires to a single 600-watt dimmer. It also offers 660 lumen production capability, a color-rendering index (CRI) of 85, a wide range of color temperatures, including 2,700K, 3,000K, 3,500K and 4,000K, and is dimmable on standard TRIAC dimmers.
Lithonia Lighting Value Stream Manager, Decorative/Residential Indoor, Michael Eckert further extolled the Versi Lite's virtues, saying, "The LED Versi Lite luminaire is designed for easy installation compared to standard remodel-type downlights… [and] mounts directly to a 4-inch junction box to simplify the installation and dramatically reduce installation time and cost."
Acculamp 25W 2000-lm PAR38 lamp
The Acculamp appears to be the first product of its kind in the marketplace to cross the 2,000-lm flux output. Such impressive output was achieved by the lamp's designers through the use of a pair of chip-on-board (COB) LEDs that essentially splits the reflecting chamber in half with a thin light engine.
Capable of replacing 150-watt halogen lamps in home or commercial lighting, the new PAR38 lamp adds to a category offering that already includes 20-watt 900-lm and 20-watt 1,200-lm LED bulbs. And while the current CRI of the 2,000-lm lamp is 80, the 2,000-lm bulbs could get better, possibly following the same progression Acuity has accomplished with previous lamps.
Speaking to the new bulb's benefits, Seth Owen, Acuity Brands Lighting vice president for LED lamps and track lighting said, "We listened to the marketplace and identified a significant demand for high-lumen-output LED lamps that would meet the requirements of demanding applications. Through the combination of a high lumen package, crisp beam angles, and low glare, the 2000-lm PAR38 is our solution."
With these new products, Acuity is continuing the rapid development that has been seen in the LED sector over the past several years. These new bulbs also represent further evidence that the famous Haitz's Law, introduced by Dr. Roland Haitz in 2000, which predicted that "every decade, the cost per lumen (unit of useful light emitted) falls by a factor of 10, the amount of light generated per LED package increases by a factor of 20, for a given wavelength (color) of light," and considered somewhat revolutionary at the time, may have been too conservative.
