 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Howard Wigg code an issue for you today. This is a huge issue, as our president would say. Namely, conversion of fluorescent tubular lamps to LEDs with huge savings potential. Today, we have not been able to do this conversion in a cost-effective manner. As we will demonstrate to you, now we have a cost-effective manner. To talk about this is Trent Mortensen, director of business development for iLumens. He will be joining us via Skype from Salt Lake City. iLumens is a nationwide outfit with some big, big contracts coming down the pike, mainly for government institutions, especially schools, wherever they've got lots and lots of fluorescent lamps. Before, oh, let me do my disclaimer first. Wild Trent and iLumens will be the star of the show today. We in the state of Hawaii, St. Tech, Hawaii, does not endorse this company. There are other similar companies out there, and we recommend that you compare when considering such a conversion. Before we get started with the slides, why don't we do a very short video which demonstrates what this iLumens conversion is all about. As you can see, iLumens is, or I should say conversion to LEDs, is ideal when your existing fluorescent population is beginning to reach the end of life anyway. And just incidentally, LEDs last a whole lot longer than do fluorescence, and they should go very, very easy on the existing ballast, meaning that maintenance costs will go down also. So why don't we get started with the first slide, and we'll just talk right through them. iLumens and Trent again is the business development marketer for same. Next slide, please. Trent, can you talk through these, or do you want me to talk through all of this? Yeah, I'm happy to do so. So this first one a little bit points to our background as an original design manufacturer in the LED world. So we actually started out doing the electronics that would go into LED lamps. Our two founders are PhD electrical engineers that are power management experts. So over time we've moved from being the company that designs the electronics for the big LED manufacturers into being an OEM original equipment manufacturer ourselves. This gives a little bit of an idea of what we do is we make LEDs smart. And here are the founders of this company. And it was originally a DARPA project, as I understand. So INOSIS, the company that creates the iLumens technology, has done a lot of work with Department of Defense, DARPA, Department of Energy, and federal government grants. So the idea is to develop new technologies that don't exist that are needed in different applications. Very good. And how about the next slide? Now this is really important if you could talk us through this Trent. Yeah, so the reason why linear fluorescent replacements are such a big deal is largely because of the magnitude of the installed base. So in commercial and industrial locations, 80% of all lighting is linear fluorescent lighting. So there are about two and a half billion linear fluorescent lights in the United States and about 14 billion installed throughout the world. So the energy savings potential is enormous, but they're everywhere. And let me jump in and say I'm the energy code sky, and we have all but ensured that all new lighting will be LEDs, but the new construction accounts for only about 1% of all the building population out there. So if we were to wait for a new to replace the old, we'd have to wait 100 years. So we need to jump in here and address the existing population. Why don't we look at the next slide to help us understand that? Yeah, so we've had a lot of problems. Conversion to date has been complicated if you could talk us through that Trent. Yeah, so I think most of us are familiar with the process of upgrading they are home fixtures to LED. It's very straightforward. You unscrew the old bulb and you threw in a new LED and you're done. You're saving 90% energy over an incandescent, for example. In the linear fluorescent world, it's much more complicated because you have a piece of electronics in the fixture that changes the way that the power goes to the lamps. And so it's not as simple as it is in our homes. We have to either create technology to deal with this piece of electronics, which is called a ballast, or we have to go around it. So those are our options. And let's go to illustrate with the next slide. And here we are, Trent. Okay, so you really only have three options when you're trying to upgrade a linear fluorescent fixture to LED. The first and most expensive approach is just to simply replace the fixture. The big positive to this is you get great performance out of a new LED fixture. You can dim the fixture. You can integrate it with sensors and so on. But the downside is it is so costly in terms of materials, the labor to install it. You have to do something with that old fluorescent fixture when you're done, such as dispose or recycle it. That very few people can afford to do it, especially budget restrained groups. The second option is to modify the fixture somehow. And this can be done either by removing the fixture and wiring the fixture directly, so that the power goes directly to the lamps, or you can use a retrofit kit. You do get some pretty good performance energy-wise with these, but safety problems are introduced to the point where certain groups such as the Department of Defense does not allow ballast bypass. The retrofit kits or the ballast bypass have high labor costs associated with them as well. The third option is to use one of the many lamps that are available on the market today that work with a linear fluorescent fixture and the installed ballast. These are called plug-and-plays or UL type A lamp. The problem, though, and this is well known, is that you cannot control the brightness very easily. It's either too bright or too dim, and a very common problem is that you get different lumen output or different brightness depending on the ballast, which is a big problem in older buildings that has a variety of ballasts. And as we go to the next slide, let me point out that we recently had in Honolulu, maybe you even saw it in Salt Lake City Trent, a big fire in a big high-rise. Three people were killed. I think the damage is estimated at $100 million. So we have become very, very safety conscious when it comes to wiring. I find this all the time. It's uppermost in people's mind these days. You learn from disasters, so safety is a big deal. But on a much cheerier note, let's go to the next slide, results of poor... Oh, no, the previous, please. Yeah, results of poor upgrade options. Look at poor little LEDs way down there. Trent? Yeah, so this is interesting. So even though linear fluorescent fixtures comprise the vast majority of installed lighting, it is the lowest on the adoption curve. And the reason is for what I just explained to you, the options for doing so are poor. It's too expensive or too difficult, or the performance that you get out of it, such as not being able to dim with the standard ballast installed, means a lot of people just don't do it. Fluorescent lighting is more efficient than incandescent lighting. So some people just say, well, let's leave it as is, but it's a huge lost opportunity, and that's why you see this poor adoption. Which brings us to the next slide. So intelligent upgrade equation. Right, so this is what we call our intelligent upgrade equation. In order for an install and upgrade technology to work, you have to be able to meet different parameters. One is it has to have lower material costs than a fixture replacement. That we already know is keeping many people from doing so. The labor to install it needs to be much lower than that. It needs to be able to perform well. And when I say perform well, I mean both energy efficiency wise, but also human comfort wise. It has to be able to dim. People have different lighting preferences. Some people like it bright, some like it dim, and it has to be able to allow for that resourcefulness. It has to be able to... A lot of us are very concerned about the impact on environment. When we go to quote unquote green technologies and tearing out millions of linear fluorescent fixtures and dealing with them somehow is not very resourceful. So we want to use our existing infrastructure but get highly efficient lighting out of it. Longevity, like you mentioned earlier, Howard, there's a lot of cost in constantly replacing lamps in a linear fluorescent system. So it needs to be able to last, both last a long time and be compatible with future technologies such as new sensors, new control systems, and so on. So that's what I call our intelligent equation. Okay. We need to take a break, but let me just point out a couple of things just for clarification. A fixture is that whole box, that two by four box that you see up in the ceiling. All that metal, the whole system is a fixture. Also, the lower your wattage in a building, the lower the heat gain. Here we air-condition 12 months a year with very high energy costs. So the lower wattage of LED is very important and comfort, absolutely. But before we proceed, we will take a break and be back in one minute. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. She said, all the better to see you with my dear. What are you doing? Research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now? Oh, yeah. This is the starting line. Posh! This is over. You're dead. Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. Aloha! My name is Steven Phillip Katz. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm the host of Shrink Wrap Hawaii, where I talk to other shrinks. Did you ever want to get your head shrunk? Well, this is the best place to come to pick one. I've been doing this. We must have 60 shows with a whole bunch of shrinks that you can look at. I'm here on Tuesdays at 3 o'clock every other Tuesday. I hope you are too. Aloha! Good afternoon again, Howard Wiig. Code Green, Sink Tech, Hawaii. We are engaged in a huge, huge subject today, namely the conversion of linear fluorescent lamps to LEDs with resulting huge savings. And there's more as we discuss. It reduces the heat gain in the building and increases the comfort of the occupants. The happier your occupant, the happier everybody is. And it's Trent Mortensen, Director of Business Development for iLumens. So let's move on to the next slide where we're going to get into some detail about what this conversion involves. Take it away, Trent. Yeah, so the last slide, we talked about the intelligent equation or the things that we would need to do to make an upgrade of a linear fluorescent fixture economical and effective. So if we look at this slide, it talks about technologies that we have created over seven years of work to make that possible. So the first thing is it needs to be, and we'll go through each of these in detail, but it needs to be plug-and-play or the ability to work with the existing linear fluorescent infrastructure for mass adoption to be feasible. It needs to be able to dim without having to modify the fixture. So zero to 100% dimming so that preferences can be met and more efficiency can be realized. It needs to be able to level out the lumen output or the brightness between different ballast types. That's a technology we call constant lumens. It needs to be able to communicate with advanced controls and sensors. Huge energy savings and comfort creating opportunities with sensors. It needs to be efficient, of course, and it needs to be able to last a long time and be compatible with future technology developments. And so we can talk about those in more detail. But that's the technology that meets the intelligent equation. Okay, we can go to the next slide. And while we look at this, let me point out to anybody who has tried to sell a new technology to a building manager. His first question is going to be how much does it cost? What's the payback? That's the real bottom line. And to me, that's where plug-and-play comes in. The guys who are up on the ladder replacing these technologies do not come cheap. They're highly, highly skilled and they're paid well for their labor. So the quicker you can make the conversion the more cost-effective this is. So take it away, Trent. Yeah, so just to continue with your point there, if you talk to an experienced electrician, one that's very fast and does a good job, they'll typically tell you that a fixture replacement takes about 45 minutes. To take that old fixture out, to put a new fixture in and to mount it to the ceiling and connect the wires, it can take a good 45 minutes of time for disposal. The idea behind plug-and-play is to make it as fast and easy as possible to get that LED. And so what that means in this case is a linear LED tube that works with the existing ballast and fluorescent fixture. And so the idea here is to reduce the frequency of ballast changeouts as much as possible. And ballasts are hard to be compatible with any company that tries to do this. We'll tell you that. But our technology, for example, is about 98% compatible with instant start ballast and about 60% compatible with rapid start ballast. And so, for example, in one installation here, they were able to... it was a university that did an entire floor. They only had to change out about two ballasts out of the entire floor. The rest of the fixtures were able to use their existing ballasts and really cut down on the time that would have otherwise been required. Okay, if we do the next slide. While we're doing this, let me point out that we live on an island and we're very concerned with disposing of things. Think of all those fixtures. If you had to remove them, what do you do? We have H-power. You can't burn those fixtures, or you can, but all you got is a bunch of charred metal. It's expensive to dispose of stuff here. So let's do deep dive constant lumens. What's that all about? Okay, so this is a big issue when you're doing plug and play. The next question is, well, so I have an LED that can work with existing ballasts and fixtures, but if I'm looking at my room and now they're all different brightnesses because I have different manufacturers with different ballasts and different ballast factors, and so constant lumens technology if you look at this graph, on the left is our I-lumens technology and on the right is a competitors' technology. And this is very consistent with different makers. The swing between brightnesses can vary as much as 50%. So you could have a lamp that's half the brightness of another in the same room, same lamp. And this technology brings that within plus or minus 1.5% or a swing of 3%. And that's not important just for aesthetics, but it's important for lifetime planning so that the brighter lamps without this technology the brighter lamps would have a shorter lifetime than the dimmer lamps. And this makes the lifetimes much more consistent so that maintenance can be predictable. And as we go to the next slide, let me also point out that when you have inconsistent lighting, a lot of people under that lighting develop headaches and that is not good for the business. So what's the next slide all about here, Trent? Yeah, so this one has to do with energy savings and comfort and productivity, so dimming. This is the first time that it has ever been possible to dim an LED lamp that is powered by a standard fluorescent ballast. So there are some technologies out there that require you to buy an expensive dimming ballast which can be anywhere from $50, $60 to $100 per ballast where a standard ballast is closer to about $10. So this allows you to get high performance dimming 0 to 100% with a standard ballast. And so in a company when they're considering upgrades it can be both from the perspective of energy savings and the perspective of how valuable is more happy and more productive employees. Precisely, and as we go to the next slide let me point out that many of us prefer a rather dimly lit, not dimly lit, comfortably lit environment to high brightness. Again, the high brightness can result in headaches for some people. So what's the next slide all about? Communication. So there's a lot of great technologies that allow you to still have highly effective comfortable lighting but save a lot of energy. And so there are sensors we're all familiar with occupancy and vacancy sensors that turn the lights on or off when you leave or enter a room. And then there are daylight harvesting sensors that take reading from the outside light this builds on the previous technology that I mentioned which was dimming. For example, if you have light coming in through a window but it's not quite enough light to turn off the lights all the way but you could get away with dimming the lights that allows you to do that continuously. So that creates more energy savings over just an on off daylight harvesting scenario. So that way people don't really notice that the lights are dimming because it does it very slowly over time and it will keep the brightness or the illuminance at the work surface equal. So you might look up later in the day and realize your lights are off and you didn't realize it ever happened. You're saving a lot of energy that way. And let me point out that we are in a verge of adopting a new energy code which for many high-rises will require dimming via daylight. And let's look at the next slide please. Okay, so energy efficiency is a big deal in many places. Many state governments for example have very strict energy mandates. California included and many other states that are getting continuously stricter but they have limited budgets to achieve that every state wishes they had a bigger budget. And so this technology allows you to save a great deal of energy. 50% energy over fluorescent lighting just from going LED alone is a great deal of additional energy savings from the ability to dim. This of course improves payback time and can save a lot of cost over time. And Trent, what is the typical cost of a KWH kilowatt hour in Utah versus in Hawaii? This is a quiz to you. Oh, okay. Well in Utah it's number 41 out of 50 in energy cost so it's about 8 cents per kilowatt hour and for what I understand in Hawaii it's about 4 times that if I am correct. Yeah, at least 3.5 times that up around 28 30 cents per kilowatt hour. So efficiency very important on that cherry note. Next slide please. Okay, future proofing so it's important when you're considering a technology that it will last a long time. So technology changes quickly. We are all aware of that in the computer world and this is in the computer world. This is solid state of lighting. So it's the first time that lighting has ever been digital but as new technologies new sensors, new control systems come out it's important that it be compatible and so this technology uses very common communication platforms. Our first product for example uses a 0 to 10 volt dimming signal and that allows you to be confident that in the future new control systems will have plugins or the ability to work with that. Also newer wireless versions will be able to upgrade the firmware similar like you would do to a smartphone. And let me assure everybody that change is coming at us so fast that it is even for people like us it's hard to keep up with it. For instance as many people know the city is going to be converting street lighting to LEDs not only will we get new street lights we'll get many computers in each one of those street lights who can do dimming and a whole host of other activities to create smart cities. This is just mind boggling. So why don't we look at the next slide. So it's been interesting this technology has only been in production for about four or five months now and over the last couple of years as we've been presenting prototypes this has gotten a great deal of recognition. This has gotten an SBIR small business innovation research grant from the Department of Energy State of Utah has provided a grant for this technology as well and then several different outlets have recognized this for its innovative nature including the Utah Innovation Award for Clean Tech in 2015 for the earliest prototype that we showed them. There's definitely a need and this definitely provides a solution for that need. Let me point out that here in Hawaii we have a very large military presence and the military is intensely interested not just in saving energy but going to zero net energy for their bases and these are big big bases and they're serious about it. So as we get high high we see technologies like this military will be very very interesting. Speaking of which take it away here Trent the next slide primary users. Yeah so there's several different groups because linear fluorescent technology is using so many different places but interestingly commercial real estate is a very interested group because they're interested in both energy efficiency reducing energy bills but also keeping tenants happy. So we've been getting quite a bit of attention from that group. Rules and universities kind of grouped in with state governments also have energy mandates they're trying to meet with limited budgets so we've been getting a lot of attention from that group and you mentioned military Department of Defense is very interested particularly about the way in which linear fluorescent pictures are upgraded so just last July they updated their unified facilities criteria to reflect that. Manufacturing in warehouse of course you don't want breaking lamps in a food production plant for example and so that's an area where people are going linear LEDs quite often and in retail where you want to dim and tune the lights to make your products look attractive these are five sectors that really are hitting on this LED upgrade effort. And on that very cheery note we need to close for the day. Thank you so much Trent and I'm putting a bug in your ear zero net energy for military bases. So thank you very much for having me Howard. All the way from Utah here worked out very nicely. So for now Howard Wig, Code Green Think Tech, Hawaii see you next time.