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No doubt it will be low voltage, but will it be low energy?

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I have been a lighting geek for more years than I want to admit, but I started out more concerned with how the lighting looked than how many resources I consumed in the process. Early in my career I spent a decade teaching theatrical lighting design at a large state university, and it was not unusual for me to design a show with 300,000 watts of lighting over the stage. “Low voltage” was not even on my radar; we had about 300 120V/20-amp dimmed circuits in each of our two main theaters. That’s roughly the equivalent of 15 homes of power just for one show.

I would have blithely continued to consume extraordinary amounts of power if my time on campus had not coincided with student fervor for sustainability. Our campus charged every student a nominal fee—I think it was $6—that was then placed under the care of a student-led sustainability committee. Our campus had over 35,000 students, so the amount sitting around needing to be spent was quite substantial.

LEDs were just then hitting theaters—about a decade before they started arriving in our homes—and I was eager to try them out. I wrote a grant to retrofit our student theater with cutting-edge lighting and took my first tentative steps into the world of sustainability. As part of the grant process, I presented my finished project to a national conference of campus sustainability folks, and my eyes were opened to a much broader and much deeper understanding of the impact of our resource consumption. You could pick me out with ease as the newbie at the conference—I was the only person at the conference with a disposable bottle of water. I left it in my bag and choose dehydration over embarrassment.

Fast-forward to today and I am in…

I switched to a dimmable LED setup with warmer color temps in most rooms and added a Crystal Ceiling Light in the hallway for a pop of style without giving up efficiency. It’s surprising how much that one fixture changed the mood. LEDs have come a long way—now even decorative options like that blend looks and performance without feeling cold or harsh.