Substitutions vs Specifications

Earlier this week I had a disagreement with a contractor about my specifications and fixture schedule.  The client, who had never been involved in a construction project of this type, didn’t know which one of us to believe.  It went like this:  We are coming up on the end of construction and the contractor is slightly over budget.  In order to save money he wants to start to substitute less expensive products for those that have not yet been purchased which, in this case, includes the lighting fixtures and control system.  His problem is that my specification and fixture schedule are so clear and precise (also referred to as “tight”) that he is having a hard time finding acceptable alternates.  He told that owner that my tight specification is unfair because of this, and that I’ve essentially “given” the project to certain manufacturers “regardless of price.”  I explained that a tight specification protects the integrity of the design, and thus protects the owner, by guaranteeing that the expected design is the one that is installed.   Who is a client to believe?  Let’s go through this.

As a lighting designer I have one source of income – my fee.  I don’t get a royalty or commission from manufacturers that I specify*, I don’t sell fixtures to the project, and I don’t set pricing for fixtures.  As a result, my only incentive to specify one manufacturer over another is appropriateness for the project.  I talk to the owner about their needs and desires, budget, and timeline. I evaluate fixtures based on performance, options, accessories, quality, and price.  I run calculations to make sure that the appropriate amount of light is being delivered and that the lighting system’s power consumption is within code limits.  In some cases I’m contractually required to identify three equal fixtures for each type.  That’s a lot of work and I want to make sure that it isn’t lost or undermined, so I write a tight specification.

After all of that work, though, most projects don’t require the contractor to provide only those items that the designers have specified.  The rationale is that this gives contractors more flexibility in getting the best price, especially for public projects being paid for with tax dollars.  In practice, however, this is often not the case.  The contractor wasn’t present during the design process and doesn’t understand the criteria that went into selecting each fixture.  He (or she) is primarily concerned with price, not performance.  It’s common for the first round of substitutions offered by the contractor contain a large number of fixtures that are inappropriate for one reason or another.  If a substitute fixture will do the job I usually accept it, but I won’t accept a fixture just because it’s offered.  A tight specification sets the requirements for the fixtures and provides the basis for rejecting inappropriate substitutions.  Yes, this can constrain the contractor’s choice of substitutions but for a good reason.  There are huge variations in fixture performance, even when fixtures look the same.  I’ve had contractors (and architects) say that a downlight is a downlight is a downlight.  Take a look at the photometrics and it quickly becomes obvious that this just isn’t so.

From a designer’s perspective we protect the client by protecting the design, accepting substitutions that work but rejecting those that don’t.  A tight specification can limit the amount of back and forth with substitutions by setting strict criteria that substitutions must meet.  That’s part of the professional expertise we bring to the project.

*I admit I do sometimes get a nice box of chocolates during the holidays.

Some Thoughts on Climate Change

The climate related news lately has been pretty bleak.  The news includes:

  • Separate studies by NASA and the University of Washington both find that the Western Antarctic ice sheet is collapsing into the sea.  At this point the melting is unstoppable and could raise global sea levels by 4 feet.  To put this into perspective, the average elevation of Miami is 6 feet above sea level.
  • The Carbon Tracker Initiative has estimated that 60% to 80% of our coal, oil, and gas reserves are “unburnable” if we are to limit global warming to a somewhat manageable 2°C.
  • According to NOAA, CO2 levels measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii have risen by 24% in just the past 56 years.

Which naturally had me asking what I can do as a citizen and as a lighting professional.  My initial thought was, “Not nearly enough to make a difference.”  But, once I recovered my balance I realized that things aren’t as gloomy as they seem.  Yes, we still have a long way to go in order to maintain a livable planet.  This includes that fact that some industries are going to fade away, be legislated away, or be forced to adapt to new circumstances.  The economic impact of that doesn’t worry me too much for several reasons.  First, the IPCC finds that the sooner we act the easier the transition will be, and that the cost of addressing climate change would result in an average annual reduction in economic growth of a mere 0.06% for the rest of this century.  Second, those industries that become obsolete will be replaced by new industries.  Imagine the jobs that would be created if every flat roof in every city were to be outfitted with solar panels.

We also need the Republican Party to join the real world.  When 97% of the world’s climate scientists in industry, government, and research institutions agree that climate change is happening and that the cause is man-made only a fool would join with the remaining three percent.  When someone like Marco Rubio says that he’s not convinced, he doesn’t mean that he’s reviewed the research history and, because of his deep expertise in this field, finds the conclusions lacking.  He means that some of his biggest donors are companies and individuals who rely on fossil fuels for their wealth and that rather than adapt they are going to deny.  Fortunately, although only 25% of Tea Party Republicans believe that there is evidence for climate change, 84% of Democrats and 67% of all American adults do believe the scientists.

On the positive side, our profession has accomplished quite a bit. For example, the maximum lighting power density (LPD) allowed under ASHRAE 90.1for an open office was 1.9 w/sf in 1986, 1.3 w/sf in 1999, and .98 w/sf in 2010.  And, our clients are asking for more.  Here are the number of LEED certified buildings 2000 – 2012.

Source: U.S. Green Building Council
Source: U.S. Green Building Council

 

That last number is 4,605 projects in 2012, when 41% of all nonresidential buildings starts were green, as compared to 2% of all nonresidential building starts in 2005.  Better than that, Net Zero buildings are a reality, and as the design and construction industries adapt we’re going to see more of them. Other organizations are working on this, too.  For example, Architecture2030.org already has commitments from a number of U.S. cities and property owners representing about 100,000,000 square feet of real estate to dramatically reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

So designers and builders have begun, and we’re moving with increasing speed toward reducing the effect of the built environment on climate change.  But there’s more to do, including convincing those who oppose action that a planned transition is achievable, affordable, sustainable, and in the best interest of the entire planet.

Energy Code Update

Yesterday the DOE issued a Notice of Preliminary Determination that ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013 would achieve greater energy efficiency in buildings subject to the code than its predecessor, 90.1-2010. The preliminary analysis estimates national  energy savings of approximately 8.5% for commercial building energy consumption.

The evaluation of every new version of ASHRAE 90.1 is required by law.  Now that the DOE has determined the level of energy savings the analysis is available for public review.  A docket has also been established to accept public comments.  Feedback is requested by June 16, 2014.

If this determination is finalized, States would be required to certify within two years that they have reviewed the provisions of their commercial building code regarding energy efficiency and updated their codes to meet or exceed Standard 90.1-2013.  More information is available on the DOE website.

As much as I kick and scream about being strangled by tight LPDs, the recent climate related news, from the collapsing ice sheets in the Western Antarctic to atmospheric CO2 concentrations that are higher than ever recorded,  has given me a reason to embrace adoption of 90.1-2013.  I’ll have more to say on that soon.

What’s Old Is New Again

Earlier this week the New York Times had an interesting, although not very informative, article about two new lamp manufacturers and their technologies.  The first is Finally, a Massachusetts based company that is using an old technology, induction, to generate light.  Induction lamps are very similar to fluorescent lamps except that they do not have electrodes or filaments, which are a fluorescent lamp’s most common points of failure. Instead of an electric arc passing through the gas-filled tube, induction lamps use an electromagnetic field to excite the gas.  Like fluorescent lamps, mercury in the lamp produces UV light, which excites phosphors on the lamp envelope to create visible light. Induction lighting has been on the market for many years from other manufacturers.  The advantages of induction include very long life, good color rendering, no flicker, and instant start and restrike.  The drawback to the other induction lamps is that the equipment producing the electromagnetic field is bulky.  The Finally lamp manufacturer has found a way to shrink the equipment to the size of the ballast in a typical retrofit CFL lamp.  The only drawback is that it cannot dim with conventional wallbox dimmers.

The second lamp is the Vu1.  It too uses an old technology in a new way.  The Vu1 is essentially a cathode ray tube, just like old televisions and computer monitors.  It fires a stream of electrons at phosphors embedded in a glass plate, which in turn produce light.  It does not contain mercury, is instant on, has excellent color rendering, and is dimmable.  It is currently available as an R30 replacement lamp.

Since both of these lamps are designed for the retrofit market, they aren’t likely to be specified by lighting designers.  Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to seeing them in operation, and I’m excited to see some alternatives to LEDs.  It will be interesting to see where these two technologies go in the next few years.

ALEC On The Wrong Side Of History

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), with funding from fossil fuel producers and the utility industry, has turned its attention to renewable energy, and not in a good way. Their latest push is to levy a surcharge on homeowners who install solar panels and then feed electricity back into the grid when the panels generate more electricity than the home is using. The legislation has already passed in Oklahoma and Arizona. Known as net metering and required by 43 states, this practice reduces the homeowner’s utility bill and the amount of energy that the utilities have to produce. A win-win, right? Wrong! Because by reducing the homeowner’s bill it reduces the utility companies profits as outlined in a report by the Edison Electric Institute.

ALEC claims that reduced utility company income will prevent them from maintaining the electricity distribution system, and if large-scale adoption of solar takes place we as a society may indeed have to reconsider the way that we finance the maintenance of the system. However, discouraging adoption of renewable energy is not the way to go. We absolutely need more renewable sources of electricity and less reliance on fossil fuels, as made clear by several reports that have been released recently. Consider the following:

  • The latest work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that climate scientists have high confidence in:
    • Risk of severe ill-health and disrupted livelihoods for large urban populations due to inland flooding in some regions.
    • Systemic risks due to extreme weather events leading to breakdown of infrastructure networks and critical services such as electricity, water supply, and health and emergency services.
    • Risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes, particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings.
  • The Carbon Tracker Initiative has estimated that 60% to 80% of the coal, oil, and gas reserves of publicly traded companies are “unburnable” if we are to limit global warming to a somewhat manageable 2°C, as opposed to the catastrophic 9°C that would result from inaction on climate change.
  • The global concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history, as reported by NASA. According to NOAA, CO2 levels measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii have risen by 24% in just the past 56 years.

Clearly, protecting the profitability of utilities and fossil fuel companies shouldn’t be a consideration. Nor should the economic impact of addressing climate change. The IPCC finds that the cost of addressing climate change would result in an average reduction in economic growth of a mere 0.06% for the rest of this century.

Meanwhile, the cost per watt of solar modules is dropping with breathtaking speed. In 1980 the cost per watt was over $16. In 2012 it was $1, just a few cents more than the upper cost for coal and natural gas. From 2011 to 2013 the cost of installed solar systems fell by 50%. Projecting these downward curves forward it’s easy to see that in just a few years solar is likely to be less expensive than fossil fuels.

Of course, one of the biggest problems with renewables such as solar and wind is that they aren’t consistent. This means that to increase our dependence on them we need a way to store energy when it’s produced and retrieve it when it’s needed. Fortunately, brilliant (pun intended) people are working on the storage issue. The latest promising technology uses a recently discovered material, grapheme, to produce rechargeable batteries that can hold at least twice as much energy as lithium ion batteries. You can read about these advancements in The Guardian and Energy Harvesting Journal.

So it seems to me that ALEC and its backers may win another victory or two before the tide sweeps them aside because they are on the wrong side of history. First, science tells us that we as a society must make changes, including a massive conversion to renewable energy. Second, technology is making the adoption of renewable energy possible with ever increasing speed. Third, economics tells us that we as individuals will soon be able to save money by installing solar panels on our homes because we’ll be able to generate electricity cheaper than the utilities.

Lighting Up Pratt

Yesterday my students at Pratt presented custom built lighting fixtures inspired buy the work of a fashion designer.  Here are some of them.

Designed by Connie Chen Inspired by Calla Haynes
Designed by Connie Chen
Inspired by Calla Haynes

 

Designed by Devon Aerts Inspired by Jil Sander
Designed by Devon Aerts
Inspired by Jil Sander
Designed by Kelsey Birchenall Inspired by Jolka Wiens
Designed by Kelsey Birchenall
Inspired by Jolka Wiens

 

Designed by Marianne Kim Inspired by Philip Lim
Designed by Marianne Kim
Inspired by Philip Lim

 

Designed by Sonya Jeong Inspired by Choe
Designed by Sonya Jeong
Inspired by Choe

 

Designed by YG Jeong Inspired by Longchamp
Designed by YG Jeong
Inspired by Longchamp

 

DOE Presents LED Color Stability Webinar

On Tuesday, April 15, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solid-State Lighting Program will host a 60-minute live webinar entitled LED Color Stability: 10 Important Questions. The webinar will begin at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT) and will include a 45-minute presentation followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session with attendees. IES continuing education credits will be offered.

The lumen maintenance lifetime of many LED products is 25,000 hours or more, but that doesn’t mean products are guaranteed to perform the same over that time. One thing that could change is the color of the light, or chromaticity. This webinar will examine the causes of color shift, and look at existing metrics used to describe color shift/color stability in LED lighting. Are there established tolerances for color shift? What current standards apply to the measurement of color shift, and are there plans for new methods and/or standards for projecting color shift in the future? Presenters Michael Royer of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Ralph Tuttle of Cree, and Chad Stalker of Philips Lighting will answer these questions and many others.

Click here to register.

March 21st Event

Next Friday, the 21st, I’ll be speaking at the 24th Annual Symposium on Public Monuments in New York City.  The symposium is on the legacy of the 19th century architect Patrick Charles Keely.  I’ll be speaking on my relighting of his Church of the Holy Innocents on 37th Street in Manhattan.  For more information, go to www.monumentsconservancy.org.

Here’s what the church looks like today.

Church of the Holy Innocents
Church of the Holy Innocents

Let’s Not Try So That We Don’t Succeed

Two frustrating items came across my desk this morning.  The first is an attempt by two Ohio state senators (both Republicans) to pass a law (SRC25) prohibiting the use of LEED in all Ohio state buildings, including schools.  This despite the fact that Ohio already has 100+ LEED school buildings that are saving  tax payers tens of thousands of dollars on energy bills every year.  What’s the rationale for the new bill?  You can read the full text here, but essentially it claims that LEED v4 “fails to conform to recognized voluntary standard development procedures.”

Why is LEED, the largest and most successful green program in the world, being singled out?  This is really just a smokescreen for an attempt to protect certain industries and manufacturers from divulging the contents of their building materials, which is new under LEED v4.  The reason favoring disclosure is simple.  Some building materials have chemical components that seep out of the product and into the indoor environment, a process called off-gassing.  Without disclosure from manufacturers the architects and owners have no way of knowing what chemicals workers, students, patients, etc. are being exposed to.  With disclosure they can make better choices that minimize any possible effects on building occupants.  Some manufacturers have been very pro-active about reformulating their products to limit or eliminate off-gassing.  Apparently some have decided that ignorance (on the part of architects, owners, and occupants) is bliss (for the manufacturer).

The second news item concerns an amendment to a bill working its way through the U.S. Senate.  The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitive Act (ESICA), if passed, would be the first new energy efficiency related legislation passed in seven years.  The problem?  The “All-Of-The-Above Federal Building Energy Conservation Act of 2013” failed to pass last year, but is now part of ESICA.   It calls for the repeal of Section 433 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), which mandates that the federal government eliminate fossil fuel-generated energy from new and renovated federal buildings by 2030. In other words, it would repeal the government’s commitment to the 2030 Challenge for carbon reduction.   The AIAs response can be found here.  Other organizations opposing the amendment include Architecture 2030 and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Not surprisingly, the sponsors of the amendment are from states where fossil fuel production is a major industry.  It’s true that the U.S has enormous reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas that can supply our energy needs for many years to come.  It’s also true that we’re changing the global environment by burning these fuels.  We can decide to wait until our reserves are used up before we entertain making a change.  However, in doing so, we are also deciding to allow Germany, Japan, South Korea, China etc. to develop the technologies that will power the future.  Alternatively, we can decide to lead the energy revolution by developing the technologies, and the markets for them, here at home.  Contact your senator and let him/her know which path you’d prefer to take.