California is leading the way, not only as an economic powerhouse, but for energy regulations as well. In our Discussion with MJ Paul at Omega Pacific we got into the end of rebates, how to get out of electrical supply by focusing on lighting distribution, and keeping the start-up mentality 30 years into a company’s life cycle. As we continued our chat we got into the particulars of working the bay area, the regional nature of the business, and building strong customer relationships in the digit...
Dec 09, 2019•38 min
The fact of the matter is that controls aren’t guaranteed to generate savings. There’s a number of reasons for this; the space is always occupied, the control mechanisms themselves draw too much energy, or people who might flip a switch end up letting the sensor do the work and lamps run for 5 minutes longer than they have to. But that’s okay (mostly), because Lighting Wizard, Stan Walerczyk is back to talk about the non-energy benefits to a set of controls. He along with Greg and Michael go thr...
Dec 02, 2019•46 min
Brian Stern and Webb Lawrence of the LED Supply Co in Denver came to lighting after working in IT and radio respectively. They jumped in by dealing in to the local cannabis market, before abandoning that space outright for the opportunities of ‘regular’ retrofit business, and also not having to compete with HPS’s stranglehold on indoor horticulture. In this episode, they chat about creating value adds as a distributor, partnering with interior designers and the surprisingly varied applications t...
Nov 25, 2019•35 min
Eric Myklebust believes each building can be its own power grid. When asked why that might be necessary he will not cop to believing in the end of days that is the climate crisis. Talking about the facts of the matter, as opposed to projections; we can say for sure that less pollution is a good thing, solar panels can be very useful to that end. But the hurdle to green energy isn’t storage, it’s inverting the power to make it work with an AC grid. Which brings us back to the first thing Eric wan...
Nov 18, 2019•53 min
Neil Mattson, PhD, is a professor at Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science, a greenhouse extension specialist, and this episode’s guest. Joining Michael and Greg from the floor of HortiCann in Denver, we start our chat with the cyclical attempts LEDs have made at breaking into this field, and how maybe this is the time they dethrone high-pressure sodium lamps, even it means rebuilding a bunch of heating systems to do it. As a researcher we ask him what the real metrics are for horticultu...
Nov 11, 2019•33 min
This week’s guest thinks what we do is too simple, nevermind the two years and a hundred podcast episodes, Mark Marmer does his work in design and build contracts for electric vehicle charging stations for condominiums. Our chat with him talks about the paradigm shift that electric cars represent, especially as driving becomes automated, but also working a contract start to finish over bidding to a specification, Toronto real-estate and the value add a charging station represents, as well as how...
Nov 04, 2019•43 min
Jessica Collier of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is fresh off her award-winning thesis and right onto the Get a Grip on Lighting Podcast to share her work in color preference under electric light. She’s building up a library of descriptive tags based on the IES’ TM30 specification, so that vendors and consumers won’t be left in the dark when it comes to all the metrics on the side of a box. We’ve done enough to encourage LED adoption with savings, now it’s time to make lamps that fee...
Oct 28, 2019•39 min
On the floor of Nalmco’s Convention in Minneapolis we met up with two of its directors, Bill Sgro and Scott Mendelsohn, to talk about the generational aspect of our industry and the value of networking at conventions like these. We also get into the incentive bubble, the future of what we’ll be making and selling as IoT adoption reaches a tipping point, current challenges and foreseeable problems. The episode closes out with some commiserations on the lack of leadership and standardization in li...
Oct 21, 2019•48 min
Stan Walerczyk has done everything in the lighting business, but today he’s here to talk about the color blue. Specifically, he wants to talk about the 480 nanometer wavelength and how it figures into spectrally-enhanced, blue-enriched lighting for human performance. As a member of the Human-Centric Lighting Society he spends most of him trying to research how high kelvin temperatures can be used to help people that operate at night. Mike and Greg prod him about how inconclusive the research see...
Oct 14, 2019•43 min
The Nefouses of A-M Electric represent 45 years and 3 generations in the business. Michael and Greg met up with The Louisville Light Man and the Godfather of NAILD in their shop to talk about the pace of the LED Invasion, the value of distribution, peaceful transitions of power, and the need to reinvent your business regularly. As they get into the story of A-M Electric, they bring up project pitches as a storytelling, tricky dealings with vendors, the nature of the Kentucky marketplace. The pai...
Oct 07, 2019•56 min
Satco has been moving in a number of directions lately, pressing beyond lamps into bulbs and electronics. Another move is sending VP of Sales, Alan Karen, to Toronto to join Michael in-studio for this episode all about the necessary moves the best lighting manufacturers are taking. We also chat about busting through the perceived tiers within the industry, finding seams, the changes in the manufacturer to distributor relationship, what goes on a cut-sheet these days, and feeling old school for k...
Sep 30, 2019•35 min
Our guest on this episode, Brilled Lighting’s Joseph Cullumber, got into manufacturing backwards. He ran an automation company and got frustrated with finding existing fixtures that met his needs, so he bought a factory to make what he wanted. In this conversation, he, Michael and Greg talk about overseas ownership and management, what you would call a dealer versus a distributor, standing out in the current field and transparency issues that plague the industry.
Sep 23, 2019•27 min
We have reached 100 regular episodes of this little series. Thanks to everyone that helped along the way; especially to you for listening, watching, commenting, and sharing all this time. This episode we’re throwing ourselves a little party in the form of a roundtable discussion with some like-minded scrubs from across the lighting industry. Our chat gets into the future of our field, the real and perceived scope of led-ification in the built environment, our mixed feelings on rebates (and their...
Sep 16, 2019•36 min
Orro is not an occupancy sensor, it’s a presence sensor. Colin Billings left his previous work in the new media industry in favor of founding Orro after a series of frustrations with connected lighting at home. An Orro switch uses algorithmic learning to adjust lighting at home, slowly accumulating data and adjusting rules the way a human might commission passive controls without having to be connected to the internet. There is a boom and bust cycle in selling controls, but maybe this cycle ends...
Sep 09, 2019•52 min
Simon Slupik, co-founder and CTO of Silvair, wants us all to live in the future with the power of low-energy Bluetooth. However, 90 percent of lighting controls are still analogue - switches and dials - this episode starts with a discussion as to why that is still the case. What follows is an informative nuts and bolts discussion of Bluetooth mesh technology, fixture firmware, planning, commissioning, platforms, and how Silvair’s way might be the best way forward.
Sep 03, 2019•53 min
Have we filled our workplaces with photonic deathray diodes? Have we turned our homes into caves? Maybe a little. Scott Zimmerman is an engineer who partners with health researchers and other scientists to model the effects near-infrared light not just on the eye, but skin, blood vessels and the brain and he’s concerned about how the observed good effects NIR are being set aside as we convert the built environment to LED lighting with IR films over the windows. We may be trading efficiency for o...
Aug 26, 2019•47 min
Exciting times at this year’s IES Annual Conference in Louisville. Michael and Greg met a lot of people, learned the power of the IES’ volunteer team, learned a lot, and did a lot of live streaming, and the material was too good to not make sure it was all available in one place for you.
Aug 19, 2019•13 min
Doctor John Davenport returns to the podcast, and while his work on eliminating flicker has succeeded beyond our current capacity to measure, there are other facets of human health he’s trying to improve upon, namely safety lighting. Retrofits on tubes often leave the original battery-powered bug-eye lamps in place, and while those do have LED equivalents, John had a better idea that works in more places - a tube with it's own sensors and it's own built-in batteries. Michael and Greg take this a...
Aug 12, 2019•37 min
The lighting industry is going through drastic changes, but they are predictable changes. In today's episode we talked with Peter Brown about where the lighting industry is at and what’s most likely coming in the future. Time to go back to the future.
Aug 05, 2019•39 min
Founder of The Startup Within, Steve Epner helps companies ignite their entrepreneurial spirit. In addition to working with distributors from a variety of industries (including lighting) he also teaches Corporate Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University. Whether you consider yourself an entrepreneur or not we all have the spirit within us.
Jul 29, 2019•30 min
Randy Breske is a “retired” lighting industry veteran and is now spending his time as an ambassador for NALMCO (the interNational Association of Lighting Management). We had the pleasure of talking with Randy at the NAILD convention and discussed the lighting industry from the contractor’s point of view. It can be argued that the contractor’s role is the most important one in the LED lighting upgrade craze so pay attention and take notes.
Jul 22, 2019•28 min
With all of the discussion and focus on the health effects on lighting, Ute Besenecker, Technical Manager of the DLC, finally summed up the proper way to define them. The current health benefits of lighting are more like supplements than medication. Their effects cannot be prescribed, but lighting can effect people's health.
Jul 15, 2019•30 min
There is nothing better than talking to someone who does what you do on a daily basis and sharing ideas. Steve Robinson of Wattsaver Lighting Products has been a constant presence in the lighting distribution channel for over 30 years. Someone both hosts of the show have looked up to, listened to and learned from over the last decade at NAILD conventions, Steve is a true lighting badass.
Jul 08, 2019•34 min
We use the word “save” way too much in the lighting industry and should consider the word waste instead. Mark Jewell is on another level when it comes to proposing an energy saving project. As an author, trainer and practitioner Mark has a way of getting to the point that matters and there is no better way to sell.
Jul 01, 2019•47 min
Futurist, author, and lecturer David Passig met up with Michael and Greg at the second Global LiFi Congress, June 2019, to follow up on his talk; The Prospect of the Future on LiFi Technology. Artificial intelligence will exceed a person in 2040, and will exceed the humanity as a collective by 2060 and the future depends on us being able to integrate information into the human experience and understanding. They also discuss transhumanism, paradigm shifts, the nature of consciousness, the singula...
Jun 26, 2019•43 min
Anytime you have someone from the IES on the show you can be assured that you will learn something valuable about the industry from the top. As The Lighting Authority, the IES is committed to bettering the lighting industry by ensuring that quality lighting is implemented in the field. Alex Baker, Manager of Government Affairs and Public Policy for the IES, met with us at the DLC convention to talk about what’s new at the IES.
Jun 24, 2019•34 min
Dr. Maïté Brandt-Pearce of the University of Virginia met with Michael and Greg at the second Global LiFi Congress, June 2019, to really get into the nuts and bolts of LiFi. What followed was a rapid Q and A session about fixtures, latency, dimming, how she sees the near-future niche market rapidly reaching mass adoption, and the visceral satisfaction of actually seeing a data connection - LiFi lamps add more to a room than dial-up noise did.
Jun 21, 2019•30 sec
Harald Haas coined the phrase “LiFi” in 2011, and now he’s telling us it’s ready to enter version 2.0. He joins the Get a Grip on Lighting Podcast from the floor of the second Global LiFi Congress, June 2019, to catch us up on the history and development of light-based data transmission, its current applications in the fields of autonomous automobiles, privacy and security, as well as defense. LiFi represents a paradigm shift for the lighting industry comparable to the one photography underwent ...
Jun 19, 2019•17 min
Hubbell runs an education facility bigger than Greg’s warehouse, for one reason: training is more important than ever in the lighting industry. Clayton Smith their director of business development sat down with Michael and Greg at LightFair International 2019 to share his thoughts on training and education in the lighting industry today. By building a dedicated facility they can exploit the value of an in-person learning experience, webinars inevitably get shuffled to another tab while ‘real wor...
Jun 17, 2019•19 min
Brian Vaughn and Tim Miller of Current by GE joined us from the floor at Lightfair to convince Michael and Greg that the phrase “futureproof” might be a useful term when discussing connected lighting. Though, even they admit that “upgradeable” might be the better word for what they’re working on; equipment that works with multiple types of connectivity as well as new fixtures that have modular components that will become the form factors for the next generation of smart home technology. Addition...
Jun 09, 2019•30 sec
