Originally published on Cleantechnica By Nicholas Brown.
Cree, a manufacturer of cutting-edge LEDs has released a new LED parking lamp: The OSQ™ Area LED luminaire. This is designed and priced to replace 54 million high intensity discharge (HID) parking lights across the United States, facilitating energy savings of up to 70%.
The OSQ Area LED luminaire features a slender 3.8″ housing (partly due to the fact that light emitting diodes are as thin as credit cards). Other features include colour temperature options such as 3,000K, 4,000K, and 5,700K. The 3,000K colour temperature closely resembles the flattering, warm white glow of traditional incandescent light bulbs. 4,000K is not quite as warm, but its a neutral white, and finally, the 5,700K version is cool white (which resembles the average CFL).
Is It Worth It?
Cree says that it costs half as much as other LED luminaires on the market, enabling it to pay for itself in two years. Combined with a high efficiency of 100 lumens per watt, I would say this model performs decently.
According to the Cree press release:
The OSQ Area LED luminaire will soon be eligible for utility rebates to drive even greater affordability. Backed by Cree’s industry-leading 10-year warranty, the versatile OSQ Area LED luminaire is ideal for area and floodlight applications such as campuses, office and retail complexes, medical centers and municipalities.
Finally, its lifespan is rated at 100,000 hours, that is 50 to 100 times longer than the average incandescent light bulb! Now that is environmentally beneficial. We wouldn’t want to keep adding so many tungsten-containing incandescent light bulbs to landfills, would we?
These lamps are available to Canada and the United States.
Source: Cree.
