Three Prestigious Award Wins Spotlight GE’s Global LED Lighting Leadership

Budapest, March 2009 - GE Consumer & Industrial’s heritage as the inventor of LEDs and its work over the last decade to invent and perfect LED systems for applications such as traffic signals, signage, architectural, outdoor and retail display lighting are paying dividends for customers today in the form of never-before-seen energy and maintenance cost savings. Three recent prestigious awards give prospective customers more reasons than ever to invest in GE-quality LED systems and solutions.

GE earned the top prize for “light sources and controls” at the Lighting Design Awards 2009 for GE’s Vio ^® High-Power White LED technology. The company also received “best in class” distinction from the LED Next Generation Luminaires ^TM Solid State Lighting Design Competition for the Immersion ^® LED Display Case Lighting and a “special recognition” from the same awarding body for the GE LED Cove Lighting System as a market-ready luminaire.

“These awards are proof points for customers, employees and all our stakeholders,” Simon Phillips, EMEA Commercial Director of GE Consumer & Industrial’s Lighting business. “This recognition from two distinct industry organizations for three different GE LED solutions tells us that our devotion to the concept of purposeful innovation—developing LED systems and components that address real customer needs—is on target and making a difference.”

GE is one of the world’s largest LED systems companies. Its expansive installed base of white LED systems in the United States includes Walmart’s refrigerated display case lighting installation, the world’s biggest white-LEDs-replacing-fluorescent lighting retrofit in a retail display setting. Globally, GE has sold over 500,000 LED refrigerated display case lights, over 5 million LED traffic signals and over 14 million linear feet of Tetra ^® LED lighting systems for use in signage and architectural applications. Over 50 percent of GE’s lighting research is devoted to LEDs (light-emitting diodes) and OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes).

“Our LED business is well established and growing sales by about 30 percent a year, notes Phillips. “Our big opportunities in the coming months and years include further development of energy-efficient LED systems for commercial, outdoor and general lighting applications.”

Details of the Awards

The Lighting Design Awards are a celebration of the industry’s best, rewarding innovations in lighting technology and providing designers the opportunity to attain the highest recognition for their skills. This year, the awards program received a record number of entries. In the Lighting Design Awards 2009, the judges deemed GE’s Vio High-Power White LED “a major advance in color stability.”


The LED Next Generation Luminaires ^TM Solid State Lighting Design Competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and the International Association of Lighting Designers, recognizes and promotes excellence in the design of energy-efficient LED commercial lighting luminaires. GE’s Immersion LED Display Case Lighting was one of only three “best in class” distinctions from the 68 entries submitted. Twenty-two entries were given “special recognition” in the market-ready category, including GE LED Cove Lighting. To qualify for the market-ready category, a product must attain at least the judges’ minimum evaluation in all performance categories and meet or exceed ENERGY STAR criteria, where applicable. The judging panel selected luminaires on the basis of color appearance, color rendering, appropriate illuminance, application efficiency, aesthetic appearance and style, serviceability and replacement.

Background on the Award-Winning GE LED Systems

Ideal for jewelers, retailers, museums and galleries, GE’s Immersion LED Display Case Lighting offers advanced thermal management and up to 80 percent energy savings versus competing halogen systems. The LEDs have a long 50,000-hour rated life to reduce the hassle and maintenance expenses of lamp replacement. The unique system offers multiple point sources of light that increase visual reflectivity and sparkle compared with fluorescent.

Rated to perform for 50,000 hours (5.7 years of continuous operation), the GE LED Cove Lighting System eases the financial and maintenance burden of continuously running architectural cove lighting in casinos, hotels, resorts and commercial retail settings, and extended operation in residential applications. At 25 times the life of halogen, the GE LED Cove Lighting System provides 280 useable lumens per foot and consumes just 6.5 watts of energy, providing significant energy savings—a 78% reduction versus a 30 watts-per-foot halogen system—and superior brightness.

The Vio ^® High-Power White LED is GE’s highest power white LED yet. It provides industry-leading light quality and stability with light outputs of up to 285 lumens. Vio combines GE’s proprietary violet chip with remote multi-phosphor technology to provide more stable color than regular blue chip/yellow phosphor LED technology with low part-to-part color variation. Vio High-Power White LEDs produce less than a 75-Kelvin color shift over a 50,000-hour rated life. This enhanced color stability allows Vio to more closely mirror halogen or incandescent light quality.

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About GE Consumer & Industrial
GE Consumer & Industrial spans the globe as an industry leader in major appliances, lighting and integrated industrial equipment, systems and services. Providing solutions for commercial, industrial and residential use in more than 100 countries, GE Consumer & Industrial uses innovative technologies and ecomaginationSM, a GE initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that help customers and consumers meet pressing environmental challenges, to deliver comfort, convenience and electrical protection and control. General Electric (NYSE: GE), imagination at work, sells products under the Monogram ^®, Profile™, GE ^®, Hotpoint ^®, SmartWater™, Reveal ^® and Energy Smart ^® consumer brands, and Entellisys ^®, Tetra ^®, Vio™ and Immersion ^® commercial brands. For more information, consumers may visit www.ge.com.

About Lumination, LLC
Lumination, LLC, a subsidiary of General Electric Company, drives innovation, energy efficiency and cost savings for customers that use LED products, systems and solutions. Fitted with robust, low–voltage, long–life LED light engines, Lumination solutions deliver world–class, GE–g rade performance. For more information, please visit www.lumination.com.

Links:
GE LED Products
LED Cove Lighting System Award
LED Display Case Lighting System Award
VIO High Power White LED Award