On Tuesday, September 9, the U.S. Department of Energy's Better Buildings Alliance will host a 60-minute live webinar entitled Better than CFL? Dimmable LED Downlights in Hospitality Facilities.

LEDs represent less than 1% of the installed base of U.S. downlights, which in 2012 numbered about 700 million. In hospitality facilities, past efforts to reduce lighting energy use have mainly involved switching to CFLs, which offer reduced energy consumption, higher efficacy, and much longer lifetimes than incandescent and halogen lamps but also have drawbacks. LEDs improve upon many of these drawbacks and offer an attractive combination of additional energy savings, longer lifetime, and other lighting and control benefits.

The Hilton Columbus (OH) Downtown hotel installed more than 3,700 dimmable LED downlights in the guestrooms when the facility opened in October 2012. Why did they choose LED and not CFL? Do the LEDs deliver the light levels and color quality needed? How did they make sure the dimming and controls would work properly? Are they saving energy? Did they pay more initially? Would they do it again, and what would they change? The webinar will answer these questions and many others. Bob Davis of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will review the results of a recent DOE study on the project, and lighting designer Ardra Zinkon of Tec Studio Inc. will discuss the strategy behind the design and some lessons learned.

The webinar will begin promptly 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.

For more information or to register, visit the DOE SSL website.