World’s Largest LED Chandelier Gets Installed

Meyda Tiffany, a leading manufacturer of decorative lighting, has just installed the largest LED chandelier in the world.

After nearly a year of planning, Meyda recently completed production in its manufacturing facilities in Yorkville, N.Y. (outside of Utica, N.Y.).

Designed and engineered with state-of-the-art technology and green energy efficiency for a local performing arts theater, the Meyda Chandelier illuminates with 328 LEDs made by Philips Luxeon (same LEDs used for New Year's Eve Ball-Drop in Times Square) using 1,120 total watts (equivalent of energy used for one drip coffeemaker), instead of conventional incandescent bulbs requiring 7,435 watts (energy equivalent of 17 refrigerators).

What a difference! LEDs have a lamplife of 15 years or more, unlike incandescent bulbs that need to be replaced every two years or less.

Made of steel, blown-glass and acrylic, the lighting fixture is 35 feet in diameter, 17 feet tall, and 7,000 pounds.

It is assembled in several sections of tubular steel trusses, plus a dozen sections of other steel trusses, framework and decorative embellishments -- all, which are being shipped, reassembled and installed this week.

The chandelier, hand-finished in antique gold and bronze, was designed to complement the theater's Mexican baroque Moorish theme. Each truss includes a steel arm featuring a hand-painted Green and White, Red glass-eyed serpent spiraling down.

At the tip of each arm is a bobeche (eight in all), each with a diameter of 36 inches and designed to hold seven candles, ranging up to two feet in height.

The bottom of each bobeche has been designed with a Red and Blue acrylic to coordinate with the nuances of the theater's color scheme. Sculpted steel candlesticks simulating wax drippings, feature blown-glass diffusers replicating candletip flames.

On Earth Day, Go Green

Sea Gull Lighting, a manufacturer of lighting and electrical products, is asking integrators to use Earth Day on April 22 to encourage customers to upgrade their lighting fixtures.

"Unfortunately, corporations and people who treat Earth Day as a simple annual event aren't doing enough in either their public or private lives to reduce energy use and the release of harmful greenhouse gas emissions," says Ace Rosenstein, vice president of marketing.

"In order to make a difference, we all must make a conscious effort to replace the many sources of wasted energy with the latest methods for improving energy efficiency."

Here are a two statistics that might resonate with your customers:

1. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the sale of Energy Star-qualified compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) nearly doubled last year to help Americans, saving enough energy in 2007 to avoid greenhouse gas emissions produced by the equivalent of 27 million cars!

2. If every American home replaced just one traditional incandescent lighting fixture with an Energy Star-qualified product, the country would save more than $600 million in annual energy costs and nearly enough energy to light more than three million homes for a year!