North Coast Electric Company

In the past couple years we have witnessed a meteoric rise in the interest in, and availability of, LED based lighting products.  I'm convinced we are in the middle of a historic and fundamental change in the lighting business being driven by the burgeoning desire to find more energy efficient and environmentally friendly ways to live.  From the perspective of life in the supply channel, it's been an interesting couple of years to say the least!

As the fervor for LED has gained momentum we have been bombarded with a near constant stream of the latest and supposedly greatest new LED products.  This product parade has had entries from some of the largest corporations in the world as well as companies that appear to be a one-man show with a garage for a warehouse. My first litmus test for LED companies has become whether they have been in business at least as long as their warranty!

We recently had the opportunity to see the 2nd generation of LED replacement lamps from our primary lamp supplier, Sylvania. For the first time we felt like we were seeing something that, all things considered, was a legitimate candidate to replace the incandescent lamp in many applications.

Whenever we see new LED replacement lamps we put the specs in a spreadsheet to see how they stack up against other LEDs and against the now published Energy Star standards for solid state replacement lamps. The new Sylvania lamps exceed the Energy Star standards in all categories and have the best balance we've seen of light output, energy efficiency, color temperature, color rendering, beam pattern consistency, and price. 

We are putting together our marketing material and inventory so watch for these exciting new LED lamps to be available through all our locations in the very near future!