Here’s a little peek into the state of the industry in Australia. Rob touches on Chinese products, bringing along the next generation of lighting professionals, and the misconceptions around human-centric lighting. Oh, and you’re going to want to take up paragliding by the end of the podcast. Originally from the UK, Rob moved to Australia in 2005. He set up HI Lighting with his business partner in 2010, which rapidly grew to be the largest commercial lighting supplier in South Australia.

Connect with Rob: Website – www.hilightingsa.com.au
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-hill-a233a713/
Instagram: @h.i.lightingsa
Linkedin: @h-i-lighting-sa

Connect with Henrik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henrik-clausen-3927372/
www.fagerhult.com

Sponsor: Keystone www.keystonetech.com

John Bullock, guest co-host on this episode, asks the question, “How do we shift the argument so that we can start to talk about the reality of what we experience rather than the propaganda of what people tell us is a problem.” And from there, Michael, John and Nona discuss the history of street lighting, the unproven link between light and safety and the spiritual notion of light equaling safety. Perhaps, as Nona says, we need to reveal the “invisible infrastructures.”

Nona Schulte-Römer is currently working and teaching as senior researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin in a social scientific project on the public understanding of 5G and light exposure in urban contexts. She has a background in humanities, sociology and journalism. In her previous research she has focused on public lighting, light pollution, sustainable chemistry and aquatic micropollutants. Her focus is thereby how these phenomena become issues of public concern or remain ‘invisible’ infrastructures. 

Mentions in the podcast:

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, “Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century”, University of California Press

Our citizen science project website:

https://nachtlicht-buehne.de/startseite/nightlights/

Our citizen science app can be found and tested or used here: https://lichter.nachtlicht-buehne.de/

Is Power over Ethernet the future for network controls? Wendell Strong tells Michael and Greg about the challenge of integrating PoE into the world of AC powered lighting. But PoE networking is perfect for lighting for health and wellbeing. Wendell is a 40 year veteran of the Commercial Lighting Industry and serves as the GENISYS PoE Lighting Manager for Innovative Lighting, a LED lighting manufacturer of 30 years based in Iowa. He has served as President and Executive Board member of the National Association of Independent Lighting Distributors (NAILD) and was instrumental in creating two Lighting Specialist Training Programs used by both Manufacturers and Distributors alike. 

Are the good old days of rebates over? Is the move to LED efficiency reaching its conclusion? Peter Brown is back to discuss this and more with Michael and Greg. With over thirty years in the lighting industry, Mr. Brown has sales and marketing experience in distribution, manufacturing, auditing, design and installation; both in the C&I and public sector markets. 

Derek and Devin give us a unique inside look at the life of a small lighting manufacturer.  They give us their perspectives on the DLC and accreditation agencies in general, and what a pain in the *ss it is to get products certified.

Louvers International was founded in 1986 with reliability and good design in mind. What started out as a small business has evolved into a team that works together to build connections between their customers and the lighting and plastics industries.

Michael and Michael - or “Marlin” as he likes to be referred to - delve into the practical and spiritual aspects of restoring darkness. Practical, as in not running someone over because you can’t see them from the glare of car and street lights, and spiritual, as in seeing the stars and the Milky Way allowing us to connect with the universe and our ancestors.

Michael Marlin (aka Marlin) has been actively involved in Dark Sky advocacy for 35 years, initially as a theatrical director/producer of an international touring show that raised awareness of the loss of darkness due to light pollution, (LUMA: Art in Darkness)  and today as a dark sky ambassador for the International Astronomical Union and International Dark-Sky Association. Marlin is the author of “Astrotourism: Star Gazers, Eclipse Chasers, and the Dark Sky Movement” the first book on the topic of the new emerging market of ‘Star Tourism’.

Not your typical Get A Grip On Lighting podcast, but you’re going to want to hear this one anyway. You can sell light bulbs over the counter, but if you want those big retrofit contracts, sometimes your customer needs financing. That’s where Ross comes in. With an LED upgrade, he can arrange it so that your customer saves money and you make money. Everybody wins. Ross is excited and enthusiastic to play a role in transforming the energy efficiency industry, which has been frustrated with "lack of budget" issues, long sales cycles, and low close rates due to the upfront project cost. His expertise in commercial financing along with his deep understanding of the energy efficiency and renewable energy industries provides a "high-value low-brain damage" funding program to remove the upfront cost, and deliver immediate cash-flow positive results for the customer! 

Jennifer Amann is a senior fellow at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy.  How does the work of the ACEEE impact lighting distributors?  It means a big push on LED.  That leads to energy efficiency and, a big part of the ACEEE’s mandate, getting mercury out of lighting products and keeping it out of the environment.  And removing mercury containing products from the environment means you sell more LED’s.

At the ACEEE, Jennifer develops and supports strategic directions for the organization’s efforts to improve efficiency in homes and commercial buildings. Since joining ACEEE in 1997, she has written and presented extensively on buildings and equipment efficiency technologies, policies, and programs.

In this special episode of Get A Grip On Lighting Conversation Series, Webster and Ron discuss this article https://inside.lighting/news/22-04/lighting-controls-become-bricks-smart-home-company-disappears

which describes an incident in which customers were left high and dry when the smart home company disconnected the cloud servers and left millions of smart home setups broken.  Can something be done to prevent this in the future?

Here on Restoring Darkness, we’ve talked about the impact of light pollution, how to restore darkness, and now, in this episode, Michael discusses, with Dr. Stone, the ethical aspects of restoring darkness and maintaining lights at night.

Dr. Taylor Stone is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Science and Ethics, University of Bonn. He studied architecture and worked in the environmental non-profit sector before completing a PhD in Ethics of Technology at Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on the ethics of urban lighting, and what it means to value – and ultimately design for – darkness. Taylor’s writing has appeared in a variety of academic journals, and in 2019 he received a Recognition Award for Research from the Professional Lighting Design Convention (PLD-C).