Saving Energy… One Dimmer at a Time
No matter where they’re installed or how big the system, every Lutron product saves energy by reducing electrical consumption.
Taken as a whole, Lutron light controls have reduced electrical use by 9.2 billion kWh, which reduces our customers’ electric bills by US$1 billion annually. Lutron also protects the environment by decreasing the demand for light bulbs. Since dimmers extend lamp life, customers need to buy fewer luminaires, and that reduces the energy and environmental impacts associated with manufacturing.
Light Controls for Every Market
Lutron light control products range from individual dimmers to total light management systems that control entire building complexes. Some of the larger Lutron light control systems in the US include the 52-story New York Times Building in New York; Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; and the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.
On the commercial side, light controls are essential in hotels, restaurants, retail stores, conference facilities, educational facilities, hospitals, museums, and public spaces. Lutron light control systems beautify some of the world’s most prestigious public locations: the Statue of Liberty; the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; and the Bank of China headquarters in Beijing, to name just a few…
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The Lutron Story
Lutron is a technology-centred and people-driven company. As a private corporation guided by our founder’s simple but profound Five Principles, Lutron has a long history of significant growth and smart innovations.
The Lutron story began in the late 1950s in Joel Spira’s makeshift lab in New York City…
A young physicist fascinated by the aesthetic manipulation of light, Spira commandeered the spare bedroom in the apartment he shared with his wife, Ruth, and set out to invent a solid-state device that would enable people to vary the intensity of the lights in their homes.
The very idea was radical. At that time, lighting control was a complicated and expensive affair, requiring bulky rheostats that used a lot of energy and generated a great deal of heat. Consequently, lighting controls were used primarily to dim stage lights in theatres. Most people would never think of having dimmers in their homes because they were just too difficult to install.
That all changed in 1959, when Spira emerged from his lab with a solid-state dimmer that could replace the light switch in a standard residential wallbox.
Spira’s key technical innovation had been to replace the rheostat with a thyristor. A thyristor is a type of transistor, which had been invented a few years earlier.
The substitution was effective because rheostats and thyristors worked in completely different ways. Rheostats dimmed lights by absorbing electrical energy into the rheostat, meaning that electricity was converted to heat in the rheostat rather than to light in the lamp.
By comparison, thyristors dimmed the light by interrupting the power flowing to the lamp.
The use of a thyristor shrank the size of a dimmer until it could fit into a standard wallbox. Spira’s dimmer also generated much less heat than a rheostat and used much less energy.
By 1961, when Joel and Ruth Spira incorporated Lutron Electronics, they knew that lighting control could contribute to society in multiple ways. Dimmers were both elegant and useful, and they allowed people to control their lights as never before.
Dimmers were practical too. They saved energy, and the more you used them, the more energy they saved. With energy costs already going up, the Spiras believed that the energy-saving aspects of the new invention would ensure the long-term appeal of lighting controls….They were right.
As official Lutron Partners, the team at LTSS can specify, design and install reliable, tailor-made smart lighting solutions for all kinds of commercial environments and applications.
Five Principles of Lutron
Over the years, our business has continued to grow dramatically, both domestically and internationally. We began with only 2 products in 1961, and now provide over 15,000 products to our global customers. Lutron’s success is a result of the strong principles and philosophies, which guide our growth. Our founder, Joel Spira, developed five principles:
Take care of the customer
The customer is our number one priority and the reason we exist as a company.
Take care of the company
Lutron is dedicated to growth and innovative development.
Take care of the people
Lutron provides opportunities for its employees to fully develop their abilities and make a personal contribution to the success of the company.
Innovate with high quality products
Deliver value to the customer