anyone heard of Borealis Lighting??

hi gang,

I'm looking for info on the quality of the products offered by Borealis Lighting;
www.borealislighting.com

A friend works for a large city, and there is talk of buying a lot of LED bulbs from this company. The website doesn't provide much info, but the lights don't appear to do a decent job of heatsinking. To me, this says that they will die an early death. My friend says that Borealis Lighting has some clever fix for the need to have much of a heatsink.

If anyone has info on whether these really are a breakthrough in technology, or if they are indeed junk, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

thanks,
Steve K.
(and if this really ought to be in a different forum, I trust the moderator will relocate it..)

I think that the problem with any gov't purchase is that those in purchasing fall for whatever sales pitch the seller is promising.

The gov't entity is better off finding the 'manufacturer' and buying directly while skipping the multiple middle men.

The website doesn't have pricing.

I haven't seen too many LED projects that were 'mature' enough for unlimited wasteful gov't spending.

I recommend that you tell 'your friend' to mind his business. Don't provide advice. Don't get dragged into the LED boondoggle. Let the bureaucrats do what they want. You won't be able to change it if you tried.

My recommendation for any large purchase for any lighting tech is a slow phase in. If the LEDs work well, then continue with their purchase. If they don't, use up the inventory and stick with whatever they were using or want to use. Please make sure you mention LVD or Induction bulbs, lowered powered equivalent bulbs, CFLs......

I mostly agree with deadrx7conv. Unfortunately, that business does not seem to be related at all to the renowned Borealis.com company.

Where's the leds' heat going? What's so special about supposedly buying polycarbonate from Bayer? Why would anyone conclude that a lower power bill meant equal or better street lighting quality? Where are light distribution graphs like this competitor's: http://www.led-street-light.info/auled_datasheet.pdf?

Why doesn't Osram-Sylvania seem to be using the same designs as PolyBrite in multiwatt retrofit bulbs now? What happened to the supposed cooperation after Lightfair 2007? What do http://www.blankrome.com/index.cfm?contentID=43&itemID=242 or
http://dockets.justia.com/search?q=Polybrite+International,+Inc. tell us about the business?

The company's regional prominence and some local "pilot" installation "might" be related to being part of the late-age business efforts of the recently deceased telcoms entrepreneur, Jack Goeken.

If your friend is still privately interested in following public lighting installations technology, you might point him to sites like these:
http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/resources/newsroom/pr_story.asp?id=192
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/consortium.html

I just did a quick peek at their sales materials and noticed that some state "Designed to meet UL, CE, RoHS and EnergyStar requirements." I'm kind of curious whether or not they actually have proper certification for all of their products.

In another part of the website they only claim "UL listed components". My gut feel is they do NOT have UL listing which will be a BIG PROBLEM if the insurance company finds out.

Have your friend ask them to provide the UL LISTING NUMBER, then verify on the UL website that it is real.

The actual listing may be done by a different lab such as CSA, ETL, MET etc. but verify from the the testing lab the product has gotten the certification. Actually if they have the listing it should have the UL/CSA/ETL/MET logo printed on the bulb with the listing number underneath or beside it. You will see that on the base of every CFL you buy.

Steve K said:

My friend says that Borealis Lighting has some clever fix for the need to have much of a heatsink.

Click to expand...

Only four possible solutions in this situation:

1.) Produce short life units, hope consumer won't notice. (Popular with Chinese manufacturers)

2.) Underdrive the unit until it is no longer dangerously hot when on.

3.) Add active cooling, hope fan works good.

4.) Get clever with warranty, send all tech service calls to 1-900 number in Mumbai.


Oh, and Marcturus, :welcome:

hi gang,

thanks for all of the feedback. I think my friend is getting this info second hand, and isn't involved with the purchase. I did recommend that whoever is making the purchasing decision should have an independent test facility run some tests to verify the manufacturer's claims... especially regarding the lifetime of the bulbs!

The mfgr literature says "60 lumens per watt", and also says the lifetime is 12,000 hours (I think). Both of these are about what the better CFLs can do, per the wiki page on CFLs. Perhaps the CRI is really impressive, but otherwise, it seems like CFLs would be a much better investment.

thanks,
Steve K.