Trinity Valley School, a K-12 preparatory school in Fort Worth, Texas, faced a multi-dimensional lighting problem in its construction plans. Outdoor covered breezeways and the multi-story, vaulted ceilings of the new library and media center created quite a challenge for Dallas-area lighting designers Bouyea and Associates. They needed a lamp versatile enough to produce lighting suitable for studying, but also one that would work with the large scale of the spaces. The lamp would also have to be very low-maintenance.

Lighting designers Barbara Bouyea and Scott Oldner advised the school owners that with 35-ft-high ceilings, maintenance on standard incandescent lamps would be too costly and impractical. Danvers, Mass.-based Osram Sylvania's Commercial Engineer Sally Lee recommended Sylvania's new Icetron system. Icetron lamps use magnetic-induction technology to generate light without electrodes used in conventional fluorescent lamps. The absence of electrodes means there are no parts to wear out, which boosts average lamp life to 100,000 hours-the equivalent of 25 years of continuous operation. Conventional fluorescent products have average life ratings of up to 24,000 hours, while the incandescent lamps originally budgeted for the project are rated at less that 1,500 hours. Developed several years ago, the long-life electrodeless lamps are just now becoming widely accepted, having now proved themselves in numerous practical applications.

Once a decision was made to go with the Icetron system, Bouyea worked with a specialty manufacturer to craft fixtures for the project. The two-lamp fixtures produce 24,000 lumens (connected load of 314W). This is comparable to 400W metal-halide systems (connected load of 458W), without color shift, warm-up or hot re-strike issues, and with five times the rated lamp life.

The system is available in two configurations: a 150W lamp producing 12,000 lumens (80 lumens per watt) and a 100W lamp that produces 8,000 lumens (75 lumens per watt). Both configurations provide a color-rendering index of 80+, which is crucial in a learning environment. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.sylvania.com.

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