Happy New Year!

Dominion Electric Supply will by closed for the New Year on Friday, December 31st and Saturday, January 1st. We will reopen on Monday, January 3rd for our regular business hours. Have a great holiday, and we'll see you next year!

Desk lamps and task lamps

We're back from our nice long weekend here at Dominion Electric Supply, and I thought I'd show you some of our new desk lamps and task lamps. These are all on display in our Chantilly showroom, so come on in to see them in person!

This arc lamp is from Elk Lighting's "Dimond" lamp collection ~ #D1428.

This is a fluorescent desk lamp from George Kovacs ~ P1001-617 ~ that is similar to an Ottlite.

Floor lamp also from George Kovacs ~ P603-1-615B.





We recently started carrying a lamp line called "Lauren" from Ralph Lauren. I've heard they recently got bought out by Visual Comfort, so it will be interesting to see how the line evolves now. This Architect Floor Lamp ~ # LRL15978PN ~ is stunning in person!

Isn't this combo of the white glass & the polished nickel body eye-catching? #LRL20116PN.

I love this updated Banker lamp, with white glass and a polished nickel body ~ LRL20146PN.

We have this pair in 2 different finishes on display. The floor lamp ~ LRL16001PN ~ we have in polished nickel. The desk version ~ LRL15934BN ~ is on display in Natural Brass.

And then last, but not least, we have this bankers lamp by Kichler, #70651.

So no matter what style you're looking for, we just might have it! We're open this week Monday through Thursday from 8:00 to 5:00. We'll be closed again this weekend, including Friday, for New Year's Eve.

Holiday closing

Dominion Electric Supply
will be closed on Friday,
December 24th and Saturday,
December 25th.
We will reopen on
Monday, December 27th
for our regular business hours.
Have a Great Holiday!

Help ASID Spread The Warmth This Winter!

Please help us make this winter a little warmer for the many homeless people in our area.

Dominion Electric Supply decided to take this cause one step further ~ our Chantilly showroom is now a donation site for ASID’s Spread the Warmth program! So please bring us your new and gently used gloves, scarves, hats, coats, and other winter apparel for the homeless. Our address is 14605 Lee Jackson Hwy., Chantilly, VA 20151.

The program runs through February and the donations are distributed to area homeless shelters and the Veterans Medical Center.

A little goes a long way ~ please help make a difference!

(Please also see my blog post of Dec. 16, 2010 for more information.)

Lutron Light Show publication

Lutron puts out this publication several times a year, and their Fall 2010 issue was chock full of info I wanted to share with our readers!

We love their "Satin Colors" dimmers, switches, and wall plates. We have take-home color samples here in the showrooms of all the colors available.

We just started stocking these new CFL / LED dimmers ~ they just arrived into our Chantilly warehouse today, as a matter of fact! I'm dying to try one at home ~ I have dimmable CFL's in my bathrooms, and I must admit, they have NO bottom range of dimming! Can't wait to get my hands on one of these!

I heard about this a couple of months ago, but forgot to mention it to you. Isn't this neat, that Lutron is now in the Smithsonian?!

And it's always good to have a reminder about how we can save energy with lighting controls. Remember that if you dim incandescent or halogen bulbs by 25%, you save 20% on electricity, plus you quadruple the life of those light bulbs!

And don't forget about occupancy/vacancy sensors, timers, scheduling programs, and controllable window shades to add to your energy savings.

One last, great tip from this Lutron booklet is to remember to dim your outdoor lights. When the sun goes down and you have a high-wattage bulb in your exterior fixtures, they can be extremely glary, and you'll no longer be able to see the beauty of those fixtures, let alone see what you're trying to light! As they say, the dimmer will allow you to achieve the perfect balance between enough light to safely illuminate the space and not too much light that the fixture itself can't be seen. Great advice!

Help ASID Spread The Warmth This Winter!

Dominion Electric Supply is a proud partner of ASID, so we wanted to publicize this great community service project they are doing this season:

Help ASID Spread The Warmth This Winter!

Please help us make this winter a little warmer for the many homeless people in our area. Through our "Spread the Warmth" program we have set up collection boxes in the following locations to accept donations of new and gently used gloves, scarves, hats, coats, and other winter apparel for the homeless:

Affinity Lab, 920 U Street NW, Washington DC ( http://www.affinitylab.com/ )

Amicus Green Building Center, 1353 U Street NW, 2nd Floor, Washington DC ( http://www.amicusgreen.com/ )

Amicus Green Building Center, 4080A Howard Avenue, Kensington, MD (in the West Howard Antiques District)

Caribou Coffee, 1400 14th Street NW, Washington DC (Logan Circle)

Rivers Edge Yoga, 300 Montgomery Street, Suite 201, Alexandria, VA

The Studio DC Yoga Center, 1710 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC (Dupont Circle)

The Studio DC Yoga Center, 2469 18th Street NW, Washington DC (Adams Morgan)

The Washington Design Center, 300 D Street SW, Washington DC

We encourage you to also set a box up at your office! We can arrange pick up from your office, or items can be dropped off at my apartment (please email me or call about this). The program runs through February and the donations are distributed to area homeless shelters and the Veterans Medical Center. Special thanks to all of the above companies/organizations for allowing us to place a box at their locations. If you’d like to volunteer, join the Community Service Committee, or would like more information on upcoming opportunities, please contact Laura DiSenso
(ASID Community Service Team Leader) at 508 612-6009 or laura.disenso@gmail.com.

A little goes a long way, please help make a difference!

Shop for Ava Daniels

I got this email from our Progress rep today and thought I should share it:

A very dear friend of mine has a 3 year old with leukemia and is up to their eyebrows in medical bills that the insurance isn’t covering. A friend at their church established this way for anyone to help them, even if you don’t know them, just be shopping on Amazon:
www.shopforava.com

You will be re-directed to Amazon’s home page. Any purchase you make (but make sure you go in by way of the shopforava link) Amazon will donate 4% of the proceeds to their medical care fund.
This doesn’t cost you any additional money. Feel free to pass along to anyone else you know who might shop online. Thanks.
Her name is Ava Daniels if you want to pray for her.
Happy Holidays
Debbie McGowan
Progress Lighting Account Manager

I'm a lymphoma survivor myself, so of course this struck a strong chord with me. Anything our readers and friends and fans can do to help will be much appreciated, I'm sure. ~Catherine




Shop for Ava Daniels

Did you know? Holiday Lights

I'm a bit slow, but just saw this cute article in Thursday's Washington Post Local Living section about the history of holiday lights. I knew the White House tree had switched to LED technology last year, but I didn't know many of the other fun facts!

1882 Three years after Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, one of his associates, Edward Johnson, employs the first string of 80 red, white and blue bulbs on a Christmas tree.



1903 General Electric introduces the first light set for public sale for $12, then the average weekly wage of a typical American worker.

1923 President Calvin Coolidge walks from the White House to the Ellipse and "lights" the National Christmas Tree, decorated for the first time with 2,500 electric bulbs.

1962 General Electric designs the National Christmas Tree for the first time. The company still designs the tree today.

1973 Because of the national energy crisis, President Nixon decides not to light the National Christmas Tree.

2009 The National Christmas Tree employs 100 percent LED technology.


National Christmas Tree by the numbers:

7,000
The total wattage consumption during the season. There will be 750 strings of white and green lights, 430 multicolored spheres and 84 white snowflakes, all LEDs. Each ornament consumes about 2 watts. The same topper, a 42-inch star, has been used four years in a row.

81,104
Number of lights.

4.3
Total combined mileage of the light strings.

$180
Daily electricity consumption for the holiday season (based on six hours per night over 30 days at about 14 cents per kilowatt hour).

500,000
The number of U.S. homes that could be powered for a year with the energy consumed by one season of holiday lights.

$13.8 million
Remember to stay safe. This is the average amount of yearly property damage from fires caused by holiday lights from 2003 to 2007.

SOURCES: National Park Foundation; Megan Robison, community relations manager for GE Appliances & Lighting; Department of Energy; December 2009 survey by HCD Research; National Fire Protection Agency
by Megan Buerger for the Washington Post

Facebook coupon and contest

Introducing our new Facebook coupon! You can now get a 15% discount off all in-stock lighting & accessories any time you want to ~ all you have to do is "Like" us on Facebook.

Here's a link to our Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/29thsux/

If you're not on Facebook but you'd still like that great coupon, you can also join our mail or email list. To do so, just send an email to marketing@dominionelectric.com. Once you sign up, they will send you a 15% off welcome coupon.

And don't forget that we're still waiting for 300 Facebook fans so we can give away our $100 gift certificate. The details are in the picture above. If you're already a fan, you can speed up the process by suggesting our page to all of your friends & family!

Sylvania's handy guide for the new bulb options

Sylvania has come out with this great guide to help you decide how to replace the incandescent light bulbs that will start getting phased out on 1/1/2012. For example, you can replace a 100-watt A19 bulb with their 72-watt halogen or a 23-watt compact fluorescent. We don't have any 100-watt LED equivalents just yet, but it won't be too much longer, I'm betting. 75-watt A19 lamps won't be phased out till 1/1/2013, and then 60-watts go on 1/1/2014, so we have some adjustment time, too. I personally am a fan of the 72-watt halogens on dimmers. First you save energy by the lower wattage, and then you save even more when you dim them (plus dimming extends the life of the bulbs, so you don't have to buy replacements nearly as often!). The quality of the halogen is very similar to incandescent, so you won't see big color shifts or anything like that. As Sylvania says, "don't wait ~ start saving today!"