Around the Industry

Swift Electrical Supply honored by Philips Lighting for green marketing

Swift Electrical Supply Co., Teterboro, N.J., was recently recognized by Philips Lighting, Somerset, N.J., for achieving the highest status in its Green Leadership program. To achieve this status, Swift Electrical Supply had to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability in five areas: promotions, merchandising, training, selling and recycling.

SupplyFORCE awarded federal GSA 51V contract

SupplyFORCE, King of Prussia, Pa., has been awarded a five-year General Services Administration (GSA) 51V contract from the federal government. The Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) Schedule 51V Hardware Superstore Contract GS-21F-0117W gives supplyFORCE members opportunities to service a new market and opens the doors for building long-lasting business relationships with government buyers. The supplyFORCE contract gives federal customers the opportunity to purchase more than 30,000 products from 110 distributor members of supplyFORCE for their electrical, industrial, safety, pipe, valves and fittings, plumbing and HVAC MRO needs.

Eaton nails $568.7 million UPS contract at Utah military base

Eaton Corp., Cleveland, has been awarded a contract to provide the U.S. Air Force's Air Logistics Center (ALC), at the Hill Air Force Base, Utah, with power reliability products and complete turnkey services including engineering, project management, system integration, installation, training and onsite maintenance services. The contract could be worth as much as $568.7 million and will be divided among two suppliers over its five-year life with one single two-year option period. Eaton's Electrical Service & Systems Division's Federal Systems Business Unit will manage the work for the contract.

This contract represents the fourth such award by the U.S. Air Force to Eaton for uninterruptible power system (UPS) equipment and system integration. The previous contracts were awarded in 1988, 1996 and 2001 to Powerware Corp., which was acquired by Eaton in 2004. According to an Eaton press release, it's one of the largest UPS suppliers to the U.S. Government and has been recognized for providing the highest quality products and services to some of its most critical and classified operations in the world.

NEMA releases first LED standard

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) published its first standard for solid-state lighting. “SSL 3-2010 High-Power White LED Binning for General Illumination” covers standardized categorization areas (bins) for the colors of “white” light-emitting diodes (LEDs) used for general lighting.

The standard sets a level of expectation for color characterization to provide consistency for integrators and installers.