| American River Ventures has made two investments into HID Laboratories Inc., a Menlo Park company that has patents for a new generation of lighting. High intensity discharge lamps are used in myriad applications where a large area needs to be illuminated. They are used to light up outdoor sports fields, car lots, warehouses, big-box stores and arenas. “These devices are everywhere,” said Barbara Grant, managing director of American River Ventures in Roseville. The technology HID Laboratories is developing allows lights to run more efficiently and be managed remotely by computer to save significant amounts of electricity. American River won’t disclose the amount of its investment, and a spokesman from HID Laboratories said the company is in stealth mode. The existing lights used in warehouses are based on technology from the 1930s. They are directly controlled by an analog switch, typically the light switch on a wall. HID Laboratories’ lights are digital and can be controlled in a computer network or even an Internet protocol address, which means they could be controlled by computers or wireless sensor networks. The fast rise in fuel prices in the past two years has created much interest in technologies that can wring out efficiencies, said Peter Bernardoni, managing director of Wavepoint Ventures in El Dorado Hills. “It is an amazing thing how many lighting plays there are” in venture capital investing, said Eric Koester, an attorney who specializes in alternative energy investment with the Seattle office of Heller Ehrman LLP. A lot of investments in green technology and energy are long-term investments, while lighting is immediate, he said. “You can go in, put in a new lighting system and see benefits today,” Koester said. “You can have that savings in electricity and money right now.” The HID Laboratories technology isn’t in the lamps. Rather, it is in the ballasts that power the lights. The ballast in a light system is equipment used to start and control the operating voltage of electrical gas discharge lights. Ballasts are used in fluorescent, neon and high-intensity discharge lamps. The digital technology HID Labs has developed allows lamps to light immediately, which isn’t the case with many ballast applications. Its technology also allows HID lamps to be dimmed, which isn’t currently available. A lot of homes and small offices can use fluorescent lights at a tremendous savings in electricity use, but there are still some areas where HID lamps are preferable. In outdoor applications, HID is superior because they are not temperature-sensitive and they put out more light. They also put out a purer light, which allows them to be installed on an athletic field hundreds of yards from play and still light up the action. The same holds true for warehouse applications. Fluorescent light is dispersed and diffused by distance. And it fails in outdoor applications because it is sensitive to moisture and temperature changes, whereas HID lighting can stand up to summer heat, winter snow and driving rain. The HID Laboratories ballasts can be used with existing lighting systems, so all that is changed is the ballast. The lamp, the fixture and the hood can all be retained, Grant said. “Think of a warehouse or even a store: The only time you need light in some rows is when the forklift comes down that row,” Grant said. With the existing technology, lighting is too slow to only follow the forklift, for example. But with HID Laboratories’ technology, lighting is instant, so the only areas illuminated in a 100,000-square-foot warehouse can be where there is a forklift or people working. | 
