Energy Focus Launches Breakthrough Controlled Lighting Solutions Targeting Retrofit Applications

SOLON, Ohio, May 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Energy Focus, Inc. (NASDAQ: EFOI), a leader in sustainable LED lighting technologies, launches EnFocus™, its patent-pending lighting control platform that provides dimming and color tuning capabilities for existing buildings with unprecedented affordability, simplicity and security. The company will host a webinar May 27 at 1:00 PM EDT to introduce the EnFocus™ platform to current and prospective customers.

The EnFocus™ platform is launched with two immediately available product lines: EnFocus™ DM, which provides a dimmable lighting solution, and EnFocus™ DCT, which provides both a dimmable and color tunable lighting solution. EnFocus™, which consists of EnFocus™ LED tubes and switches that communicate over existing powerlines, was designed with Energy Focus’s customers in mind – schools, universities, hospitals, military and government agencies as well as other commercial enterprises where occupant health, safety and security are critical considerations. With the EnFocus™ retrofit LED lighting platform, customers can obtain control over not only the brightness, but also the color temperature of the lights without the need of adding new communication cables, replacing whole lighting fixtures, or buying and integrating products from separate lighting and controls suppliers. This makes EnFocus™ far more affordable and accessible than any other lighting control solutions in the market today, particularly for retrofit applications.

The EnFocus™ platform also comes with circadian rhythm-ready capabilities. Numerous studies have repeatedly shown that circadian rhythm—the natural biological process that regulates sleep-wake cycle throughout a day—is key to better health and productivity. EnFocus™ lighting systems, for example, can be made bluer, “cooler” and brighter in the morning to suppress melatonin production and effectively encourage the production of serotonin, dopamine and cortisol—helping to boost wakefulness and alertness, which may increase learning and work productivity. As the day progresses, the lights can be set to produce redder, “warmer” tones at lower light levels to allow melatonin production. This can lead to a calmer, more restful mood after the school or workday is completed to help facilitate better quality of sleep.

The EnFocus™ platform provides dimming and color tuning with the same high-quality features of Energy Focus’s other products: long life, energy efficiency and low flicker. In addition, because all EnFocus™ LED tubes are dimmable, the transition to EnFocus™ allows customers to meet new energy efficiency codes that require dimming. And since no additional communication cables or wireless hardware are needed, EnFocus™ is completely secure, free of cybersecurity risks.

“While energy savings and sustainability remain the core appeals of LED lighting, we are particularly excited and optimistic about the impact and prospect of human-centric lighting (HCL), which focuses on enhancing biological, emotional, health and wellbeing of people,” said James Tu, Chairman and CEO of Energy Focus. “Combined with Internet-of-Things technologies surrounding electronics, sensors, software and cloud, HCL is poised to usher LED lighting into another promising age that makes human lives more sustainable, more productive, healthier and safer.”

“EnFocus™, with our patent-pending control platform and dimmable and tunable products, represents the beginning, yet powerful and scalable foundation of our effort to make HCL accessible to all buildings, and we look forward to not only entering broader U.S. and global markets with EnFocus™ DM and EnFocus™ DCT, but also continuing to expand the product portfolio within the EnFocus™ family to further elevate the quality and sustainability of our customers’ lives,” concluded Mr. Tu.

“We believe EnFocus™ will bring unprecedented ‘triple-bottom-line’ benefits—financial, environmental and health—to millions of existing government, commercial and industrial buildings where lighting controls have been unattainable due to prohibitive costs and complexity,” said Mike Somers, VP of Business Development at Energy Focus. “We have received positive and enthusiastic feedback from our early pilot program and customers in the energy service company (ESCO), education and healthcare industries, and we are very excited to bring such breakthrough and unique products to our customers as well as to our rapidly growing national network of channel partners.”

Key features of the EnFocus™ platform include:

  • 10-stage dimming (DM) and color tuning (DCT) capabilities
  • Patent-pending phase-cut communication technologies over A/C power lines to facilitate dimming and color tuning while maintaining high power factor and low THD
  • Low flicker across the entire dimming and color tuning range
  • Utilize existing wiring of buildings to eliminate the need for pulling new wires to create a lighting control pathway; installation is as easy as replacing a wall switch and retrofitting existing fluorescent or LED tube sockets
  • Universal building compatibility with either 2-wire or 3-wire electrical systems, and with voltage range of 120V / 277V
  • Unlike lighting controls that utilize wireless communication protocols, EnFocus™ is “network safe,” free from increasingly common cybersecurity hacks and risks
  • EnFocus™ LED tubes replace existing fluorescent or LED tubes instead of replacing the entire fixture, making it the most sustainable and affordable lighting control solution versus other alternatives
  • Additional control capabilities can be added in the future through simply upgrading EnFocus™ switches without replacing the lamps

Register Now for our Interactive Webinar

Energy Focus will be hosting a webinar on Wednesday, May 27 at 1:00 PM EDT to introduce the platform. John Davenport, Chief Scientist and Mike Somers, Vice President of Business Development, will be leading the discussion about the features and benefits of the EnFocus™ lighting control platform, as well as answering questions from the audience. To access the webinar, participants are asked to register at the following link: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/2318/34146

About Energy Focus

Energy Focus is an industry-leading innovator of sustainable LED lighting technologies and solutions. As the creator of the first UL-certified “low-flicker” LED products on the U.S. market, Energy Focus products provide extensive energy and maintenance savings, and aesthetics, safety, health and sustainability benefits over conventional lighting. Our customers include U.S. and foreign navies, U.S. federal, state and local governments, healthcare and educational institutions, as well as Fortune 500 companies. Since 2007, Energy Focus has installed approximately 900,000 lighting products across U.S. Navy fleet, including TLEDs, waterline security lights, explosion-proof globes and berth lights, saving more than five million gallons of fuel and 300,000 man-hours in lighting maintenance annually. Energy Focus is headquartered in Solon, Ohio. For more information, visit our website at www.energyfocus.com

Forward Looking Statements:

Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Generally, these statements can be identified by the use of words such as “believes,” “estimates,” “anticipates,” “expects,” “seeks,” “projects,” “intends,” “plans,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “would” and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. These forward-looking statements include all matters that are not historical facts and include statements regarding our current expectations concerning and, among other things, statements regarding the timing of when we will deliver on our contract with DLA and the amounts we ultimately will receive from the contract. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. Although we base these forward-looking statements on assumptions that we believe are reasonable when made, we caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and industry developments may differ materially from statements made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this release. We believe that important factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: market conditions, our need for additional financing in the near term to continue our operations; our liquidity and refinancing demands; our ability to obtain refinancing or extend maturing debt; our ability to continue as a going concern for a reasonable period of time; our ability to implement plans to increase sales and control expenses; our reliance on a limited number of customers for a significant portion of our revenue, and our ability to maintain or grow such sales levels; our ability to increase demand in our targeted markets and to manage sales cycles that are difficult to predict and may span several quarters; the timing of large customer orders, significant expenses and fluctuations between demand and capacity as we invest in growth opportunities; our ability to compete effectively against companies with lower cost structures or greater resources, or more rapid development efforts, and new competitors in our target markets; our ability to successfully scale our network of sales representatives, agents, and distributors to match the sales reach of larger, established competitors; market acceptance of our high-quality LED lighting technologies and products; our ability to remediate our material weakness and otherwise comply with our obligations as a public company and under Nasdaq listing standards; our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel, and to do so in a timely manner; the impact of any type of legal inquiry, claim, or dispute; general economic conditions in the United States and in other markets in which we operate or secure products; our dependence on military customers and on the levels and timing of government funding available to such customers, as well as the funding resources of our other customers in the public sector and commercial markets; our reliance on a limited number of third-party suppliers, our ability to obtain critical components and finished products from such suppliers on acceptable terms, and the impact of our fluctuating demand on the stability of such suppliers; our ability to timely and efficiently transport products from our third-party suppliers to our facility by ocean marine channels; our ability to respond to new lighting technologies and market trends, and fulfill our warranty obligations with safe and reliable products; any delays we may encounter in making new products available or fulfilling customer specifications; any flaws or defects in our products or in the manner in which they are used or installed; our ability to protect our intellectual property rights and other confidential information, and manage infringement claims by others; our compliance with government contracting laws and regulations, through both direct and indirect sale channels, as well as other laws, such as those relating to the environment and health and safety; and risks inherent in international markets, such as economic and political uncertainty, changing regulatory and tax requirements and currency fluctuations, including tariffs and other potential barriers to international trade.

Media Contact:
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Investor Contact:
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Cameron Donahue
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