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Carmanah Partners with frog design to Develop New Solar-LED Area Lights
SSLDesign News Staff
July 17, 2009...Carmanah, a company based in Victoria, Canada, has signed an agreement with frog design inc. to introduce what the companies hope will be the next benchmark in solar-LED area lighting. Carmanah, a company that is known for its self-contained, solar powered aviation, marine, and street lighting is apparently looking to make more stylish and better performing new solar powered area lighting intended for streets, parking lots and pathways.
frog design, Carmanah's partner in the new product development reportedly brings a history of design work for trendsetting companies such as Apple, Disney, HP, Louis Vuitton, Logitech, Microsoft, and Sony.
Carmanah News Release,
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GE Introduces LED-based Parking Garage Light Fixture
SSLDesign News Staff
July 14, 2009...GE has recently released a wide range of consumer and industrial LED-based lighting products. The company's most recent product release is an LED garage light fixture that takes the place of HID systems.
The GE Evolve™ LED Garage Light Fixture from GE Lighting Systems, Inc is for areas with low mounting heights. The company boasts that with a rated life of 70 percent initial lumens of 50,000 hours, it offers a long lasting, energy-efficient lighting solution. The company notes that it also greatly reduces maintenance and re-lamping costs in parking garages, warehouses, walkways, stairways and service stations.
The light has three opticals for general areas, entrances, and exits. The company says that it needs no warm-up time and can therefore be used effectively in emergency entrance and exit areas.
The company claims that the new LED fixture reduces energy consumption up to 50 percent versus comparable HID products. It comes in 80-, 110- and 125-watt options, and the company says the lights emit a high level of lumens per watt.
The light reportedly comes from high brightness LEDs with a 70 color-rendering index and a 5700K color temperature. The LEDs reportedly ensure low comparative lumen loss throughout its 50,000-hour effective life and provide continuing uniformity and brightness. It is housed in die-cast aluminum with cast heat sinks to transfer heat away from the
electrical components and ensure its long LED life. The company notes that inside and outside are painted with polyester paint for what it claims is superior corrosion resistance. It has eight mounting options for what the company says is almost any field installation condition.
“Based on reduced energy, maintenance and operating costs, customers can expect payback in less than three years with the GE LED Garage Light Fixture,” said Andrew Lindstrom, senior product manager, GE Lighting Systems. “This is a watershed year for outdoor and municipal lighting, and GE’s in the thick of it with LED fixtures for all kinds of applications.”
GE Lighting Systems Inc. News Release
Seoul Semiconductor expands sales of high-efficiency bulb (GU10) using Acriche
SSLDesign News Staff
July 14, 2009...Seoul Semiconductor, the makers of the Acriche LED light source, have expanded the company's sales of GU10 LED bulbs. Seoul says that the bulbs have had impressive sales in Europe that it expects to double in 2010. The company says that it will supply the lamps through Poland’s Elgo Lighting Industries S.A., a leading lighting maker in Europe. Seoul notes that GU10 lamp bases are one of the most widely used for interior lighting in Europe, especially where halogen bulbs are used for interior light sources. Seoul's GU10 LED bulbs are reportedly compatible with commercial voltages ranging from 110V to 220V. Company News Release SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Sunovia Launches Cobra Head LED Lighting Products
July 14, 2009...Sunovia is another company that has entered the race to capture the streetlight market.
Sunovia Energy Technologies has launched a line of EvoLucia brand, LED-based cobra head street lights.
Sunovia says that the lights drastically reduce both energy consumption and carbon emissions, and last up to three times longer than traditional HID cobra streetlights.
An estimated 10 million cobra head lights are reportedly used the United States alone, and the company claims that the worldwide market for cobra head light fixtures exceeds $10 billion.
Bob Fugerer, President of Sunovia Energy Technologies, Inc. stated, "We are very excited by the positive response that we have received regarding this new product line."
The lights retrofit into an existing cobra head housing. Only the lamp and ballast need to be replaced.
The company claims that its patent-pending light aiming technologies precisely focus light to the location specified and virtually eliminate light pollution.
her light utilization, and illuminates the targeted area more efficiently.
Sunovia's new cobra head product is an ideal replacement for the widely used 100-watt High Pressure Sodium cobra heads (typically 120-watt input) with an IES Type II Medium light distribution. The LED product supports a 25 to 30-foot mounting height and pole spacing of more than five mounting heights.
According to Sunovia, the light engine is designed to retrofit cobra head style housings that adhere to ANSI C136.17 size constraints, further increasing the opportunity for additional markets. Also, lower-wattage versions that are adapted for battery power rather than utility grid power are being sampled for solar lighting applications. The company estimates that the lifetime for the initial product offering is better than 12 years under typical operating conditions. Sunovia News Release
Six Flags' Bizarro roller coaster gets New Lights from Elation
SSLDesign News Staff
July 9, 2009... Designers used Elation's Elar Exbar BL RGB LED bars to create an eye-popping display for the ride.
Some seventy strobing, RGB color-changing Exbars were installed in a series of 5 loops that riders race through immediately after surviving Bizarro’s first breathless plunge. Along with the visual “thrills” from the lighting, passengers experience literally got more “chills” in the loops from being cooled down by new misting machines that were also installed as part of the upgrade.
The Exbar is a 1-meter DMX-compatible RGB-mixing bar containing 240 x 10mm LEDs (48 red, 102 green and 90 blue). It weighs just 10 lbs, and is housed in a rugged die-cast aluminum shell. It is rated at IP44 for outdoor use.
Fourteen Exbars were installed in each of the five loops for a total of 70. Elation News Release,
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Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey USA, decided to update its floorless Bizarro roller coaster, which some roller coaster enthusiasts have ranked as one of the scariest rides in the world. The management of the park was hoping to re-theme the coaster (formerly known as Medusa) and take the thrills and chills of the ride to a new level.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
LED Lighting Manufacturers Have What They Need - DOE Conference Report, Part I
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
July 17, 2009...Attention LED lighting manufacturers: You have no excuse for creating an inferior product... all the information you need to understand the quality requirements and to receive the correct right "stamps of approval" are right there in front of you, whether online or at one of your friendly neighborhood conferences. One opportunity for those answers was the just-concluded SSL Market Introduction Workshop put on by the US Department of Energy. The three-day workshop in Chicago, conveniently located at the end of a number of nonstop flights, brought a lot of the answers into one place.
Attending a good quality industry conference tends to leave you feeling that you have spent a few days drinking from a fire hose (as well as complimenting it with an unreasonable amount of food, but that part is not unfamiliar to any business traveler). This year's workshop was no different. It appeared that about 80% of the 200+ attendees were solid state lighting manufacturers, with another 15% representing the energy efficiency/utility stakeholders, including the Midwest Energy Efficiency Alliance who cosponsored the event. The remaining 5% or so represented the top of the food chain, including lighting decision makers, lighting designers and even some facilities folks. All of them were in the right place, and Jim Brodrick and his DOE, Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNL) and DR International teams did a fine job of hosting this informative event.
A number of sessions provided reviews and updates on the array of resources available from the DOE to help anyone wanting to move forward as a high quality luminaire manufacturer. Monday kicked off with a complete overview of the current DOE programs, which include the CALiPER testing program, Gateway technology demonstrations, the Quality Advocates initiative (which gives us the Lighting Facts label), and the ENERGY STAR program; all of which are designed to help move the technology and quality forward by engaging in a specification-testing-deployment-lesson type of feedback loop. We also heard about the DOE's design competitions, including Lighting for Tomorrow (an annual competition sponsored jointly with Consortium for Energy Efficiency and the American Lighting Association, targeted towards the office and residential space), the Next Generation Luminaires design competition (also an annual one, directed more towards the commercial space), and the L-Prize (punctuated with the now-obligatory "first call to the gate" which rang out whenever that $10M "L-Prize" phrase was spoken). Brodrick commented that the DOE was expecting to see the first submittals for either the PAR or A19 replacements this fall, which would kick off a 9+ month testing and qualification program. Of course, by the time the process to identify 2-3 winners completes, it's likely that another pack of capable competitors will arrive on the scene, riding the wave of a subsequent generation of still-brighter LEDs. I can't say I envy the evaluation team's task to meld issues such as the submission window, with what might be a fairly continuous flow of potential contenders, but the stakes are high. Winners will have access to a purchasing preference for what should be expected to be a tsunami of mandated government procurement, which also suggests it is equally mandatory for there to be multiple winners, and hence, no mandated sole-sourcing. Added to the fact that a submission requires something like 2000 samples to be included, while prestigious and lucrative, it's not likely to be a prize that anyone other than a well-resourced company will be able to tackle.
The latter half of Monday afternoon provided manufacturers with the DOE's take on the current 'best fit' applications for LED lighting (streetlights, difficult-to-maintain locations and in directional lamps that are currently served by 20-40W incandescents). Kelly Gordon of PNL provided that perspective, and was followed by Jeff McCullough who gave an excellent talk on why efficiency (of the system) matters. Capping off the evening, attendees were invited to participate in a walking tour to visit the Merchandise Mart, and the new Wit Hotel, which have substantial deployments of LED lighting. In the case of the Merchandise Mart, the installations are considered to be a fairly varied, multi-generational product pilot program, which includes hallway lighting, signage spot lighting, high-bay installations in the recycling catacombs (flush the mercury-laden yellow and let there be white!), and in several product showrooms. The latter are perhaps most interesting to us, as the operator of the high-end kitchen showcase reportedly is not just happy, but is extremely happy with how their design offerings "pop" in the revised illumination offered by the latest generation of high-CRI PAR replacements.
The showroom demo was a natural lead-in to the next morning's keynote by Cree's Mark McClear. Animated as always, Mark provided the audience with two big takeaways. The first... Education is key, now more than ever. Obviously everyone in the room had a decent handle on that, since they were in the room, and we can be hopeful that many will take it to heart and take action to continue to refer decision makers to the educational and networking opportunities the industry offers. Two upcoming examples of include the SSL Design Summits, slated for Nov 3-4 in the New York area, as well as Dec 1-2 in Los Angeles (Mark didn't say that part... we did).
Are area lighting standards reflecting what we see?
The second big takeaway Mark offered was illustrated by the near-ubiquitous "half the parking lit by LEDs, half by HPS" picture from Beta LED . It was simply, "Why won't the illumination standards groups step up to acknowledge what we can clearly see with our eyes?" That question highlights a continuing series of obstacles that might be most easily summarized as "all photons are not created equal". The jump in color rendering from high-pressure sodium (its lovely yellow coming at at a CRI of around 20) to the 80+ CRI of a decent LED streetlight is striking, to say the least. Note that on the project report that the average photopic lumens were less than half of the HPS solution, with the foot-candles just above one-half of the HPS incumbent. It's a reasonable contention that the parking lot minimum foot-candle specs were set with the HPS sources in mind, and would necessarily have to have been bumped up to compensate for the lack of color rendition, and the resulting difficulty in identifying what is actually around the viewer in the parking lot.
It seems intuitive that better quality light allows equally effective visual identification at much lower light levels, so how are we doing to reflect that in the illumination specs? The good news is that work is being done, at least in the related area of CRI, which was originally written around fluorescent lighting's rather narrow spectral emission peaks (ref DOE write-up on CRI). The US National Institute of Standards (NIST) is working on a "color quality scale" (watch out, it's kind of technical) which is seeing the light of day, and we can hope for quick moves to adopt the concept, or an equivalent, as a standard more reflective of what our eyes really see. More standards work is yet to be done, and much of it is in process now, but there are still a few holes that may not have been tackled yet. Continued success in the projects LEDs can handle will help build the credibility such that soon, the "eyes" will have it.
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