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Lightmaster-Direct and Philips Dynalite Create Efficient LED and Fluorescent Lighting System for Scarlet Hotel
SSLighting Design News Staff
January 26, 2010...The Scarlet Hotel in Cornwall, UK, has upgraded its lighting system with the help of Lightmaster Direct, and Philips Dynalite. The design created by Philips Dynalite Dimension dealer, Lightmaster-Direct is a lighting scheme in harmony with the surroundings using just 3.36 watts per square meter. It reportedly provides guests with an unparalleled ambience and sense of opulence.
Lighting control and automation group, Philips Dynalite, drew on its expertise in the hospitality sector to supply an energy-saving lighting control system for the luxury Scarlet eco-hotel in Cornwall. Energy-saving fluorescent and LED luminaires, along with multipurpose sensors, are integral elements of the lighting design.
Lightmaster-Direct designed, engineered, and commissioned the innovative lighting system to meet stringent environmental, functional and architectural criteria. Many of the hotel’s light fittings were custom-designed and built by Lightmaster-Direct to meet these exacting standards. Philips Dynalite News Release,
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Lemnis Lighting and Zumtobel Group to Jointly Develop Residential and Professional LED-based Retrofit Lamps
SSLighting Design News Staff
January 26, 2010...Lemnis Lighting B.V. (Lemnis Lighting) has reportedly partnered with the Zumtobel Group, a professional lighting solution provider, to jointly develop a full-line portfolio LED-based lamps for residential and professional use.
The goal of the joint development effort of Lemnis Lighting and the Zumtobel Group is to create a portfolio of retrofit LED lighting products designed to replace conventional light bulbs and halogen spots. The companies expect a fast time to market. Additionally the companies hope to drive the dynamic development of the market for high quality and affordable energy-saving LED lamps. Lemnis Lighting, under its renowned Pharox brand name, says it will be able to quickly leverage its existing product portfolio and leading heat management solution that it recently developed with Advanced Thermal Solutions.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Zumtobel Group (through its subsidiary LEDON Lamp) will be able to enter the retrofit LED lighting market in Europe and generate economies of scale for the jointly developed portfolio. Lemnis says that this will allow both companies to provide its customers with technologically advanced and attractively priced products for uses around the house and in their business. The joint portfolio based on technology developed by Lemnis Lighting and Zumtobel Group companies together, consists of high quality LED lamps which emit a pleasant color of light.
Lemnis notes that the agreement further cements and enhances the long-lasting supply relationship between the two groups that has existed since the beginning of 2008 when Lemnis designating Zumtobel Group companies a preferred supplier.
Lemnis Lighting CEO Remko Gaastra commented, “Lemnis Lighting is very pleased to announce the development partnership with the Zumtobel Group as a key driver for its rapidly increasing product portfolio. It is a further step in our strategy to form strong partnerships with key players in the industry to enable fast technology and product development in order to provide our customers with high quality LED lamps as a genuine alternative to incandescents and CFLs. This partnership further enhances Lemnis Lighting’s leading position in LED lamps and we are proud that our long-lasting relationship with the Zumtobel Group is taking a further step forward.”
Lemnis Lighting News Release
Altman’s 4-Channel LED Entertainment Lights Deliver 281 Trillion Colors
SSLighting Design News Staff
January 26, 2010...Altman Lighting and Future Lighting Solutions have together developed a color changing fixture that can produce an unprecedented number of colors, over 281 trillion.
Future Lighting Solutions, a solution partner of Philips Lumileds Lighting, says that entertainment venues around the world will now be able to light their stages with over 281 trillion colors, including improved rendering of warm colors such as skin tones, thanks to two solid state lighting fixtures from Altman Lighting. The color changing fixtures feature light engines deveveloped with the help of Future Lighting that have what Future Lighting says is an unusual combination of Luxeon Rebel red, green, blue and amber LEDs.
Future assisted Altman in doubling the light output per fixture and reducing the number of luminaires required to achieve the desired wall wash or spot illumination. Future also helped design the LED board layouts to achieve the desired light distribution; specify the microcontrollers and power supplies; identify the best color bins for Altman’s purposes using Future’s internally developed software tools; and provide binning services and inventory management to ensure color consistency from fixture to fixture as well as reliable LED supply. Future Lighting Solutions News Release
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BetaLED Breaks 100+ Lumen/Watt Mark with 304 Series (Corrected)
SSLighting Design News Staff
January 26, 2010...BetaLED, a division of Ruud Lighting, Inc., has introduced the 304 Series luminaires, the company's first luminaire to achieve landmark performance of over 100 lumens per watt (LPW). An initial headline on this story incorrectly referenced the brand and manufacturer of the LEDs. Beta has confirmed that they achieved the new benchmark using Cree XP-series LEDs and boasts that the luminaires can save as much as 70 percent in energy use when compared to incumbent technologies.
“We are continuously improving our BetaLED luminaire systems,” said Christopher Ruud, president of Ruud Lighting. “By optimizing all the components in the system we’re able to provide a breakthrough that reaches new heights in energy-savings and light levels while demonstrating measurable proven performance.”
BetaLED says its 304 Series luminaires are scalable up to 12,000 lumens of delivered light output. The new luminaire series achieves what BetaLED says is superior efficiency, longevity, lumen maintenance and light control. Such performance benefits are especially welcomed in applications where lights are on 24/7.
The luminaires utilize a two-level dimming option to save even more energy.
304 Series luminaires are available with 100+ LPW for recessed canopy and soffit applications with petroleum symmetric optics. The luminaires can be installed in single- or double-skin open-air petroleum station canopies and building soffits such as banks and quick serve restaurants. Other optics with the new technology upgrades will be available soon for additional applications such as parking structures.
BetaLED News Release
Albeo First Manufacturer to be DesignLights Consortium (DLC) Approved
SSLighting Design News Staff
January 21, 2010...The DLC, a collaboration of utilities and efficiency companies, has approved Albeo to be its first manufacturer. According to the DLC, fixtures on its qualified product list are eligible for rebates from over 21 utility companies, energy research, and public service organizations.
Albeo's C-Series Parking Garage Luminaire, model number LS-B144-01BC0, is among the first Solid-State fixtures to qualify for the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) Designlights Consortium's Qualified Products List (DLC QPL). The DLC's qualified product list covers product categories not currently addressed by Energy Star. The DLC's goal is to ensure that high-quality, energy-efficient lighting design becomes commonplace in all lighting installations.
Albeo News Release
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Cree Showcases New Residential LED Downlight
SSLighting Design News Staff
January 21, 2010...Cree's new 6-inch LED downlight, the CR6, for the residential market was showcased this week at the 2010 International Builder’s Show in Las Vegas. Cree says that CR6 LED downlight takes the technology at the heart of the LR6 family and redesigns it to deliver maximum value for residential lighting.
The CR6 downlight, planned for availability in mid-2010, is being designed to meet Energy Star criteria and for an end user price of approximately $60.
“By delivering the beautiful warm light created by Cree TrueWhite™ technology in an affordable, energy-efficient LED residential fixture, we’re providing consumers with an alternative to energy wasting incandescents and the poor color-rendering of compact fluorescent bulbs,” said Neal Hunter, President of Cree LED Lighting. “There is no residential LED downlight on the market today that can come close to matching the value and performance of the CR6. This product builds on the success of the award-winning LR6, which has shipped more than 350,000 units to date.” Company News Release
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Commentary & Perspectives...
Lame news update: LED traffic signals and snow stories miss the big picture
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
January 14, 2010...December snows blew up some interesting news as a year-end reminder that even when you're doing things right, critics make their living off criticizing, not praising. In this case, the 'big news' was that LED traffic signals, the SSL industry's poster child of adoption curve success, don't melt snow. The reporting told us that because LEDs use so much less power (true) that they generate less heat than the old incandescent bulbs (true) and don't melt the snow off the traffic signal lenses (true) like the incandescent bulbs did (hmmm... do they? always?). The news made headlines that labeled them as "unintended consequences" as though this good idea was suddenly a bad idea because the new thing didn't do something that the old is presumed to have done. I call that 'missing the big picture'.
First and foremost, let's make it clear that the fact that LED traffic lights don't melt snow does not come as a surprise to anyone in the LED traffic signal business. They kind of knew this, and as I polled around some folks that are or were involved in the LED traffic signal market, this also wasn't a surprise to the customers (typically municipalities) either. One source reported that over a number of years, they had only gotten one request from a customer in Canada to propose a way to melt snow on the signals. In that case, the customer decided it wasn't worth the additional cost to deal with it. What, not worth the cost? They must have been looking at the big picture.
To simplify the discussion, although I truly tend to doubt that incandescent signals always melted the snow off (is that yellow light really on long enough to generate enough heat to melt accumulating snow), let's unconditionally grant that incandescents did and LEDs don't. I know first hand that it's not true, having lived in the Lake Tahoe California area for a winter a few decades ago. Good snowstorm, steady wind, and some traffic signals were obscured. Seems to me that's why they invented the brake pedal. But, let's go ahead and grant the old stuff a pass and claim they were always snow-free. From that position, we can launch into the other half of the story that wasn't reported... the LEDs are probably saving many more lives by simply being on in the first place, than they would ever cost due to rare snow obscuration events. Heck, one could claim that electricity is the culprit, if anyone has ever been injured in a traffic accident when the power failed and the signals went dark. It might sound something like, "Before these ee-lectric traffic signal thingies, we'd only have that old, reliable stop sign, and never have we seen one of them fail... well, except when people didn't see it and would run right on through it."
So here's the truth... the LED traffic signals seem to have an incredible ability not to fail (7+ years and counting for many). Incandescents failed regularly, but unfortunately not like clockwork. Given their on-off cycle, reports seem consistent that they would typically have a 8000 hour life span, or a year or two, depending on the cycling. That suggests that any individual signal could be expected to go dark for some portion of at least a, if not longer, once a year. If we make an optimistic guess that they would be dead at least 4 hours before the city repair crew got around to them when they failed during the day, and say something like 10 hours average when they failed at night, we have something we can get our heads around. Average of 4 and 10 is 7 hours per year, that any given signal is going to be dead... not signaling... presenting the opportunity for someone to run them and crash into someone else. If red and green are equally important, that's potentially 14 hours of "danger" per signal head each year. 14 hours with some certainty, versus a few hours if a once in a great while snow storm with just the right kind of snow and wind-angle combination hits on a particular year (presumably in the kind of storm that thins traffic to virtually zero, and if you're driving, common sense suggests no one can stop predictably). Bear in mind that much of the US, from the west coast, across the mid-south, and on to Florida rarely sees snow, and if it does, it won't ever reach the magnitude needed to block the light from a traffic signal. But those same states would see just as many incandescents fail for just as many hours each year. Heeellllooo? 7 years, some rare darkness on some heads due to a rare snow event every few years, versus a predictable period of dark from every signal everywhere, every year. Which one is dangerous? Can you hear us media? We lost one life in 2009, but how many did we save since those LED traffic signals were installed?
So, can we do better? Maybe, but at what cost to get to "never fails to signal"? $100K in this city, $200K in that one... Is that money best spent on preventing the possibility of snow accumulation in the next blizzard because one person in the US, as unfortunate as that is, had their death attributed to an obscured traffic signal in 2009? Could those hundreds of thousands perhaps be better invested in an extra ambulance in an underserved area, or perhaps in adding another police officer, or even more to the point, in adding a traffic signal to a current high-risk, uncontrolled intersection? Big picture.
As an industry, let's make sure we don't get caught up by what the critics may turn into the 'potential for the disaster' story of the day. It doesn't matter if it's "if you stare at an LED, it could blind you, and now we've installed them in our TVs!" or "they're talking about LED automobile headlights, and we all know that LEDs can't melt snow off of traffic signals, so what's going to happen in our cars!" Yep, we've kept that one in sight for years, and that one does need to be solved before LEDs can work there. We're keeping the big picture in mind, and we just need to share it every chance we get.
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