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Robe Lights First All-LED Lit TPi Awards Show
SSLDesign News Staff
February 14, 2012...Andy Hurst designed the lighting scheme that illuminated the 2012 Total Production International (TPi) Awards. The lighting design used nearly 300 Robe lighting LED fixtures. The event was staged at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith. The major Awards was lit entirely with Robe LED lightsources.
The lighting design was the result of a collaboration between the Czech Republic based manufacturer and it’s UK operation, Mondiale Publishing, producers of the Awards. UK lighting and visuals rental company HSL handled the rigging and installation of the lighting equipment. Hurst worked with programmer Tim Fawkes who also operated lighting on the night of the ceremony using a Road hog Full Boar console.
The annual TPi Awards honors the best of creative and technical talent, achievements and expertise in professional production and entertainment. The Who’s-Who of the industry was there. The lighting rig featured Robe’s new ROBIN DLX Spot. The Robin DLX Spot is an RGBW spot lighting fixture that can produce a complete range of proper high quality variable whites. Fifty-two of Robin DLX spots were placed around the complex trussing system above the stages and audience.
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Cooper Industries Announced the Acquisition of Fifth Light Technology, Ltd.
SolidStateLightingDesign News Staff
February 9, 2012...Cooper Industries announced the acquisition of Fifth Light Technology, Ltd. ("Fifth Light"). Fifth Light is a privately owned company based in Oakville, Canada that specializes in the design, sale, and implementation of digitally addressable lighting interface (DALI) solutions and a suite of centralized building management software applications.
Cooper says FIfth Light's portfolio of solutions enables facility management to measure and control energy consumption across individual fixtures, as well as provide for the integration and control of other building management systems across multiple applications. Over the past several years, Fifth Light has reportedly installed over 100,000 control devices in premier locations across North America, saving customers significant energy usage associated with their lighting systems. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
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Seoul Semiconductor Releases Acrich2 Linear Module, an AC-Power LED Solution for Fluorescent Replacements
SSLDesign News Staff
February 9, 2012...Seoul Semiconductor has released the Acrich2 family of AC-powered LED. The company claims that the Acrich2 Linear Module exhibits efficacies, light output levels, and power factors comparable to DC LED solutions while eliminating the AC to DC power supply. The solution was exhibited at the Strategies in Light conference this week in Santa Clara, California.
Seoul Semi says that compared with the existing linear modules driven by direct current, the main feature of the Acrich2 Linear Module is the removal of AC/DC converter and the consequent optimized form factor. Seoul says that this solution increases the reliability by removing many of the components which cause early lifetime failures of other fluorescent replacement solutions. According to the company, the design also provides more flexibility and space to work inside the fixture since the large ballast (power supply) does not have to be accommodated.
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Lumenpulse Releases Low-Profile Luminaire for Facade Illumination
SSLDesign News Staff
February 9, 2012...Lumenpulse Inc. of Montreal, Canada announced the release and immediate availability of Lumenfacade Horizontal, a linear, high-performance, LED projector with a slim, 2-inch profile. The Lumenfacade was developed for exterior floodlighting and wall grazing of tall structures, the Lumenfacade Horizontal's low-profile design makes it easy to conceal and integrate into architectural facades. According to Lumenpulse the design fo the Lumenfacade repositions the driver chamber to hide it from view, reducing the height of the luminaire while simultaneously concealing all wiring and mounting details. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Soraa Introduces GaN on GaN LED-based MR16 Lamp
SSLDesign News Staff
February 7, 2012...Soraa, which was founded by Shuji Nakamura and Steve DenBaars, announced the
launch of its flagship product, the Soraa LED MR16 lamp. Soraa claims that new
replacement lamp is the first single-LED design to provide illumination equivalent
to a 50-watt halogen MR16. Pricing was not announced, but is intended to provide
a retrofit payback of routinely less than 1 year in standard commercial usage.
Soraa says that its flagship product, the LED MR16 lamp based on GaN on GaN
technology represents a revolutionary lighting technology hence the moniker,
LED 2.0.
Soraa reportedly leverages decades of expertise from the two GaN LED lighting
innovators who have done much of their research work during the last decade
at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The company is headquartered
in Fremont, California, where it houses the world’s first GaN on GaN light-chip
fabrication facility and their lighting products design lab. Soraa claims that
its pure GaN crystal is up to one thousand times purer than GaN on sapphire
or GaN on silicon carbide substrates, allowing both the power density of the
chip to be increased, and the chip size to be substantially reduced compared
to standard LED devices.
“Our technological foundation enables Soraa products to emit more light
per LED material and handle more electric current per area than competitors,
providing the highest quality light that makes for a perfect, more energy efficient
replacement for traditional halogen lamps,” said Soraa CEO Eric Kim. Soraa
says it chose the MR16 format because it has been the most difficult LED lamp
to do correctly, given its small size and intense, high quality brightness requirements.
Khosla Ventures, NEA Partners, and NGEN Partners are backing Soraa with over
$100 million in funding.
Soraa's MR16 LED lamp offers what the company describes as a bright, highly-focused,
controlled beam with the ability to produce a high color rendering index and
center beam candle-power to match a standard halogen lamp. An efficient thermal
design does not require a mechanical fan or other active cooling, and the form
factor is fully conformant to the MR-16 envelope. In addition, the lamp’s single-source
LED design offers crisp object definition with solo shadow, uniform color and
beam pattern. Additionally, the Soraa LED MR16 lamp features optimized electrical
design for broad compatibility, making it suitable for use with all common transformers
and dimmers, both indoors and outdoors.
“Lighting affects the way we see the world, and good light can make anything more compelling,” said Co-Founder Shuji Nakamura. “At Soraa, we are proud to create efficient lighting products that do not compromise on performance, offer the highest quality available, and greatly reduce energy waste. We believe that with GaN on GaN, we have truly entered the next chapter in LED technology: LED 2.0.”
Our news features are reported
by the SSL Design staff writers.
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editor -at - solidstatelightingdesign.com
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Info7 -at - solidstatelightingdesign.com
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Commentary & Perspectives...
LED Industry Buzzing at Strategies in Light
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
February 9, 2012...The leading annual US exhibition and conference for the broader LED industry supply chain, Strategies in Light, took place this week, and there is no doubt we're seeing a lively industry. Revenue growth at the packaged LED industry has been moderated a bit by the overall economic climate, but with most segments growing simply because LED-based solutions make sense, the overall picture is good and should continue that way. Here are some of the highlights that struck us, both in and around the event:
Is 2012 the year of the light engine?... A 'point of order' we're not shy about sharing is that lighting is already a fully-established industry, with fully-established channels, and upstart "chip-head" companies aren't necessarily going to be able to waltz right into the world of replacement lamps and luminaires without expecting more than a little market fight. Just a small step back from the luminaires are the different light-engine approaches, that provide a good opportunity for LED-based innovation, without the substantial channel challenges that arise at the level of full integration. We had the chance to hear from several companies that are making a good showing as "enablers" to the hundreds and hundreds of specialized luminaire manufacturers that may not have the resources to create an LED lighting design from scratch.
First up was Xicato, which has been making a name for itself with a color-consistency message that it has taken straight to the lighting decision makers, in hopes of setting a high-bar for any competitors to deal with. By combining a 'just barely' remote phosphor approach with thermal management that include cooling that phosphor plate, they are able to deliver modules that hit a 1.2 MacAdam ellipse target, and stay there for the life of the product. Not only does that suggest a luminaire incorporating that engine will be delivering essentially the same light 5+ years from now, but that subsequent versions spec'd at the same color temperature and CRI will match the originals despite their difference in ages.
While doing a good job of defining "color quality", they aren't going to be left alone in the space. Terralux is also after a piece of the market with its own innovations aimed at assuring an ultra-long lifetime. Their magic includes integrated thermal monitoring that compares the LED array operating parameters with the LM-80 data curves, so that operations are maintained within the "known" operating envelope at all times. Lumenetix, a name new to me, was also on hand showing its Araya family of dynamically-tuned white light engines. Able to vary their CCT from 2700K to 6000K, the design allows the users to tailor the light to suit the specific subject being lit, whether it's a painting or retail display, to achieve the desired effect. In a serious piece of fancy, they demonstrated a CCT copy-and-paste procedure that is a simple as aiming the remote control at one source (whatever it may be), capturing the observed CCT, and then "pasting" the same CCT to another luminaire. The luminaire has bi-directional communication with the remote in which the remote verifies the CCT by observation, rather than simply trusting that the luminaire hit the target. If it's not a perfect match, the remote provides the coordinate direction and magnitude "suggestions" for the luminaire to finish the tweaking process. Three very different, and productive approaches chasing what is currently a $1.9B module market opportunity, and which is projected to approach $6B towards the end of the decade.
Planar and power... In a sideline visit, we spent a few minutes with Eran Fine, CEO of Israel-based Oree, for an update on their planar LED technology. For those not familiar with Oree's approach, imagine something about the size and thickness of a playing card, that glows with a bright, uniform white light from one side. Personally, I've called it the "white OLED killer" as it provides a simple answer to the standard 'point source' LED challenge, and delivers the ultra-thin form factor with 85 lm/watt efficiency, all at 1/15th the price of an OLED solution. Color tunability is also part of the demonstrated capabilities, and overall, it's out of the box thinking, and well-supported by strategic industry investor-partners. It looks like what many of us imagined early-on as one "futuristic" approach to lighting that LEDs enable.
At the other end of the technology spectrum, Soraa shared some additional detail on its technology launch into the replacement lamp space. CEO Eric Kim outlined the gist of their innovation, which is simply making use of correctly polarized pure GaN substrates, allowing them to operate with incredible power densities within the LED structure. Not to get too techie, but while "normal" LEDs get brighter as you drive more current through them, they also lose efficiency. We call it "the droop problem", and if it went away, we could get a lot more lumens out of much smaller LEDs. The Soraa design, arrived at in no small part through a few decades of Shuji Nakamura's and Steve Denbaar's research, pushes 250 amps per square centimeter through it while still maintaining 90% of the starting efficiency. Now to get a little too techie, think about that for a second... if we assume 10 watts are doing the job of making the equivalent light of a 50W halogen, we're probably dealing with 3.3A at an LED-standard 3V. 3.3 into 250 is .013, which suggests the LED itself may only be 1/100th of a square centimeter. Even if some of my speculations are off by a factor of 2, 1/50th of a square centimeter is still reallly-really small. Talk about a point source! If the chunk of GaN you use to make the LED is small enough, you can get a bunch more of them from one expensive wafer, which makes each one relatively cheap. It's also a dream come true for the optics designer, since a smaller source suggests you can use a smaller optic to get a desired beam pattern. Soraa tells me that they're a few thousand hours into testing, with good results that are backing up their lifetime predictions. More data is needed to know that they've got the full package here, but things look good for this to be one of those noticeable breakthroughs that make the science of semiconductors interesting.
A vision for the future... Awareness seems to be building that now that LEDs are able to begin economically serving a number of areas in lighting, we can afford to expand our vision beyond just replacing the current lighting out there, to instead beginning to see where this could all go. Much as optical communications gave life to a whole new, and really-really big thing called "e-commerce", the fundamental technology of solid state light opens the door to "apps" none of us had previously imagined. For lack of a better term, lets call it "adaptive, responsive, interactive lighting". In a reception hosted by Light Based Technologies, the execs there did a good job of summarizing a concept of "personalizing" light by accepting inputs at a level of granularity relevant to an individual "user" and then responding at that same user level. Communicating information back up the hierarchy, for instance to that section, of that floor, of that building, on that grid, can allow those progressively larger functional blocks to take those conditions at the user level into account in "the big picture" of energy and environmental management. It can start to get very abstract, very quickly, but if we acknowledge that our health, happiness and productivity can all be influenced by light, and that now we finally have the technology that enables us to control it with unprecedented precision, we're off on a hunt to truly understand it. The discussion has just begun, and I, for one, look forward to "the more" that we'll uncover in the process.
The SSL Summit, April 3-4 in Long Beach California, is all about the future of better, smarter lighting. Make your plans now to join key visionaries who will engage, and help shape, the future of lighting. Visit www.SSLsummit.com for more information.
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