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Lighting
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EPA Publishes Draft 2 of Energy Star Lamps V 1.0 Specification for Comments (Update: Links to Spec added)
SSLDesign News Staff
July 10, 2012...The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published Draft 2 of the Energy Star Lamps V1.0 specification for partner and stakeholder review and comment. This specification is intended to replace the existing Compact Fluorescent Lamps and Integral LED Lamps specifications (“the existing specifications”).
According to the cover letter, on October 21, 2012, EPA released Draft 1 of Lamps V1.0. [Ed. note: We tend to remember it as October 21, 2011, but the US government does own they atomic clock, so we're probably just confused...]. The release letter indicated encouraged stakeholders to submit comments on the draft proposal to lamps@energystar.gov no later than August 24, 2012. The EPA says that the comments received about Draft 1 were posted to the ENERGY STAR Lamps Specification Development website at www.energystar.gov/lamps, along with a document summarizing those comments, Draft 1 itself, and other supporting materials. The letter and specs have not appeared on the EPA website, so we have posted the cover letter here, and the spec here.
The EPA recommends that stakeholders carefully review comment boxes incorporated throughout the draft which provide further details about proposed changes and additions. Key additions and changes to the standards include: adjustments to minimum life requirements, addition of commercial grade performance tier, addition of MR16s, new luminous intensity distributions for directional lamps, and reintroduction of non-standard lamps.
The EPA announced that it will hold a Webinar on Wednesday, August 8, 2012 to provide further details about new proposals and changes made in Draft 2. Advanced registration for the Webinar is required through email to lamps@energystar.gov with attendee name(s), company name, phone number(s) and email address(es) with “Lamps Draft 2 Webinar” in the subject line of the email. For those unable to attend, the EPA make a recording of the presentation available posted to www.energystar.gov/lamps for subsequent review.
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Gateway Demonstration at Smithsonian Yields Savings
SSLDesign News Staff
July 10, 2012...Pacific Northwest National Laboratory contacted Scott Rosenfeld, Lighting Designer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum in fall 2010, to ask if the Museum would be willing to participate in a
GATEWAY demonstration project in which LED replacement lamps would be used in exhibit space . At that time, the museum industry was concerned about increased damage potential from LEDs and other energy efficient lighting sources that produce a discontinuous spectrum.
The Museum agreed to participate, based on a review of the existing literature that Steven Weintraub of Art Preservation Services for the American Institute of Conservation conducted along with subsequent testing of solid-state lighting sources on light sensitive materials performed by Jim Druzik of the Getty Conservation Institute.
In a process that took more than a year lamp samples were procured based upon performance data. The lamp samples were tested in the museum workshop, then temporarily installed in one gallery for feedback. All traditional incandescent lamps in one gallery of modernist art at the American Art Museum were ultimately replaced and two galleries of the Museum’s Renwick Gallery partially replacing lamps. The staff lighting designer found a wide variety of LED replacement lamps, many with excellent color and beam properties for display lighting and wallwashing techniques including PAR38 and PAR30 lamps.
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Future Lighting Solutions and Shanghai Prime-LED Lighting Technology Complete ShanXi XinShui River Landscape Lighting Project
SSLDesign News Staff
July 10, 2012...Future Lighting Solutions and Shanghai Prime-LED Lighting Technology Co. Ltd. have announced the successful completion of a large scale lighting project illuminating the ShanXi JinCheng XinShui River with Luxeon LEDs. Luxeon LEDs are produced by Philips Lumileds lighting. The ShanXi XinShui River landscape lighting project is part of the “Blue Sky Green Water” initiative in ShanXi. Using 4700 high power LED lighting fixtures. The project, which features Luxeon LEDs, beautifully illuminates the banks of the XinShui River and square. The LEDs make the area an ecologically friendly local icon.
Mr. Yu Bin, General Manager of Shanghai Prime-LED Lighting Technology Co. Ltd. explained, “Shanghai Prime-LED Lighting Technology has been leading the LED application industry with years of experience behind us. We thank Future Lighting Solutions for being our partner in providing quality Luxeon LEDs and for securing the success of this project, from planning through to implementation.”
Clear-Vu LED Lighting Earns LEED ID Credit for Lighting at Harvard Art Museum
SSLDesign News Staff
July 10, 2012...Harvard University set out to renovate its Fogg Art Museum Complex. One of its goals for the 201,000-sq-ft, multi-year, project scheduled for completion in 2014 was to earn LEED-Gold certification. Clear-Vu Lighting and general contractor Skanska had the novel idea of garnering LEED Innovation in Design Credit (ID) at the start of construction by using energy-saving temporary jobsite lighting.
The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) awards ID credits for exceptional or innovative performance beyond the requirements addressed by the LEED Green Building rating system. For Harvard, the use of Clear-Vu's low voltage, LED-based FLEX SLS Site Lighting System could set a precedent for saving energy during construction.
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Iluminarc Gives Light to Sonic Fireflies
SSLDesign News Staff
July 5, 2012...Iluminarc of Atlantic City, New Jersey USA employed its Ilumipod Logic 6 as the LED light source for a permanent interactive installation at an Atlantic City resort spanning over six million square feet of beachfront destination encompassing a spa, casino, clubs, restaurants, and retail shops.
The resort’s ocean-side walkway is home to “Sonic Fireflies”, created by architect and composer Christopher Janney, who serves as artistic director for PhenomenArts, Inc. Inspired by the sounds of the sea and the flashes of fireflies, the piece engages guests as they enter the resort.
Environmental sounds and acoustic instruments greet you as you walk in. This composition is a “sonic portrait of a soothing ocean environment” that also changes throughout the course light, sounds like marimbas, drums, and flutes emit softly from audio speakers.
According to the company, the interaction is a personal experience between you and the ‘firefly’—enveloping you in a shaft of light and sound.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
The Impact Assessment of LED Replacement Lamps
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
July 10, 2012...In June of 2012, the US Department of Energy released Part 2 of it's Life-Cycle Assessment of Energy and Environmental Impacts of LED Lighting Products (you can download the 78-page PDF here). Part 2 of the project produced a more detailed and conservative assessment of the manufacturing process of an LED product and provided a life cycle assessment (LCA) in comparison to other lighting products. Part 2 based its assessment on an improved manufacturing analysis and took into consideration a wider range of environmental impacts, including energy use for production as well as the environmental impacts of disposal that took into account the waste generated in the manufacturing of the product and component materials.
It's no surprise that the dominant factor when it comes to environmental impact is due to the energy consumption during the use phase of the products. When energy is sourced from fossil fuels, the stuff that comes from the ground that isn't carbon gets a free ride into the atmosphere. I've always found it interesting that mercury is "just there" when you burn coal, for instance, and it can become humorous at times when we hear the hyperventilation over the "dangerous mercury" from the rare in-home CFL breakage. Granted, a few milligrams of mercury on your carpet is a more recognizable hazard than the relatively large amount of mercury released from generating the power that runs the incandescent equivalent over the same x thousand hours, but this whole "impact" thing is about the big picture and not about what happens in any one home or business. The great news for the LED lighting industry, of course, is that it is hyperventilation-less in that arena, and is simply causing some consumers heart attacks when they get their first glance at LED replacement lamp prices plastered on the shelves of their local big-box store. Don't worry, that's getting fixed in a very progressive and rapid manner.
Interestingly, the greatest environmental impact after energy-in-use for the LED sources comes from manufacturing the aluminum heat sink. The heat sink is the main reason that the LED currently exceeds the CFL in the category of hazardous waste generation, and that is driven by the upstream energy and environmental impacts from manufacturing the aluminum from raw materials. Although end-of-life was evaluated in a conservative way for this report, recycling efforts could further reduce the adverse impact of manufacturing the aluminum heat sink. Since heat sinks are there to get rid of waste heat, and there will be less of it in the future, even that drawback will continue to diminish pretty rapidly. We've covered this in detail before, but the upshot is that at 100 lumens/watt, an LED emitter is converting roughly 30% of the input energy into light, with the other 70% or so becoming heat. That's a factor of 2-3 better than incandescents, but it's still a fair amount of heat. However, in a future where 200 lumens/watt is not out of the question, that equation reverses. Not only that, but we also need less energy to produce the required amount of light. That 1000 lumen lamp that uses 10 watts here in the near future is implied to be sloughing off 7 watts of waste heat. At 200 lumens/watt, we'll only need a total of 5 watts to do that same 1000 lumens, of which only about 1.5-2 watts is wasted heat. Twice the efficacy results in 1/4 the waste heat that needs to be managed, implying 1/4 the amount of heat sinking (standing by for correction from our thermal engineer friends, but I believe that part of the physics is close enough to linear for this discussion...). See? Good news.
As a side note to the main point here, Sections 5.2 and 5.3 (pages 32-46) cover the step by step manufacturing process, from raw materials to LEDs and then to replacement lamps. From the energy and waste impact sides, It's easy to jump to the bottom line there, but wait... save that PDF as it's one of the best semi-technical primers ever on how LED lamps come to life. Except for the whizzing machines and dancing test probes, it's like the "How It's Made" TV program on steroids. It also includes the anticipated improvements in the technology in processing over the next 5 years, which will probably find some use for a lot of COO- and CTO-oriented PowerPoints for years to come...
When it comes to the 15 metrics that have been compiled for the three different types of lamps, it probably comes as no surprise that the portion attributable to the use phase, as opposed to raw materials, manufacturing, transport or disposal, represents 93% of the lifetime impact purely as a result of energy use. What is surprising is that for CFLs, energy represents 78% of the impact, and with assumed LED replacement lamps, the impact is still only down to 81% (yes, slightly behind CFLs, because of the LED manufacturing processes). Even with the 130 lumen/watt assumptions for the LED lamp of 2017, the energy effects remain substantial at 78% of the total impact. As far as the overall assessment, the report summarizes:
Overall, the impacts of the LED lamp in 2017 are significantly less than the incandescent, and about 70% lower than the CFL and approximately 50% lower than the LED lamp in 2012, which itself is the best available technology in 2012. The important finding from these graphs is not necessarily the minor relative differences between the [current] CFL and LED lamps, but instead the very significant reduction in environmental impacts that will result from replacing an incandescent lamp. Environmental impact reductions on the order of 3 to 10 times are possible across the indicators through transitioning the market to these more efficacious light sources.
So guess what? The LED lamps win, and will continue to improve as we head into the future. It's a good place to be.
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