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President Bush Signs Law Mandating Incandescent Phase-Out
Scott McMahan
December 19, 2007...Today, President George Bush Signed H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. In remarks to the press, the President said, "Today we make a major step with the Energy Independence and Security Act. We make a major step toward reducing our dependence on oil, confronting global climate change, expanding the production of renewable fuels and giving future generations of our country a nation that is stronger, cleaner and more secure." He commented, "The bill ... includes revisions to improve energy efficiency in lighting and appliances."
The new federal law provides dramatic and sweeping changes to building requirements, fuel efficiency requirements, and lighting. Among many parts for consumers and businesses, the legislation proposes tax credits for plug-in vehicles and fuel economy standards of 35 MPG for automobiles by 2020. The act gives a big boost to the the solid state lighting industry in the United States by mandating the phase-out of inefficient incandescent bulbs in favor of more efficient lighting solutions such a compact fluorescent and LEDs.
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Lamina Snags Former President and CEO of Philips Lighting North America for Board Position
LIGHTimes Staff
December 20, 2007...Lamina of Westampton, New Jersey reported that it named Eric Bouts, the former president and CEO of Philips Lighting North America, to a board position. According to Lamina, Bouts most recently served as president and CEO of Philips Lighting North America. In that position he was responsible for P/L and balance sheet including core areas of company vision, long range strategic planning, brand positioning, new product and business development, manufacturing and supply chain, multi-channel/market sales and marketing. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Fourth Holiday Light Exchange in Toronto Sets Records
SSLDesign News Staff
December 13, 2007...Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited ("Toronto Hydro"), in partnership with the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas (TABIA) and the City of Toronto's Cavalcade of Lights, has concluded another successful neighborhood Festive Light Exchange program. Thousands of Toronto residents exchanged two old sets of incandescent seasonal lights for one new set of energy-efficient LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights, slashing 2 Megawatts from Toronto's power grid.
Toronto Hydro set a record this year for the number strings of old and inefficient holiday lights people brought in to be taken off of the grid and recycled. The company also set a record for the number of LED light strings it gave out to residents. People from 21 communities brought about 15,000 old holiday lighting strings to be taken off the grid and recycled. This is nearly twice the 8,000 holiday light strings collected in 2006. Toronto Hydro gave out about 10,000 LED light strings. This is enough to power about 500- 600 houses.
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Holland Tunnel and George Washington Bridge Get Lighting Upgrade
December 13, 2007...The Holland Tunnel, which connects the island of Manhattan to Jersey City while going under the Hudson River, got a lighting upgrade on the night of December 11, according to an article in New York NewsDay. Some 1700 LED fixtures replaced 4000 fluorescent ones in the tunnel. The article cited Port Authority officials who said that the LED fixtures would save about $340,000 each year in energy and maintenance costs. The LED fixtures reportedly boast a lifetime of 15 years compared to the relatively short lifetime of fluorescents of 1.4 years. The article indicated that the George Washington Bridge, which also spans the Hudson River, will be adorned with LEDs along the long cables connecting the bridge's towers.
Philips Soon-to-be-Released Luxeon Rebel LEDs Featured in Products from Chromatica and IST
SSLDesign News Staff
December 13, 2007...Philips Lumileds reports that several new products are about to be introduced that leverage the technology of the Luxeon Rebel. The Luxeon Rebel’s smaller footprint gives designers new options. The company says that the Luxeon Rebel with a size of just 3mm x 4.5mm has a footprint that is 75 percent smaller than previous SMD LEDs. Philips touts its small size, light output, and reliability. Versions of the Luxeon Rebel LEDs deliver a minimum of 70, 80, 90, or 100 lumens. The Luxeon Rebel will be featured in the RGB LED module designed by Chromatica and in a compact fluorescent replacement created by IST. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Martin LED Panels Grace the World Music Awards
SSLDesign News Staff
December 13, 2007...Light weight, transparent Martin LC Series LED panels provided a dazzling backdrop at the 19th Annual World Music Awards show. An astonishing 190 m2 of Martin LC Series LED panels were incorporated into the set of the awards program held on November 4th at the Monte Carlo Sporting Club in Monaco. The show, which recognizes the “World's Best” in several categories of artists, was hosted by Julian McMahon and featured performances by some of the world’s top recording artists such as: Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne, Rihanna and Akon. Ninety-two Martin LC 2140 LED panels were used for set decoration, graphics, text projection, and color accompaniment around a large main stage and side stages. An additional 12 LC panels were placed in the audience.
AED Rent, which supplied the panels, said that the Martin LC Series was chosen for its light weight and transparency in addition to the fact that there were a large number available. The LC Series of LED panels is ideal for displaying film, digital images and graphics. The easy to assemble and service panels come in a 2 x 1 or a 1 x 1 meter size.
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Welland, Ontario Receives Accolade for LED Street Lighting Pilot Project
SSLDesign News Staff
December 6, 2007...The City of Welland, Ontario Canada received recognition for a pilot program to switch to LED street lights on Fitch Street between Prince Charles Drive and South Pelham Road. Peter Love, Ontario’s Chief Energy Officer presented a certificate of recognition for the installation of the LED street lights. If the project goes as expected and all of the city’s street lights are replaced with LEDs over the next 3- to 5-years, the city estimates that it will save about $185,000 per year. The city noted that the current annual street lighting costs over $350,000 per year for electricity and maintenance. Relume Technologies supplied the LED streetlights. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
LEDdynamics Wins Popular Science Innovation Award for Fluorescent Tube Replacement Product
SSLDesign News Staff
December 6, 2007...Popular Science, a magazine about all branches of science on news stands around the US, has given its Innovation Award to LEDdynamics for its EverLED-TR fluorescent tube replacement. Popular Science gave the EverLED-TR the "Best of 2007 Innovation Award." It was the only lighting solution of any kind (not just LEDs) over all of the 20 years the magazine has given the award out for thousands of different products. LEDdynamics notes that about 680 million fluorescent tubes containing mercury are disposed of each year. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
$10M for an LED lightbulb, just in time for the New Year
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
December 30, 2007...How's this for a deal? If your company can create and validate an LED-based screw-in replacement for the standard Edison-type 60-watt incandescent light bulb, the US Congress has mandated a $10M prize for the effort. The prize is designated as one element of the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prizes, which is part of The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (US House of Representatives, Resolution 6). It was recently signed into law (available as a PDF download). The awards section starts on page 209 of 310.
There are 3 prizes being awarded. The first award totals $10M and is called the 60-Watt Incandescent Replacement Lamp Prize. The winning lamp will be in a standard A19 form factor in a single contact medium screw base, produce 900 lumens on less than 10 watts (>90 lm/watt). It addition, it must deliver a CRI of 90+ and a correlated color temperature (CCT) between 2750K and 3000K. Reliability and commercial aspects are factored in as well in that it will need to operate with 70% lumen maintenance during its predicted 25000+ hour life and must be sold in competitive commercial volumes.
The $5M PAR Type 38 Halogen Replacement Lamp Prize, reads basically the same, except for the projector-type lamp and should produce 1350 lumens on less than 11 watts (>123 lm/watt). The "wildcard award" is something called the 21st Century Lamp Prize and is worth $5M for apparently anything producing 1200 lumens at an efficiency exceeding 150 lm/watt, with a CRI of 90+ and CCT between 2800K and 3000K. Presumably the judges get to fill in some more criteria, such as what form factors are useful and such.
The US DOE is charged with scraping up the award funds as "donations" from any person, government entity or organization, and donors can't receive any of the awards (which blows the lottery idea I had...). Prizes are available to US companies, citizens or legal permanent residents, so if you don't have a subsidiary here, hurry... Once either of the first two prizes is awarded, the government purchasing office is directed to make plans to start purchasing those bulbs as replacements for use in all the US government buildings. The goal would be to have entirely switched to those solid-state lighting alternatives within 5 years of the respective awards being made. (Note to CFL providers: If you sell to the US Federal Government, it's time to revise your sales forecasts down.)
How tough is this going to be?
For years elements in the solid state lighting industry, including myself, have been working to dial back the consumer expectation of a screw in replacement for the good old Edison bulb. Frankly, a primary motivation has been to keep our collective eyes fixed on what LEDs can do that traditional incandescents can't. Think "ultra-low profile" and "color washing with hidden sources" as prime examples. Along with that, we've wanted to keep the consumer market from biting off on the first thing to come along that "looks like a light bulb", which up until fairly recently could be counted on to make nightlights look bright in comparison. But the progress we've expected is coming to fruition and things are looking good. As efficiencies come up there is less heat that needs to be dissipated "behind the source" and companies have shown some innovative ways to accomplish that. Heck, if we can read a newspaper headline from an orbiting satellite (which would seem to be about the same thing as looking through a photolithography machine from the IC's viewpoint), this shouldn't be tough to finish. For the non-semiconductor folks, we'll just liken it to the magic that lets the clock on your PC synchronize itself to within a hundredth of a second to US National Bureau of Standards atomic clocks, using the the same internet connection that can be challenged to bring you your email in as few as 10 minutes. (At least the clock on my DVD/VCR sets itself now!)
How close are we?
Some recent "lab results" announcements suggest that we may be as little as a year away. While we have love-hate relationship with announcements of laboratory results, they can be useful if there is a track record to back it up. Cree is among the positive examples for making good on lab announcements. Cree has been pretty steady in announcing their laboratory results and consistently delivering on that about 12-18 months later. Similarly Philips Lumileds last year announced that it had a series of breakthroughs "now in the lab" that were supposed to lead to a substantial increase in luminous efficiency. Instead of showing up all at once in a new product, the individual ingredients appear as evolutionary steps during the course of the year. Those started appearing last February at Strategies in Light, when Frank Steranka shared the first results and those have continued to roll out during the course of 2007. Nichia is great at announcing a lab result for incredibly efficient LEDs (150+ lumens/watt, if memory serves), although those numbers appeared in relatively low power devices. They play things very close to the vest and continue to quietly win their share of the high-end lighting business. That's tough to do if you're not delivering on those expectations of continuous improvement.
The most recent announcement relevant to these awards came from LED Lighting Fixtures (LLF), and if they can be used as an example, we're pretty close to seeing some real leaps towards the goal. LLF's recent laboratory announcement covered a PAR 38 self-ballasted lamp producing 659 lumens on just 5.8 watts of wall-plug power. The 113.6 delivered lumens per watts is only 10 shy of that PAR 38 replacement target, although they will need to double the overall output reach the 1350 needed. They announced the result with a warm 2760K CCT and a CRI of just over 91, so that part is effectively nailed. How's their track record? In baseball terms, they've pretty much had one hit on one "at bat" with their LR6 downlight replacement. Neal Hunter brings his Cree experience to LLF, so one can assume he knows what's at stake for getting an announcement wrong. Perhaps more to the point, there is a lot of innovation going on, and if they don't get there pretty quickly, it's a fair bet that someone else will. The next 18 months should prove to be an interesting race...
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Copyright 2007 by Veriphos Communications. LLC
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