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Philips Lumileds Resuming TFFC Device Production; Wins Automotive Lighting's “Supplier of the Year Award” |
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Catalyst Semiconductor Wins “Product of Year” Award for LED Driver
LIGHTimes Staff
February 5, 2008...Catalyst Semiconductor of Santa Clara, California USA, has earned the “Product of the Year” award from the EN-Genius Network for its 7W buck LED driver, the CAT4201. The device won the award in the “Smartest Commercial Move in Switching Regulators” category. According tot he company, the device is smaller than the linear regulators traditionally used to control high-brightness lighting applications. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
LED Streetlights Found to be Effective but Too High Priced for Short Term Payback
SSLDesign News Staff
January 31, 2008...The city of Oakland, California USA and the Pacific Gas Electric Company, assessed the applicability of LED luminaires for street lighting. During the first phase of the study, the a team of researchers took measurements both before and after the installation of LED street lights in a parking lot on a public street. The researchers compared the conventional street lights to the LED ones that replaced them and decided that the LED street lights would be safe for installation on a public street.
Then, in Phase II, the researchers installed fifteen 78-watt LED luminaries to replace a like number of 121 watt high pressure sodium (HPS) luminaires (100 nominal watts) on Sextus and Tunis roads between Empire Rd and Coral Rd in a residential area of Oakland. To compare the streetlights, Sextus Rd was illuminated with fresh HPS luminaires on the eastern half and LED luminaires on the western half. The entire portion of Tunis Rd was illuminated exclusively with LED luminaires, while the adjacent Cairo Rd was entirely relamped with new HPS lamps. All of the street lights had heights of 28.5 feet, and they were placed at intervals of 110’, 120’, or 165’ between luminaires.
The researchers performed Photopic and scotopic illuminance measurements on a 395’ x 36’ grid over an area containing four luminaires. Variables such as ambient temperature were taken throughout the testing period. And the researchers measured the illumination in each part of the grid.
The researchers measured the electricity usage as well. The LED street lights were found to consum about 35 percent less electricity than the HPS models. The LED versions averaged 77.7 watts, about 43.3 watts less than the HPS luminaires that used 120 watts.
Based upon the measurements, the researchers estimate that each LED version of the lights used 178 kWH less than the HPS version.
The average Correlated color temperature of the HPS street light was 1991 K (warm yellow). The average CCT for the LED street light was 6255 K (cool blue)
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Nearly three-quarters of SSL Industry Insiders in Cree Survey Reported Growth of Greater than 20 Percent for 2007
LIGHTimes Staff
January 30, 2008...Cree, Inc. of Durham, North Carolina USA, a maker and developer of LED solid-state lighting components, announced the results of an independent survey on the adoption, deployment, and benefits of LED lighting. The survey was taken at the recent 2007 Hong Kong International Lighting Fair. According to Cree, the survey confirms the strong global growth for LED lighting applications and the public awareness of the energy-efficiency benefits of LEDs. Additionally, Cree said that the survey indicates that the adoption trend should continue through 2010. Among survey respondents, nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of respondents reported that they witnessed a growth rate in excess of 20 percent for LED lighting applications in their businesses over the past six months. About two-thirds of respondents (63 percent) reportedly believe LED lighting will comprise more than 50 percent of their sales or installations by 2009. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Osram Opto Semiconductor Gets Distributor and Marketer for India
LIGHTimes Staff
January 30, 2008...The German company Osram Opto Semiconductors announced that its Malaysian branch signed partnership agreement with Rabyte, a world class distributor and marketer of semiconductor products. Under the terms of the agreement Rabyte will distribute and promote the entire range of products from Osram Opto Semiconductor (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd. for India effective 1st, Jan 2008. Osram Opto Semiconductor is not just a maker of LEDs, it is the world’s second largest manufacturer of optoelectronic semiconductors for the illumination, sensing and visualization sectors. As part of the agreement, Rabyte will promote and distribute all of these product lines in India. SSL Design PageTwo members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
Austin Becomes Next LED City and Includes LED Lighting in Rebate Program Expansion
SSLDesign News Staff
January 30, 2008...The city of Austin, Texas USA , the capital of the U.S. state of Texas, has reportedly joined in Cree’s LED City initiative. Austin is the fourth-largest city in Texas with a population of 1.5 million and is among the fastest growing cities in the United States. Cree, Inc., announced that the City of Austin today joined the LED City program, an international initiative to deploy and promote energy-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) lighting. Austin joins Toronto, Canada, Raleigh, North Carolina USA, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, in evaluating and deploying state-of-the-art LED lighting technology in their municipal infrastructures.
In December 2007, the City of Austin and Austin Energy retrofitted a floor of the One Texas Center Parking Garage with 47-watt LED fixtures from Beta LED. LED fixtures have also been installed in a hallway at Austin Energy headquarters, in streetlights on Barton Springs, in the Palmer Events Center marquee sign, and in the water fountain at the new Palmer Events Center Park. Austin plans to have additional test installations throughout the City, including a portion of the lights surrounding the Lady Bird Lake Hike and Bike Trail.
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Commentary & Perspectives...
A Story of Recalls and Anonymous Tips
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
February 7, 2008...Any news organization gets a thrill from the possibility of "getting an exclusive", especially when it's not simply a press release that everyone else will have in their hands momentarily, but something you have to dig for to get the facts. The phone rings, a semi-anonymous caller whispers, "Hey, did you hear about the recall?" What does he know? When did she know it? Hey look, they faxed the copy of the letter that the customer's received. Time to put on the private investigator hat and trench coat and see what the word on the street is... or maybe it's time to grow up.
In case you missed that LED-related news, the case in point involved a limited set of Philips Lumileds Lighting's products incorporating their TFFC technology. A call to a company spokesperson clarified that there was a specific production time period involved, and that the company (not the customers) had uncovered a manufacturing issue. My simple paraphrase is, "They had some bad adhesive," and the result, uncovered in presumably diligent internal testing, was that sometimes the chips (aka "die") would separate from the substrate. For those of you who aren't coming from the semiconductor perspective, if you lose the bonding between the actual LED chip and the "carrier" it sits on, which holds it in place and dissipates the heat coming from inside the chip, things go bad and the chip dies (not plural of die, but more like "the sucker done be dead now"). A vast majority of the affected LEDs were still in distributor inventories, or in customer inventories, and not installed in an end product at that point. The update came in yesterday that shipping of the affected product lines is expected to resume before the end of this month, which is a number of weeks ahead of schedule (ref coverage).
So we're getting anonymous tips on this for exactly what reason? Is there a hope we'll set off half-cocked and report on it as some major scandal or cover up (since they didn't hold a press conference or broadcast a big news announcement when the recall decision was made)? Is there an expectation that we'll help a competitor bolster some kind of "Well, that proves our LEDs are more reliable" story they would like to share with anyone who will listen? Again, maybe it's time to grow up.
In fact, product recalls are probably more rare than the should be. Not that we hope for more, but realistically, even in the world of ISO 9000 type certifications, many manufacturing defects can slide right on through the system, often not becoming apparent until there are widespread field failures that allow manufacturers to connect the dots. (The ISO 9000 family of certification, by the way, merely demonstrates that the company has consistent processes, tracking and feedback incorporation methods in place, and does not guarantee the quality of those processes... just that if they are followed, issues should be able to corrected and quality should therefore improve over time). If you want to have a moment of fun, I'd recommend a Google or Yahoo search for Intel recall then AMD recall, Motorola recall, and continuing to replace that first word with Dell, Sony, LG and on down the line with any large manufacturer you can think of. Intel had to broadcast far and wide in several instances, since some of the affected products had made it into the hands of consumers. The scary prospect is not that a company has a recall, but that there are probably ones that should, but avoid it because they don't want "the bad publicity". Lumileds isn't pointing any fingers, but one hopes that if the epoxy that Lumileds was dealing with was contaminated prior to their receiving it, that the supplier is in contact with any other customers who might not have identified the issue on their own.
In our opinion, a product recall is between the manufacturer and its customers. The broader dissemination of the news would hopefully rarely be needed and should principally apply to circumstances where it may not be so clear where the affected products might have ended up. On other occasions, it may also be necessary to embark on a wider communication in order to set the record straight as to the extent of the affected products or the real nature of the problem. That's why our publications covered it, since the anonymous email tipsters and callers were obviously doing their best to "spread the word", we felt it our industry obligation to make sure the factual word came to light.
For our readers that are new to the LED or LED-based lighting worlds, the question might have popped into your head, "Is solid state lighting really ready for primetime when it comes to reliability?". The simple answer is "Yes it is." Any solid state technology will have its issues from time to time, and much like this one, they are and will remain to be transparent to the users because of the hard work of the reputable manufacturers and integrators to make sure its caught well before the product makes it to the field. When Intel's 1.13 GHz Pentiums glitched, or more recently Dell and Sony laptops were recalled because of fire-breathing batteries, we didn't all lose faith in the reliability and usefulness of our personal computers. We simply asked, "Do you know what caused it, did you fix it, and have you adjusted the processes to make sure that kind of thing will be caught before products leave the factory next time?"
And to the telephone and email "their product has a problem" tipsters out there... grow up. Spend your time improving your own product and get excited any time you can learn from someone else's challenges rather than your own.
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