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Lighting
Developer is the leading destination in the SSL industry for engineers
seeking a total lighting solution. |
ElectroniCast Says HB LED Driver IC Market to Grow by 27 percent Per Year Through 2019
SSLDesign News Staff
February 20, 2013...Market research firm, ElectroniCast Consultants says that the worldwide total consumption value of HB-LED Driver ICs reached $1.79 billion in 2012. During the 2012-2019 timeline, the firm forecasts that the consumption value will grow at an average annual rate of 27 percent to $9.59 billion in the year 2019. These values refers to consumption (use) for a particular calendar year; therefore, this data is not cumulative data. The company defines HB LEDs as LEDs with an efficiency of 30 lm/Watt or more.
ElectroniCast says that the use of HB-LED Driver ICs in general lighting, as well as several other applications it studies, is increasing. ElectroniCast says for example, that in the general lighting application, the increase in consumption is initially driven from government-based retrofitting projects – then to commercial/business – and eventually to the consumer-level.
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Atmel Launches Two-channel LED Drivers for High CRI Lamps
February 19, 2013...Atmel® Corporation, a producer of microcontroller (MCU) and
touch solutions, introduced three new two-channel solid state
lighting (SSL) LED drivers.
According to Atmel the drivers provide accurate color control for
two-color LED light engines. In addition, the LED drivers deliver
the most efficient power management, with the lowest component
count, for high CRI LED lamps. The drivers are designed primarily
for general lighting, residential and commercial lighting,
architectural lighting, and mood lighting. The three drivers, the
AtmelMSL2021, MSL2023, MSL2024 all can be accompanied with an Atmel
AVR microcontroller (MCU) orARM processor-based MCU for a complete
system solution in a variety of luminaires and lamp
configurations.
The company says that the new MSL2021/23/24 LED devices have several
distinct advantages when compared to existing LED drivers:
The
devices drive one dominant LED string with a linear controller and
one color LED string with a low-side buck controller to achieve the
target correlated color temperature (CCT) Th They replicate the
color spectrum to attain a high CRI value. The devices have a
look-up table in the EEPROM so designers can program accurate
profiles to follow the desired CCT compensation curve, lowering the
overall bill of materials (BOM) cost. External MOSFETs allow the
choice of LED currents and LED string lengths. The drivers have
several dimming options and an I2C interface can provide additional
flexibility and control.
“White point control of an LED lamp is a key challenge for
designing high-performance general, architectural or mood
lighting,” said Tushar Dhayagude, Director of LED Products,
Atmel Corporation. “The MSL2021/23/24 LED devices address this
key issue by enabling the control of two strings, typically
comprising of white and red or amber LEDs, to provide precise
white color control, while providing extraordinary power
efficiency, flexibility and wide power levels for the lamps.”
Worldwide LED Component Market Grows 9%; Lighting Ranks First Among Application Segments, According to Strategies Unlimited
SSLDesign News Staff
February 19, 2013...LED component revenue for lighting applications reached $3.11
billion in 2012, narrowly dethroning the Large Area Display
Backlight segment at $3.06 billion, according to Strategies
Unlimited. The $13.7 billion worldwide market for LED components is
expected to grow to $16.4 billion in 2017, for a CAGR of 3.7%,
Stategies Unlimited predicts.
The company estimates that the total
illumination market for 2012 is about $14.52 billion. The LED
lighting market including LED replacement lamps and luminaires is
estimated at $11.72 billion—an increase of 26% between 2011 and
2012. SU projects this market will grow at a CAGR of 12% over
2012-2017.
Strategies Unlimited for the first time estimated the market size of
LED lighting outside the traditional replacement lamps and
luminaires, The company says that in 2012 this market was $2.75
billion in revenue for applications such as: decorative/festive/Xmas
light strings; tube lights that go into many untraceable
applications including signs; flexible tape and strips of LEDs sold
in applications ranging from step lighting to lighting stairs to DIY
cove lighting; and all other miscellaneous.
According to SU, commercial applications, the largest segment in
the LED lighting market, grew 72%. This is followed by
replacement lamps. Japanese market was the primary driver for the
22% growth in replacement lamp revenues worldwide from 2011 to 2012.
The slower growing segments such as emergency and industrial
lighting depend on the overall economic activity. SU says that
entertainment lighting was a victim of slow down in European
financial crisis, after the frenzy for the Olympics.
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P2 fixtures Brighten Lights and Save Energy at Indoor Tennis Courts
SSLDesign News Staff
February 19, 2013...
A recent lighting retrofit in four tennis courts at the Wheaton
Sport Center in Wheaton, Illinois, has made the lights brighter and
made it easier to see and strike the ball.
Precision-Paragon [P2]
of Yorba Linda, California manufactured the fixtures installed at
the tennis courts. According to P2, the fixtures reduce energy
consumption and maintenance costs.
The family owned recreation club is housed on 10 acres about 30
miles west of downtown Chicago. The facility boasts 14 tennis courts
including the four inside a permanent tennis facility. The center
has a full fitness facility, day spa, racquetball courts and two
swimming pools.
“Addressing the lighting issues inherent to indoor tennis
facilities really requires a focused discipline in the creation of
a custom-designed fixture,” said Randy Breske, [P2]’s outside
sales representative covering the North Central Region. “There
is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution.”
Peter Rimbos is a
national account sales representative for Facility Solutions Group
(FSG), the electrical and lighting distribution company that
specified the [P2] fixtures for the Wheaton Sport Center. FSG has
done a number of lighting projects at the center in recent years
including retrofits in the weight lifting and cardio rooms.
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GE’s Evolve™ LED Scalable Cobrahead Fixture Wins Best-in-Class “Roadway Lighting” Award in 2012 NGL Competition
SSLDesign News Staff
February 18, 2013...GE Lighting’s Evolve™ LED Scalable Cobrahead fixture has
earned a Best-in-Class designation in the “Roadway Lighting”
category in the 2012 Next Generation Luminaires™ (NGL) Solid-State
Lighting Design Competition. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America,
and the International Association of Lighting Designers, the NGL
awards were created to recognize excellence in energy-efficient LED
commercial lighting unit design.
GE points out that the Evolve™ LED Scalable Cobrahead fixture from
GE ecomagination℠, was among just four products that received a
Best-in-Class designation. These winners came from four different
manufacturers and covered four categories of outdoor lighting.
GE’s Evolve™ LED Contemporary Conical Post Top and the Evolve™ LED
Modular Area Light also lso receiving formal 2012 NGL awards
recognition. The Conical Post Top was noted for its uniformity and
glare control, and the Evolve™ LED Modular Area Light, commended for
its light distribution and color quality.
“The goal here is to recognize products that are not only
attractive, but that are also energy efficient and deliver good
lighting quality,” said DOE Solid-State Lighting Program
Manager Jim Brodrick. “It reminds me of football, where the most
effective quarterbacks aren’t just good passers — they can also
run well and see the whole field.”
The NGL Awards were presented Feb. 14 at Strategies in Light in
Santa Clara, California.
Robe Illuminates Sumafieldayze
SSLDesign News Staff
February 18, 2013...
At Summafieldayze 2013, a popular marathon dance music festival
staged at Doug Jennings Park, The Spit on Australia’s Gold Coast,
over 150 Robe moving lights were spread around multiple stages. The
moving lights included: the ColorSpot 2500E AT™, ColorWash 2500E
AT™, ColorSpot 1200E AT™, ROBIN® 600E Beam, ROBIN® 600
LEDWash
Electronic music legends like The Chemical Brothers, M.I.A, Fedde Le
Grand, Mark Ronson, Hot Chip, The Faders, Kimbra and many more
headed up the 24 hours of danceable music. Lighting equipment,
together with lighting production designs for the event’s three main
stage areas, was supplied by Clifton Productions, a high
profile rental operation based in Australia.
Stage One was based around M.I.A.’s spec and featured 22 x Robe
ColorSpot 2500E ATs, 8 x ColorWash 2500E ATs and 18 x ROBIN 600
Beams. The set centrepiece was an extensive upstage video wall. The
second stage was custom designed to accommodate the Chemical
Brothers’ unique and highly visible DJ show. Lights included
22 x Robe ColorSpot 1200E ATs, 30 x ROBIN 600 LEDWashes and 8 x
Robin 600 Beams.
Stage Three, where Hot Chip performed, featured 12 Robe Robin 600
LEDWashes, 16 x ColorWash 2500E ATs and 13 x ColorSpot 2500E ATs,
complete with 30 x 18 mm pitch video panels All of these
were controlled by a ChamSys MQ 100 console + wing, with a Catalyst
v4 media server for the video playback. According Robe and
Clifton Productions, the lights all stood up very well to the heat
and tough operating environment of being hammered for 24 hours
non-stop.
Our news features are reported
by the SSL Design staff writers.
For submissions or content suggestions, you can contact us using
editor -at - solidstatelightingdesign.com
For more information and to reserve promotion space contact
Info7 -at - solidstatelightingdesign.com
or call +1 (512) 257-9888
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Commentary & Perspectives...
The Mix of Thinking at Strategies in Light
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
February 21, 2013...It was an interesting week last week at the annual Strategies in Light conference and exhibition held in Santa Clara, California. The upshot of it is that the entrepreneur and "up and comers" are definitely keyed in to the concept of "smart lighting" but the components side, not so much. It's not that they aren't keeping it on the radar scope, it's more that they weren't fully represented in the mix of show-and-tell, especially given how much buzz it was in the conference. I suppose that's a natural process, as sometimes the leading edge doesn't have much to "show" since a lot of that edge is conceptual rather than real. So here's a bit on what we saw, and heard.
Technology... Progress continues, including one announcement timed with the show that Sharp was introducing a 100W chip-on-board LED that produces 14000 lumens (140 lm/W for those thinking slowly today). That was a great lead-in to some thought process asking: Will LEDs soon perform better than the market needs? In a nicely drawn "value wheel" we can see that compared to other sources, LEDs have great color quality, efficiency, size, lifetime, and such, with the only short comings being total lumens and lumens-per-dollar. Guess what semiconductor technology does really-really well over time? More "function" (lumens in this case) and less cost, time and time again. Under that scenario, LEDs become a big player commodity game, just as DRAMs, microcontrollers or even microprocessors have become. (Quick, how many microprocessor companies can you name...?). As that happens, this will transition in two somewhat parallel directions:
1) The cost optimization route, in which the "features" start to be carefully scaled to meet the market's requirements. You want a notebook with a DVD drive and lots of disk capacity? You don't find it for much less than $500, even though you know a $200 version could easily exist. If you want it cheaper, the features are trimmed (and we call them netbooks or tablets). For lights, it will be "how bright" or "how efficient" or "how small" as price points are settled on. The LEDs will be able to meet the requirements whatever the spec.
2) The mind-bending features route, in which art and style or form-factor and features all combine to create entirely new classes of lighting. Ceiling panels, or a "hidden" 14000 lumens from a square inch (combine that with some creative optics, and think about how few luminaires and corresponding power drops that will take to light something like a conference center). Intelligence and responsiveness to both the user and building level operating constraints will be other feature sets. Light that makes us healthier or happier... who needs oxygen? Stop in the "light bar" for a dose of performance-tuned photonic energy. How much will that all sell for? Who knows. People pay $6 for a feature-rich cup of coffee which makes you feel good (for a while) but unlikely there's anything healthy about it.
Health... We jest a bit about the "light bar" but as we've mentioned a number of times before, LEDs let us control and tune light to a previously unprecedented degree. The result is that we're going to learn a lot, and we'll probably learn it pretty quickly. It wasn't until 2002 that researchers discovered that our eyes contained non-visual sensors that control, in a round-about fashion, the hypothalamus and the pineal gland (the melatonin generator). 700+ experiments over 7 years revealed that non-visual response path is sensitive in the 446-477nm zone, so overlapping and just a little north of the typical "blue LED" sweet spot in most mammals. Most interestingly, blue narrow-bandwidth light is 8 or so times more potent than broad spectrum light for stimulating the pineal. So much for needing a "healthy dose of natural light"... you can just mainline some narrow blue for that melatonin kick. And the point of this isn't that we've now "found the secret" but rather than we didn't find this secret until the last 10 years, and even then, our "tools" in terms of intensity and color-controllable light were pretty crude even just 5 or so years ago. That suggests there is a lot more yet to find, and that will be an area to watch.
Market/Funding... The investor panel offered up a few interesting thoughts, headed up by a statement that the market talk has changed from lumens-per-watt to applications. What are we going to do differently? How will that overlap, engage or disrupt other markets? When you have "legacy" companies like Acuity, Cooper and Philips showing LED lighting as being 16%, 24% or even 30% (respectively), how much room is there for an LED pureplay to break into the top tier on luminaires alone? As we look towards 2014-15, things get exciting, and as Jed Dorsheimer aptly put it, "We really start looking at the nodes in the ceiling going digital," driven by the electronics in the sockets, not the light. And interestingly, while book values of SSL companies are increasing, there really haven't been any big realizations in terms of venture-backed enterprises in a liquidity event.
At the component level, the story is somewhat less exciting, as ASP's are projected to fall at a rate pretty much in line with unit volume increases. That's not a concern on its own, but there is a separate over-capacity story in China that plenty of people see as a ticking time bomb. There are a lot of unused LED production machines that someone is going to be putting to use as they learn how to turn the dials the right way. That suggests there could be a sustained period of "profitless prosperity" as that capacity is put to use, pushing down profits for all the LED manufacturers.
The opportunity isn't without challenges, but no one is suggesting the LED lighting industry is lacking opportunity. Channels will be shaken as existing approaches prove to be unprofitable or simply untenable (how does a maintenance contract company earn revenues in lamp replacement when there are no lamps to replace?). Maybe those folks become IT companies that remotely commission and then manage full building integration systems. Europe has long had a more streamlined path from the manufacturer to the customer, and LED lighting may just be the trigger for a full channel revolution in the US lighting market. Or maybe not. Building owners often don't pay the electricity bill on space they lease, but who wants to put in 7-20 year fixtures when they only have a 3 year lease? Challenges, challenges... but that's what makes it an opportunity.
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