Arian Duijvestijn, Senior Vice President of Philips Intellectual Property & Standards said, "\We are delighted that more and more businesses, from start-ups to larger companies sign up to the LED luminaire and retrofit bulb licensing program and recognize that working with us helps to speed up product development, lower costs and advance the industry. We warmly welcome our 300th licensee and are confident the program will continue to attract a wide variety of companies in the coming months with the ultimate goal of driving growth in LED lighting - the energy efficient lighting solution for the future."

According to the data from the survey, on average among survey respondents, lighting is left on in the workplace for up to 12 hours a day unnecessarily including in storerooms and warehouses. Ex-Or found that 17 per cent of those polled responded that their office lighting is sometimes needlessly left on for up to 24 hours a day. Furthermore, Ex-Or’s survey found that a staggering 44 per cent of respondents indicated that up to five unoccupied rooms at their workplace are left lit for significant portions of the day, and nearly one in five admitted more than 20 rooms are lit unnecessarily.

Jason Ng, marketing communications specialist at Ex-Or comments, “With UK businesses tightening their purse strings and urgently eliminating costs from their organisation, wasting so much money on lighting empty rooms is almost a criminal drain on resources. Worse, most companies are completely unaware of the issue.”

Statistics published by UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change in July 2011 show that across a broad selection of non-domestic applications, lighting represents, on average, 21 per cent of a building’s total energy consumption.

Not surprisingly, Ex-Or contends that batten mounted sensors with occupancy detection technology offer a simple solution to save and increase energy efficiency, as they reduce the number of rooms and length of time lighting is left on unnecessarily.

Ng continued, “Batten mounted sensors offer advanced occupancy detection technology in a quick and easy to fit package and can help companies eliminate energy and money lost to poor lighting management.”

Ex-Or notes that its BattenFit range can automatically switch the light on when someone enters an area, and switch the light off again when the area is vacated. More sophisticated variants, such as DSI and DALI-compatible BattenFit detectors, are capable of maintaining constant light levels by adjusting a luminaire’s output in concert with available natural light, further eliminate unnecessary use of energy.

The addition of reoccuring schedules enables users to calendarize popular timer settings so that repetitive, daily behaviors in the home, like waking up and going to sleep, are supported and enhanced by Hue without having to reset them each day. The timer function can now also be set to “randomize” lights to turn on and off at unexpected times when an owner is away from home for extended periods.

A new “synchronous scenes” feature works in the background to ensure that large batches of Hue bulbs change scenes in a smooth, immediate manner. The company says that now, pre-set scenes are stored in the bulbs themselves, eliminating a “wave” or domino effect that can currently occur as the bulbs relay a command among multiple bulbs throughout a home.

“People have really taken to Hue with the idea of connected lighting being a stepping stone to the connected home and in the last six months alone it has exceeded sales expectations by 300 percent,” said Ed Crawford, general manager and senior vice president of the Professional Channel, Philips Lighting Americas. “We have built a vibrant, vocal community at meethue.com and the feedback of those voices has been invaluable. The guidance given by our most enthusiastic users was a major factor in bringing our latest updates to life and we can’t wait to see what they think of next.”

Since publishing Hue’s open APIs on March 11, dozens of new apps have already hit the market. Some of these new apps now instruct the bulbs to coordinate with music and album art, adjust according to a person’s biorhythms, assist in planetary study, respond to spoken commands, and synchronize with television screens for an ambient, immersive viewing experience.

Philips says that with the recent proliferation of SDK-inspired apps and the new IFTTT (pronounced like “gift” without the “g”) partnership, the evolution of Hue apps is expected to continue. Users can share “Light Recipes” or “scenes” at meethue.com, IFTTT will make new API “Recipes” and apps possible that can prompt a user’s bulbs to behave in specific ways based on predetermined “Triggers” and resulting “Actions.”

By using conventional white LEDs in the FD version, Cree has brought down the price point by up to 25 percent compared to the TrueWhite versions. The Full Definition 4" and 6" recessed downlights have a slightly lower 83 CRI, and a somewhat shorter expected lifetime of 35,000 hours compared to the 50,000 hour lifetime for the TrueWhite versions. Cree says that the price reduction came primarily from the company's latest advancements in LEDs and driver design with full-system thermal and electrical integration, and allows the product to beat fluorescents on an initial cost basis, putting it in reach of wider range of commercial and residential applications.

“Cree is committed to delivering customers the LED lighting solution needed to fit their budgets and applications,” said Greg Merritt, vice president, lighting at Cree. “The new Full Definition CR downlights cost less than fluorescent alternatives and also use 20-30 percent less energy compared to the outdated CFLs they replace. With the low initial investment and good light quality, customers should never need to install an outdated fluorescent or incandescent downlight again.”

The Cree CR4 Full Definition downlight delivers up to 575 lumens and the CR6 Full Definition downlight delivers up to 625 lumens. Both models feature 2700k color temperature and are dimmable to five percent with most standard incandescent dimmers. The Full Definition downlights are qualified for both residential and commercial ENERGY STAR® standards. According to Cree, the new CR Full Definition luminaires can deliver payback against incandescent downlights in less than one year in many installations (Based on typical commercial usage of 9 hours per day and $0.11 per kWh electric costs and virtually zero maintenance). All the new TrueWhite versions of its existing CR Series feature a CRI of 90 or higher. The Full Definition CR4 and CR6 downlights and the new color temperatures of the existing CR4 and CR6 down lights are sold through Cree lighting sales channels and are available now.

For the UK part of the tour, Knight and Production Manager Scotty Ross worked with Lester Cobrin, White Light's Head of Concert Touring, to choose the layout of the lighting rig. After toured the show in America, Knight decided to turn to mostly LED lighting for the UK tour. "In the US, we used mostly conventional sources - incandescent pars and similar - which didn't give me a lot of flexibility and required constantly changing gels," Knight said. With the opportunity to design the new rig, she looked to LED technology.

Knight used the flexible LED-based lighting rig to create variety of looks throughout each performance which flowed seamlessly from one to the next as the Jackson 5 stars treated audiences to fan favorites.

Knight specified more than 30 of JB Lighting's VaryLED A7 Zooms for use overhead and on the deck. She employed the VaryLED fixtures for increased flexibility, vibrant colors, and wide angle coverage to give the show bright and bold looks. Knight used a dozen Pixeline 1044 LED units to display patterns and color effects. Martin Mac 2000 Profiles added further depth.

In addition to being impressed with the equipment's versatility Knight, was also impressed with the service and support of White Light. "As with every tour," she explained, "each venue brings its own challenges, but service and support from White Light throughout the UK has been outstanding. The knowledge and willingness of the staff was incredibly valuable, meaning any changes were handled with ease and efficiency. "

James Mckenzie, CEO of PhotonStar, commented, “We are already making good progress with Chromawhite and are on track to have both new installation and retrofit products available for the market in 2014.”

The first OLED products using rigid glass tiles are already on the market. However, OLEDs have also been produced and demonstrated (at least in the lab) on plastic films to create flexible light sources. It is expected that eventually, Flexible OLEDs could be produced at lower cost than glass-based OLEDs. Flexible OLEDs could be embedded into most kinds of everyday objects.

While flexible OLEDs have been successfully demonstrated in the laboratory scale by many groups (including CSEM), the Flex-o-Fab project aims to take them from lab to fab through the development of reliable processes for manufacturing OLEDs on plastic foils. The project will reportedly set up a modular, integrated pilot production line and associated manufacturing chain to achieve this. The Flex-o-Fab project will migrate existing sheet-to-sheet processes to roll-to-roll (R2R) production for a further reduction of costs and to enable high-volume production. The project will focus on lighting applications. The project participants hope to have a proof-of-concept pilot line operational by September 2015.

In collaboration with a range of partners, CSEM will contribute to develop new bonding-debonding solutions to facilitate reliable manufacturing of flexible OLEDs based on “foil on carrier” concept. The solutions developed will be compatible with the complete OLED processing flow. This will eventually provide the consortium with a reliable and roll-to-roll compatible handling method for OLED processing on polymer foils.

The move to GE’s energy-efficient LED lighting solution further enhances Las Vegas Sands’ comprehensive Sands ECO 360°Global Sustainability program that features an array of best practices in four integral areas—green buildings, environmentally responsible operations, green meetings, and stakeholder engagement.

“The team at GE Lighting impressed us with the range of products that help us conserve even more energy without sacrificing the high aesthetic standards that our meeting and convention customers expect of a five-diamond resort and meeting center,” said Norbert Riezler, senior vice president and chief procurement and sustainability officer at Las Vegas Sands.

May 16, 2013...As a result of a midnight premier of Star Trek - Into Darkness last night (this morning, technically), the forward-looking technology thoughts are flowing judiciously. Apparently I walked into the conclusion of the discussion on when and where the movie was happening, only to catch the part where I was being asked if I wanted to see it "when it opens". Lacking the context they thought I had overheard, I was inextricably offered the opportunity to earn the cool dad title (and it was indeed earned, while waiting to get in, as I showed the group of late teen to 20-somethings some tricks with the polarized lenses in the 3-D glasses). The movie is a must-see, by the way, for anyone clued-in to the backstory elements from the "Original" Star Trek movies' reality/timeline, of which this is a slight alternate. I did have to overlook what looked like a current generation swoopy T8 fluorescent fixture stuttering in the engineering section after the warp core was damaged in the treacherous attack... The solid state lighting in the 23rd century won't be re-striking as a result of the jolt, thank you very much. So from there I've been led to ponder what our LED "light bulb" should be doing for us in the future (and not the far future at that). The answer is "lots of stuff".

First, it will be important to set aside the fact that LED lighting visionaries insist that we'll simply "do light differently" and that we need to break out of the whole LED light bulb mentality. No doubt that is true, but no one is beaming our legacy technology away, so "differently" is more a matter of time, and it could be validly argued, a long time before light bulbs have been replaced by "something else" in both our homes and offices. We personally own table lamps that are probably 50 years old, and they aren't antiques, they are just "the lamps by the couch". Fresher ones in the house date back 15-20 years, with the newest fixtures (front porch, back porch) being the youngsters at 5 or so years. I believe the ceiling fan in our bedroom has been continuously spinning for 7 years, other than a 1 day period when it moved from the rental we installed it in over to the house we're in now. The point is that our indoor fixtures really don't wear out, and all are fresh enough to allow me to spin in at least one last bulb. If that has a nominal 25,000 hour life, I figure it's not going to be "driven" to change for the next 20 years or so (based on our 3 hours per night average use). Heck, given that the oldest floor lamp now has a Philips Hue installed, and with a recent iPhone update we have at least 3 devices in arms reach and available to control it, we actually are leaving the power switch on, greatly reducing the next most likely failure point. While our sockets will be disappearing at some point, that point will likely be a long time from now. Fluorescent sockets in many commercial spaces, especially T5's and T8's, will be similarly sticky, although the addition of more granular control capabilities that LED (aka "digital") lighting enables will provide retrofit opportunities ahead of simply waiting for the next interior renovation.

Residential markets - What do we want that bulb to do? Low power consumption, bright enough, good quality light, and useful for the variety of sockets that we have scattered around the house. That means dimmable on the ubiquitous TRIAC dimmer for the ceiling, as well as useful in a 3-way socket found in many table lamps. And there doesn't seem to be any reason that they can't also be fun, so something along the lines of a dimmable RGB-W configuration that also takes clues from the 3-way socket... and it communicates... to more than just "the controller" but with the big, wide world. There are examples of all the features out there now, most notably Philips aforementioned Hue for that communications and fun. Recent fun additions include "geo-fencing" so that your smartphone can trigger lights on or off as the residents come and go from the house, as well as support for If-This-Then-That (IFTT) to trigger events based on other events (our recent coverage here). Stock price hits a target, flash the office lights. Team wins, paint the house lighting the team colors). Cree, and probably a few lesser-known others, have recently hit that dimmable white part at a useful $10-ish price point, and at LIGHTFAIR we saw those 3-way and 75w to 100w replacement category "bright enough" introductions from Switch. Are we being unrealistic to envision a future that brings them all together into one affordable LED replacement lamp? That would be like expecting your cell phone to also take pictures, record movies, let you video conference, surf the web, watch movies and let you listen to music. I mean to be big dreamers, maybe we should also expect the phone to provide maps, point to point navigation as well as control your lights at home. So no, it's not unrealistic to expect the residential light bulb to handle the light, fun, dim, 3-way and communication, as well as adding in daylight or ambient light compensation and even other environmental sensing. My good old iPhone 3 had a stack of sensors and functions that were just waiting for apps to bring them to life, and there is no doubt our bulbs can and will do the same.

Commercial markets - Heavy on sensing, light on fun. It seems doubtful that the property operators are going to be very keen on creating the disco effect as the lighting color pulses to the music it "hears" through its microphone (just got that app for the Hue at home... hilarious fun to instigate a pillow fight with strobe mode on). But the tenants will be keen on the increased productivity that comes from more "effective" light. Whether it is better to be maintaining a constant ambient color temperature in spite of changing daylight, or modify the CCT as well as inject some additional "perky" wavelengths in those post-lunch sleepy times, we'll leave to the scientists to figure out. We will want the capabilities to be pretty much the same, whether retrofitting in a full LED-based luminaire, upgrading a troffer with a LED kit, or just swapping in LED tube. We'll expect them to integrate seamlessly into the control network, as well as operate with "coordinated autonomy", not needing to hear from "central control" that there is a particular amount of sunlight, or zero, one or a meeting's worth of bodies in the room. And since we need luminaires in every space, there is no reason that every kind of building-automation, environmental and security sensor that is practical should be integrated into the room's light. "A person-down sensor in every space" might be the battle cry (although one does have to wonder how it will respond when the boss starts doing his or her yoga... yes there will be unpredicted issues along the way).

Timing - Slower than desired, but faster than expected. It's inevitable, as technology advances often are. We expect a lot from our technology, and while we may want it pretty quickly, since we don't have it, we don't "miss it" for the lack. I still harken back to the year 2000 when I sat in a room of "normal" people here in high tech Austin, who were polled on how many had fast (broadband) internet in their homes. It was about 5-10% that had access of something other than dial-in, and at the then-blazing speed of 500K to 1Mbit data rates. A scant decade or so later, and someone without that data rate streaming into their pocket is considered the odd man out. Change is like that, and technical change is accelerating, not peaking by any means. We'll have our light bulb "egg-laying-wool-milk-pigs" before the end of this decade, with Grade AA quality on every feature. Need pictures of the strobing pillow fight? Just tell the light.