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Editorial:
Lame news update: LED traffic signals and snow stories miss the big picture
... December snows blew up some interesting news as a year-end reminder that even when you're doing things right, critics make their living off criticizing, not praising. In this case, the 'big news' was that LED traffic signals, the SSL industry's poster child of adoption curve success, don't melt snow.... Read the editorial...
(if it resists... go here)
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The
2010-2011 Summit Series is ready to succeed... are you?
After the successful 2008 launch and 2009/2010
expansion of Solid State Lighting Design's
SSL Summit in New Jersey, the feedback remains consistent: Just what we
needed, do it again soon. The Summit brings together lighting decision makers
with industry thought leaders, pioneers, and innovators from the across the
solid state lighting eco-system. Read
the 2009 conference report...
Following our changes in 2009, 2010-2011 will
continue to be all about quality, quality, quality.Showcase
participants and sponsors are vetted to separate the wheat from the chaff
(have your IES LM-79 test reports ready!). The 2010-2011 Summit includes NY/NJ
in September and LA/Long Beach next January. Look into the series information
at www.SSLsummit.com for the details.
Sponsorships are available for the full series.
Veeco Awarded $4M in R&D Matching Funds from DOE for SSL Manufacuturing CompoundSemi News Staff
January 25, 2010...Veeco Instruments Inc.was awarded $4 million in R&D matching funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by the U.S. Department of Energy for solid state lighting projects.
The company of Plainview, New York USA, produces metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) systems.
Veeco is among 8 companies to share in $23.5 million for research and development of manufacturing equipment, processes, or monitoring techniques used in the production of solid state lighting. The research and development efforts among the eight companies is focused on achieving significant cost reductions and enhanced quality of solid state lighting products.
(Ref: LIGHTimes Article).
Congressman Rush Holt, who represents New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District commented, “In a few years, LED lighting will be everywhere, and New Jersey should be in the forefront of creating the jobs that will make it happen”
Veeco’s proposal was aimed at driving down the cost of high brightness LEDs through the advancement of its metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technology.
Veeco says that the overall objective of its two year program is to develop high-volume MOCVD systems that provide a 4X reduction in the cost of epitaxial growth for LED devices, with the ultimate goal of a 10X reduction in LED costs. Veeco will partner with Sandia National Laboratories on this project.
According to John Peeler, Veeco’s CEO, "The funding will support the retention and creation of jobs in Veeco’s Plainview, N.Y. and Somerset, N.J. facilities."
Veeco News Release
January 26, 2010...Marl International of Ulverston, UK has been awarded the Passenger Comfort Innovation of the Year award for its 'Sci-Light' LED lighting technology, at the 2009 Railway Interiors Expo 'Innovation & Excellence' Awards, held on 25th November 2009 in Cologne, Germany.
Porterbrook Leasing Company successfully tried Marl’s winning Sci-Light LED lighting on a Class 323 unit used in the West Midlands area. Marl says that theT Sci-Light system replaces a 36W or 40W fluorescent tube with an intelligent LED system having a maximum power rating of 21W. Marl International News Release,
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Lighting decision
makers deserve quality answers, not hype...
Lighting
decision makers for 200 million+ square feet
of commercial property will be represented at the SSL industry's quality-focused
"insiders meet", September 14-15 in New York City...
They
are looking for the keys to quality in LED lighting, and you can not
afford to miss it. Just one look at the special
guests and NY
Summit agenda, and you will know why you need to be there in September!
Building on the continuing success of this first-of-its-kind event,
the 2010/2011 Summit series will again deliver the highest quality
agenda and attendees in an unsurpassed networking environment. We
have expanded the Summit to "take it to the facilities decision
makers" in NY, and quality oriented suppliers need to be seen. See what you need to be part of at
www.SSLsummit.com
LedEngin Inc. Offers 365nm UVC Power LED Which Provides 700mW from Single Emitter LIGHTimes News Staff
January 26, 2010...LedEngin Inc., a Santa Clara-based provider of UV LED emitters,
has made available 365nm UVC LED emitters in single and multi-chip packages. The company claims that it is the first LED manufacturer to deliver record flux numbers up to 700mW at 365nm. The company further boasts that the newly available UVC LEDs have the highest flux densities available today equating to 2300 mW/cm2. These products can be utilized in applications for adhesive and paint curing, sterilization, skin treatment, forensics particle detection, currency verification, fluorescence and blacklight blue.
"Our new 365nm UVC LEDs utilize LedEngin's proven highly reliable LED packaging technology with low thermal resistance, UV- resistant glass lens, and compact form to produce the most robust, highest flux density UV LED available today," said Uwe Thomas, Director of Technical Marketing, LedEngin. "Customers have been waiting for this specific wavelength to replace expensive, power-hungry and toxic Mercury lamps in a range of curing, medical and security applications. Our LEDs deliver the performance to shorten curing times, improve visibility in forensics and security applications and increase detection distances."
LedEngin 365nm emitters feature rugged, reliable performance in a compact form factor, which the company says provides record flux densities with exceptional optical system efficiency. The RoHS compliant devices has a
surface-mount ceramic package with integrated non-degrading glass lens. It is rated with a JEDEC Moisture Sensitivity Level 1 for unlimited shelf life.
LedEngin News Release
QD Vision Receives $3 Million from DTE Energy Ventures for LED Technology Commercialization Ramp Up LIGHTimes News Staff
January 21, 2010...QD Vision, Inc. of Watertown, Massachusetts USA, a developer of Quantum Light™ nanotechnology-based products for solid state lighting and displays, reports that DTE Energy Ventures has invested $3 million in the company. QD Vision says that the funding will support its market expansion of quantum dot-based nanomaterials that enable very signficant efficiency gains in solid-state lighting and flat panel displays.
The investment follows a $10 million initial close of funding announced last month by the company.
Knut Simonsen, president, DTE Energy Ventures, said DTE Energy is pleased to partner with QD Vision and its highly talented team. “QD Vision’s Quantum Light™ platform will help lighting and display manufacturers reduce the carbon footprint of their products even as they continue delivering higher quality, better efficiency and lower costs for customers,” Simonsen said. “This technology promises to set a new standard for these multi-billion dollar global industries.”
Mike McNalley, Director of Energy Efficiency and Business Energy Services, DTE Energy, said “We look forward to creating more LED lighting options for our customers with QD Vision products. We plan to encourage QD Vision to team up with Michigan based LED lighting companies and broaden their market reach.”
QD Vision’s first product which was unveiled in 2009, is a Quantum Light optic for a new high- efficiency, high-color-quality LED lamp developed by Nexxus Lighting, Inc. The company points out that the Quantum Light combines the warmth and color of incandescent bulbs with the efficiency of LED technology. QD Vision expects to ship the lamps in the first quarter of 2010. The lamps can be directly installed in standard Edison sockets used by today’s incandescent bulbs. Meanwhile, QD Vision is actively working with several major manufacturers to design its Quantum Light optic into a number of SSL lamps and fixtures.
Company News Release
New Audi A8 Lights Road with LEDs from Osram Opto Semiconductors LIGHTimes News Staff
January 21, 2010...The new version of the Audi A8 sports LEDs from Osram Opto Semiconductors (Osram). The LEDs are responsible for the dipped and full beams as well as for other specific lighting functions. Osram points out that the LEDs are highly efficient and have a long-life, which exceeds that of the vehicle. Plus, they reportedly emit light similar to daylight, which the company says improve motorists’ safety.
According to Osram, the light emitted from the LEDs illuminates the road surface with perfect definition, without glare, and it enhances perceptions of contrast.
Osram says that the LEDs make replacement virtually unnecessary, and their improved efficiency is ultimately reflected in the gas mileage and the car's CO2 emissions.
As with other current Audi models, the A8 features LED daytime running lights installed in the headlamps. In the new high-end A8 Osram LEDs now take on further lighting functions in the headlamps in addition to dipped and full beams are based on the energy-saving LEDs from the Ostar headlamp product platform. The motorway beams, cornering lights and all-weather lights are handled by LEDs. Osram notes that the individual light sources visible in the headlamps distinguish the Audi noticeably from other automobiles at night. Osram Opto Semiconductors News Release
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Magnalight.com Adds Multi-Purpose Underwater LED Light LIGHTimes News Staff
January 21, 2010...Larson Electronics’ magnalight.com has introduced the LEDEUL4 underwater LED light for wet area and submerged applications. The 12-watt LED light can be configured with visible, color, or infrared LEDs. It operates on a range of 9-32 volts and produces up to 720 lumens. The round light measures 4.25 inches in diameter and 1.25 inches thick and is mounted with three through holes. It features an aluminum housing with anti-corrosive coating. The sealed junction box design eliminates the need for ‘bedding’ concerns and ensures watertight and moisture tight design.
According to the company, the new LEDEUL4 LED underwater light is rated for operation to 60 meters in depth. The specialized housing design with sealed off junction box guarantees watertight operation above and below water. While many LED underwater lights can operate only underwater for cooling purposes, the LED-EUL4 underwater LED light can operate above or below water. Offered with several different LED options, including white, blue, green, amber and infrared LEDs. The light draws only 1 amp on 12 volts and runs on 9-32 volts, which makes it suited for low voltage operation on line supply or battery banks.
Larson Electronics News Release,
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Veeco Launches TurboDisc K465i GaN MOCVD System CompoundSemi News Staff
January 20, 2010...Veeco has introduced the new TurboDisc K465i gallium nitride (GaN) Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) System for the production of high-brightness light- emitting diodes (HB LEDs). Veeco reports that its beta site customers rapidly qualified the K465i for volume production, and the Company has received orders for the system from multiple LED customers throughout the Asia Pacific region. According to the company the system is based on its production-proven K-Series platform and it combines high productivity with the capability to drive LED yields approaching 90 percent in a 5nm bin. Veeco says that the fully automated system requires only a short recovery period after maintenance and enables higher productivity and reduced cost of ownership compared to competitive tools.
According to Bill Miller, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, General Manager of Veeco’s MOCVD business, “With superior wavelength uniformity and excellent run-to-run repeatability, the K465i extends Veeco’s lead in capital efficiency – the number of good wafers per day for each capital dollar – for high volume LED manufacturers. We are extremely pleased that our beta site customers achieved world-class results in a very short period of time. Industry interest in the K465i is strong.”
John R. Peeler, Veeco’s Chief Executive Officer, added, “The K-Series is a robust, reliable, multi-generational MOCVD platform that is in production at more than 80% of the world’s key LED manufacturers.”Company News Release
Department of Energy Announces Selections for SSL Core Technology Research, Product Development, and Manufacturing SSLighting Design News Staff
January 19, 2010...U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced more than $37 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support high-efficiency solid-state lighting projects. This announcement outlined the sixth round of funding for the DOE's core technology research and product development, which has the goal of advancing the technical knowledge base of LEDs and OLEDs and SSL components, the developing a manufacturing base for SSL products in the U.S., and creating jobs. In addition to being the sixth round of the DOE's funding for SSL Core Technology, it marks the first time that DOE has funded solid-state lighting manufacturing development projects.
Three of the projects will receive $4 million to focus on the core technology research to advance the technical knowledge base of SSL for general illumination purposes. These projects will place particular emphasis on meeting efficiency, performance, and cost targets. Six of the projects will receive a total of $10.3 million to focus on the development or improvement of commercially viable SSL source, component, or integrated luminaire products. The eight remaining projects will get $23.5 million to focus on achieving significant cost reductions and enhancing quality through improvements in manufacturing equipment, processes, or monitoring techniques. The projects will also leverage $28.5 million in industry cost share.
DOE News Release,
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GE Merges LED and Fixture Businesses to Form GE Lighting Solutions LIGHTimes News Staff
January 19, 2010...GE Lighting, a unit of GE Appliances & Lighting has merged with GE's (LED) systems operation, Lumination to establish GE Lighting Solutions. The new company combines Lumination, based at GE Lighting’s world headquarters in Cleveland, and its commercial and industrial fixture group, GE Lighting Systems in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
David Elien, previously president and CEO of Lumination, now serves as president and CEO of GE Lighting Solutions, while Paul Morse, formerly president of GE Lighting Systems, leads commercial efforts as vice president of sales and Hendersonville site leader. The full integration of the businesses is scheduled to be completed in the first half of 2010.
“The value of energy-efficient lighting solutions has never been more apparent to businesses and consumers,” commented Michael B. Petras, Jr., president and CEO of GE Lighting. “Through GE Lighting and our new GE Lighting Solutions unit, we’ll continue to provide innovative GE-quality solutions for customers who want to optimize energy efficiency and pursue energy cost savings, while having less of an impact on the environment.”
“We like how GE Lighting Solutions positions us to do even more for customers right out of the gate,” added Petras. “We have a head start in these market segments because we’re combining our specialized LED application expertise and our penchant for quality with our outdoor fixture heritage and established distribution.”GE Lighting News Release
Bridgelux Names New CEO and Raises Additional $50 Million Series D Financing LIGHTimes News Staff
January 19, 2010...Bridgelux, a developer and producer of LEDs and LED light engines for the lighting industry based in Sunnyvale, California USA, reports that William D. Watkins was named CEO, replacing Mark Swoboda. Mark Swoboda served as company president since June 2007, and he will remain the company president leading product development, R&D initiatives and sales and marketing efforts.
The company also announced that it has successfully raised an additional $50 million Series D financing, led by VantagePoint Venture Partners. DCM and all other existing investors also participated. The round, which is oversubscribed, also included new investors. The company says it intends to use the capital to aggressively develop its manufacturing technologies and expand its global manufacturing infrastructure to meet increasing market demand while continuing to drive its technology research and development activities.
Previously Watkins served as CEO at Seagate Technology, the largest hard disc drive and storage solutions company. During his 13 years at Seagate, Watkins, reportedly led growth strategies and improvements across all areas of the business, increasing revenue from $6.5 billion to over $13 billion in his five years as CEO. Prior to his position as CEO, Watkins served as Seagate's president and chief operating officer between 2000 and 2004, where he was responsible for the company's hard disc drive operations and transformed its manufacturing processes to yield significant increases in capacity and efficiency.
"Bridgelux experienced substantial growth over the past two years and has achieved scale and a perfect market position given the opportunity we have in the near term," said Bill Watkins. "We intend to seize this opportunity and dramatically grow the company. I look forward to working with the team to build upon the strong foundation they have established. In the coming weeks we will be announcing several initiatives that will further underpin our growth strategy as we pursue this huge market opportunity." Bridgelux News Release
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Commentary & Perspective...
Lame news update: LED traffic signals and snow stories miss the big picture Tom Griffiths - Publisher
January 14, 2010...December snows blew up some interesting news as a year-end reminder that even
when you're doing things right, critics make their living off criticizing, not
praising. In this case, the 'big news' was that LED traffic signals, the SSL
industry's poster child of adoption curve success, don't melt snow. The reporting
told us that because LEDs use so much less power (true) that they generate less
heat than the old incandescent bulbs (true) and don't melt the snow off the
traffic signal lenses (true) like the incandescent bulbs did (hmmm... do they?
always?). The news made headlines that labeled them as "unintended consequences"
as though this good idea was suddenly a bad idea because the new thing didn't
do something that the old is presumed to have done. I call that 'missing the
big picture'.
First and foremost, let's make it clear that the fact that LED traffic lights
don't melt snow does not come as a surprise to anyone in the LED traffic signal
business. They kind of knew this, and as I polled around some folks that are
or were involved in the LED traffic signal market, this also wasn't a surprise
to the customers (typically municipalities) either. One source reported that
over a number of years, they had only gotten one request from a customer in
Canada to propose a way to melt snow on the signals. In that case, the customer
decided it wasn't worth the additional cost to deal with it. What, not worth
the cost? They must have been looking at the big picture.
To simplify the discussion, although I truly tend to doubt that incandescent
signals always melted the snow off (is that yellow light really on long enough
to generate enough heat to melt accumulating snow), let's unconditionally grant
that incandescents did and LEDs don't. I know first hand that it's not true,
having lived in the Lake Tahoe California area for a winter a few decades ago.
Good snowstorm, steady wind, and some traffic signals were obscured. Seems to
me that's why they invented the brake pedal. But, let's go ahead and grant the
old stuff a pass and claim they were always snow-free. From that position, we
can launch into the other half of the story that wasn't reported... the LEDs
are probably saving many more lives by simply being on in the first place, than
they would ever cost due to rare snow obscuration events. Heck, one could claim
that electricity is the culprit, if anyone has ever been injured in a traffic
accident when the power failed and the signals went dark. It might sound something
like, "Before these ee-lectric traffic signal thingies, we'd only have
that old, reliable stop sign, and never have we seen one of them fail... well,
except when people didn't see it and would run right on through it."
So here's the truth... the LED traffic signals seem to have an incredible ability
not to fail (7+ years and counting for many). Incandescents failed regularly,
but unfortunately not like clockwork. Given their on-off cycle, reports seem
consistent that they would typically have a 8000 hour life span, or a year or two, depending on the cycling. That suggests that any individual signal
could be expected to go dark for some portion of at least a, if not longer, once a year. If
we make an optimistic guess that they would be dead at least 4 hours before
the city repair crew got around to them when they failed during the day, and
say something like 10 hours average when they failed at night, we have something
we can get our heads around. Average of 4 and 10 is 7 hours per year,
that any given signal is going
to be dead... not signaling... presenting the opportunity for someone to run
them and crash into someone else. If red
and green are equally important, that's potentially 14 hours of "danger"
per signal head each year. 14 hours with some certainty, versus a few hours
if a once in a great while snow storm with just the right kind of snow and wind-angle combination hits on a particular year (presumably in the kind of storm that thins traffic to virtually zero, and if you're driving, common sense suggests no one can stop predictably). Bear in mind
that much of the US, from the west coast, across the mid-south, and on to Florida
rarely sees snow, and if it does, it won't ever reach the magnitude
needed to block the light from a traffic signal. But those same states would
see just as many incandescents fail for just as many hours each year. Heeellllooo?
7 years, some rare darkness on some heads due to a rare snow event every few
years, versus a predictable period of dark from every signal everywhere, every year. Which one is dangerous?
Can you hear us media? We lost one life in 2009, but how many did we save since
those LED traffic signals were installed?
So, can we do better? Maybe, but at what cost to get to "never fails to
signal"? $100K in this city, $200K in that one... Is that money best spent
on preventing the possibility of snow accumulation in the next blizzard because
one person in the US, as unfortunate as that is, had their death attributed
to an obscured traffic signal in 2009? Could those hundreds of thousands perhaps
be better invested in an extra ambulance in an underserved area, or perhaps
in adding another police officer, or even more to the point, in adding a traffic
signal to a current high-risk, uncontrolled intersection? Big picture.
As an industry, let's make sure we don't get caught up by what the critics
may turn into the 'potential for the disaster' story of the day. It doesn't
matter if it's "if you stare at an LED, it could blind you, and now we've
installed them in our TVs!" or "they're talking about LED automobile
headlights, and we all know that LEDs can't melt snow off of traffic signals,
so what's going to happen in our cars!" Yep, we've kept that one in sight
for years, and that one does need to be solved before LEDs can work there. We're
keeping the big picture in mind, and we just need to share it every chance we
get.
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