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NIST Outlines Proposed Metric CQS to Replace CRI
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 15, 2010...The National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued a paper outlining the methodology for a proposed standard to replace the commonly used Color Rendering Index (CRI). Critics of the CRI measurement are quick to point out its limitations and the history of the measurement as a way to compare fluorescent lighting.
The NIST notes that CRI is a 40-year-old measurement that has issues when used to evaluate white LED lighting. The NIST's technical committee TC 1-62 concluded that the CRI score does not correlate well with the visual evaluation in many cases. Some of these cases include instances of color saturation and color shift that can change the color discrimination ability and visual clarity of a given light. In such cases a high CRI may not actually mean good light quality.
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Dialight's Introduces New ATEX Approved LED Bulkhead Light for Use in Potentially Explosive Atmospheres
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 15, 2010...Dialight is now offering its SafeSite Series LED Bulkhead luminaire with ATEX certification for Zones 1 and 21. It also complies with ATEX Directive 94/9/EC, which is obligatory for any equipment intended for use in potentially explosive atmospheres. The product carries "CE" marking as per the European Union Directive. The ATEX certification opens up an important market extension for Dialight.
Dialight points out that the LED technology used in the Bulkhead luminaire will deliver 50,000 hours of operation in a wide variety of applications, radically reducing lighting maintenance needs in comparison to conventional solutions such as HPS and fluorescent lighting. Dialight notes that its compact design makes it suitable for stairwells, platforms, exits, walkways, tunnels, subways and other confined or hard-to-access spaces.
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Luminus Devices’ PhlatLight LEDs Employed in Christie's MicroTile Display and Samsung’s New H03 Media Player and Projector
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 10, 2010...Luminus Devices reports that Christie Digital's modular display solution called MicroTile uses its PhlatLight LEDs in its PT-54 chipset. Additionally Luminus Devices announced that Samsung’s new H03 Personal Media Player and Instant Projector is powered by its PhlatLight SBT-16 LED chipset.
Christie MicroTiles are stackable, modular 40.8 cm wide x 30.6 cm high digital display tiles that can be clustered like building blocks to create a relatively seamless large screen of any size and shape.
Luminus says that Christie's MicroTiles remove the rigid mechanical requirements of competing technologies such as flat-display panels or LED walls. Chritie boasts that MicroTile enables solutions providers and designers to integrate displays in any shape and scale, independent of physical constraints, with applications ranging from digital signage and advertising, commercial displays, stage displays or control rooms.
Each MicroTile is an ultra-compact light engine combining Texas Instrument’s DLP technology with Luminus PhlatLight LEDs.
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Soraa Hires Former Intel Executive Eric Kim as New President, CEO
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 11, 2010...Soraa Inc., a UCSB spin-off announced today that Eric Kim, former Chief Marketing Officer at Intel, and Executive VP at Samsung would become President and Chief Executive Officer. Soraa was founded in 2008 by renowned semiconductor pioneers Professors Shuji Nakamura, Steven Denbaars and James Speck of University of California, Santa Barbara. The company, which is funded by Khosla Ventures, has established a vertically integrated fabrication facility with operations in California's Silicon Valley and Santa Barbara
Mr. Kim previously served as Intel's Chief Marketing Officer and head of global sales and marketing group. More recently, he served as senior vice president and general manager of the Digital Home Group.
Prior to joining Intel, Mr. Kim was executive vice president at Samsung, in charge of global marketing and business development in the digital convergence area. During his tenure there, Samsung became one of the world's fastest growing brands.
Mr. Kim will officially join Soraa on July 6th, 2010 and will work out of Soraa’s new corporate headquarters in Fremont, CA.
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LED Lighting is a Consultative Process...
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
June 10, 2010...One of the things that the LED lighting industry gets knocked for is "not having the standards in place" to make it easy on the lighting decision makers. First, that's simply not true, but a standards roundup can easily set you up for a full day of reading. More importantly, it appears that the perception is that solid state lighting should somehow be easier to implement that other lighting is. After all, electronics make things simpler, don't they?
It's a common misconception, or probably better, "selective memory condition", that technology makes things simpler. That's kind of like saying, "water is never dangerous", or for that matter, "water is often dangerous". Your choice. If you pick one, you're wrong, since it all depends on what kind it is, and what you're doing with it. As an insulator while you're working on power lines, it's kind of dangerous. In a water gun that kids are shooting each other with, not dangerous. Whatever we pick, can be taken to any extreme to prove or disprove the supposition, so please no letters from chemists to remind us that ultra-pure water is actually a pretty good insulator, or from safety freaks who can only envision the SuperSoaker Mk. XXLIV 400 psi model in the hands of 4 year-olds. In the middle 80% of the circumstances, common sense prevails in comparing the application with the risks.
Technology quite often makes things faster, or more efficient. An spreadsheet on my computer is a much faster way to add up columns, then sum then across, and find the percentage growth, but building the spreadsheet wasn't simpler than operating a calculator and pencil. Some level of specialized knowledge was needed. Once we know it, it can be simpler, but it's not automatic. You still have to figure out where to enable "auto set" on the clock for your DVD player (which is why many DVD players don't display the time, I suspect... the legacy of the flashing 12:00 on the VCR needed to be left behind to achieve true customer satisfaction). And technology does often make things simpler, but mostly from the maintenance stand point. Cars last longer and need fewer components for a tune-up. A refrigerator defrosts itself magically at 2am (there's actually a little heating element in ours that melts and evaporates what it's melting). Well-designed and constructed LED lights get installed, run for a decade, and then get replaced. Better technology and simpler maintenance don't necessarily imply easier installation, and definitely does not make for simpler selection. The more complex the technology, in fact, the more difficult the selection process may be, and the more likely you will need to tap your, or someone else's, expertise to make a good decision.
LED lighting is that way. Solid state doesn't mean simpler. I contend it does mean "better and more reliable" (when done correctly). So how does a facility lighting decision maker, for instance, figure out the correct answer? From the pure lighting aspect, they can rely on the same engineering approach that has worked for many decades. The concepts of beam angle and center beam candlepower, and foot-candles a the target, and light loss factors apply just as they always have. In fact, those metrics probably matter even more when you're looking at the increased acquisition costs of those "higher tech" LED-based lights. Precision matters. If you're used to winging it, you might be leaving a lot of money on the table that a lighting designer or other qualified lighting expert may have enabled you to save. "Too much light" takes on a increased significance when the cost per lumen is many times more than it was for the previous approaches.
More significant are the decision factors that are totally new in the lighting equation. Whose LEDs are inside. If you want them to stay the same color as they started, it kind of matters, since it's not a simple swap out. Whose drivers are inside. A bad ballast could be swapped out, but not so with bad drivers, especially when they may not manifest their inferiority until well past the warranty period. A 5-year payback isn't a payback if you only get a 4-year life from the product. How does the product look? Have shadowing effects been handled? Will it work with your dimmers or other controls, beyond just "theoretically"? All of those will be answers that come from experience, and most likely, the facilities expert or architect won't have that expertise yet.
So who does have those answers when it comes to LED lighting? Some lighting designers and some lighting consultants have the right kind of experience, and they're working to catch up (that's why they come to the SSL Summit series... NY agenda just updated!). Some solutions providers/sales organization, as well as some rep organizations, do have the answers, and you can tell which simply by asking how many different solid state lighting products, other than the lines they carry, they have evaluated and tested first hand. If it hasn't been at least double or triple the number the solutions provider is working with, they probably are short on necessary experience in separating the good and the OK, from the bad.
Finally, every quality manufacturer has the expertise, although they may or may not be active with the customers to apply it, if they have a well-trained rep/sales force that they have delegated it to. You also may run into the good manufacturers being less responsive than you might like, especially if you're working in the onesy-twosy mode. Just because a product is in volume production, don't take that to mean "in commodity supply". Some very sharp manufacturers are necessarily filtering whom they work with, as their solution is limited in the number of "cost effective" applications by the current performance and cost curves that the industry is handing them. A call for "can I buy a couple to try" might not be returned if you don't have the volume, or aren't providing the information that helps them to be sure your application meets their standards for success. Others may need to know that they will be able to actually "partner" with the user to assure a cost-effective retrofit and sensible deployment plan, since the last thing they want to see is a stack of luminaires returned because "they didn't work right" when they are working exactly as specified. For most applications out there now, adopting solid state lighting needs to be a consultative process to assure that the expected payback will really be achieved. There will be a number of segments that will move commodity at the point that simple price/performance surpasses the incumbents, but that will be a long while, yet. Even then, the more consultative suppliers will likely turn out to have ultimately more cost effective solutions because they will see that those solutions are correctly applied. The best answer for the business case to be real now is to not be small, and to tap real expertise.
To find industry quality, you might need to look to the one executive-level conference that demands it, SSL Design's 2010/2011 SSL Summit Series, September 14-15 in New York, and January 19-20, 2011 in Los Angeles. Speakers, showcase participants and even sponsors are vetted for their ability to show lighting decision makers quality LED lighting solutions, or to enable those solutions with quality componentry. Attendees will find not just choices, but the relationships that will bring success to their projects.
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