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Applied Materials Stops Selling Turnkey Solar Production Lines to Focus on c-Si Solar and LEDs
CompoundSemi News Staff
July 22, 2010...Applied Materials, Inc. announced plans to restructure its Energy and Environmental Solutions (EES) segment to focus on crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar and advanced energy, including LED technology. The restructuring is expected to decrease the company's operating expenses by $100 million annually. The plan is intended to make EES a profitable segment in fiscal year 2011. The company will discontinue sales to new customers of its SunFab fully-integrated lines (turn-key) line for producing crystaline silicon Solar. However, the company will continue to sell individual chemical vapor deposition and physical vapor deposition systems to crystalline silicon thin-film solar makers. Applied's solar R&D center in Xi'an, China will reportedly concentrate on advancing its c-Si solar and other technologies. Applied Materieals is expected to use money awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act towards improving the cost effectiveness of MOCVD systems, especially for the production of LEDs.(Ref: Coverage).
Barco Acquires Digital Signage Specialist dZine
LIGHTimes News Staff
July 21, 2010...Barco of Belgium, an LED display solution provider, has signed an agreement to acquire Belgium-based digital signage solutions company dZine. Through this acquisition, Barco has added advanced software tools for content creation to its digital visualization products.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, however Barco noted that the total acquisition cost at the time of the transaction is less than the annual sales of dZine excluding an earn-out provision over the next two and a half years.
Under the terms of the agreement, dZine's core team, based in Kortrijk, Belgium, will function as Barco's center of competence for digital signage technology.
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Cree Claims Most Color-Consistent LEDs
LIGHTimes News Staff
July 21, 2010...Cree of Durham, North Carolina USA, reports that it has added its smallest warm and neutra bins to its multichip XLamp MP-L and MC-E EasyWhite LEDs. Cree says that it can now offer a single two-step MacAdams ellipse bin per color temperature, optimized to achieve incandescent-like color consistency.
Cree contends that the new smaller EasyWhite bins eliminate the need to purchase multiple small bins and perform complex color mixing.
According to Cree, EasyWhite binning is a unique feature of Cree lighting-class multi-chip LED components that allows customers to specify a color temperature and lumen output for simplified LED system design and improving LED-to-LED color consistency.
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Cyberlux Enters into $3.4 Million Contract with National Guard Bureau for 200 BrightEye Dual Lighthead Tactical Illumination Systems Purchase
SSLDesign News Staff
July 21, 2010...Cyberlux Corporation of Research Triangle Park, North Carolina USA, a provider of LED lighting solutions, reports that the National Guard has purchased two-hundred Dual Head BrightEye Tactical Lighting Systems. Cyberlux says that the National Guard will immediately deploy the systems throughout the United States.
The company notes that various branches of the military have long recognized that its BrightEye is a dependable LED lighting solution because of the qualities it possesses that are unavailable in traditional lighting systems. Cyberlux says that its BrightEye Systems provide broad area visible white lighting and night-vision compatible IR lighting capable of operating all night on an advanced battery power system.
“Needless to say, we could not be more excited that the National Guard Bureau has chosen to purchase 200 of our Dual Head BrightEye systems for their tactical lighting requirements and we have already begun shipping systems. We intend on fulfilling this order flawlessly, as this level of exposure within the National Guard should allow us additional opportunities of the same magnitude throughout the military and governmental channels,” said Mark Schmidt, CEO of Cyberlux Corporation.
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How many lights in an airport?
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
July 13, 2010...Airports have begun making the news recently. Fortunately this time around, it's not for security challenges or full-body scan pictorials, but because they are picking up on the fact that LED lighting is a good idea that can reduce operating expenses and improve the user experience. Some of the more recent wins include Boston, Miami and Pittsburgh, where parking structures have been the first target of opportunity to "see the light".
In
the case of Boston's Logan Airport, with 30 year old lighting ("before"
picture at left) in the Terminal B parking facility, a lighting upgrade revamp
was going to happen either way. Dan Hallahan is the LEED accredited engineer
with engineering firm Fay, Spofford and Thorndike. Dan was responsible
for the overall lighting design, product recommendations and on-site evaluations for
the project, including a pilot installation to compare several different manufacturers LED fixtures. This was their firm's first LED lighting implementation, and they
were pleasantly surprised by the smoothness of the process, and the quality
of the result. "The main considerations included the payback period and efficiency. So prior to selecting the source, we reviewed options to reduce the lighting when it's not necessary. The options include using natural daylight along the parameter of the garage and using occupancy sensors to control the lighting. We designed an occupancy sensor network in the garage to switch large sections of lighting at a time rather than individual lights. If occupancy is detected within 80' of a neighboring section, that triggers the neighboring section to power 'on' allowing drivers ample time to react. With the LED solution, we were able to completely turn off all non-emergency lighting when the lighting isn't needed. We couldn't do that with metal-halide because they require a long warm up period," commented Dan.
The
fact that the Terminal B facility needed the update was key to solid state lighting
being able to take the win ("after" picture at left). Essentially,
Massport was able to consider the acquisition-cost uplift as a delta, compared
to the energy savings that would result. The payback was less than 5 years,
which Hallahan considered "a slam dunk" in terms of acceptable business
cases. Makes sense, considering the last installation had a 30 year life span,
so they didn't need to see 1-2 years to visualize the advantage. With about
8800 hours in a year, 5 years represents about 44000 hours, which would be well
within the product lifetime, given the dimming strategy that the design employs.
Interestingly, when I asked about the other main parking structure at Logan, while there could be an energy saving opportunity, the lighting installed there was "only" 10 years old, is running pretty efficiently, and wasn't likely to be replaced anytime soon. Make no mistake in assuming the incumbents are going to be easily knocked aside. LED lighting can bring a lot to the table, but it faces more than just simply economic decision criteria.. Even when the payback might be clear, whether it is 2, 5 or 10 years, a lighting retrofit is a big task, takes a lot of resources, and is a distraction to the day-to-day business that goes on in a facility. Plus it takes money. Lots of it, and whether it is accomplished with good quality metal halide fixtures (at $300+ a crack) or LED luminaires (not bad, but still more than that), it's not complicated math to figure out that anything over a few thousand fixtures makes it over a million dollar deal. That's not money that's spent lightly, and if it's not handy, it won't be spent at all, regardless of the payback. Municipalities and port authorities are running on tight budgets, and if the capital appropriations aren't there, they have to pursue a nontrivial approval process which may include submitting a bond issue to the voters. But if you need to replace the installation anyway, the delta in those capital budgets becomes substantially lower, and the door opens much wider to the LED lighting alternatives.
Why are we seeing this high-profile upswing? In a word, it's belief, according to BetaLED East Coast Regional Sales Manager, Michael Winegard. Michael oversaw the Terminal B win in Boston, and has reportedly just gotten the nod to equip Logan's new economy parking structure as well as an existing parking structure at Portland Maine's airport. He tells us it's a very different world from two years ago. As the ground was being plowed "back then", it really was a process of enticing the potential users to simply open their minds to the possibility that these new LED lights could be a good idea. While the semiconductor industry had its own track record, LEDs were generally considered to simply not be ready to produce the amount, quality and reliability of light that the incumbents had been delivering for decades. But the industry did well to promote installations and learn from their missteps, and a positive track record began to emerge. "Now, the industry has high profile installations and large scale wins that it can point to, including the I-35 bridge in Minnesota, the city of Anchorage, Alaska and very notably, the City of Los Angeles that is moving ahead with its wide-scale streetlight retrofit plans. Municipalities and facility managers are willing to listen to the full business case simply because there is enough success that indicates the technology works and can be relied on."
So progress continues and airports are on the radar scope. With 3000 or so publicly operated airports, as we move from the parking structures to the ramps, taxiways, runways and eventually on inside the buildings, there is still a bit of room in the opportunity...
Don't miss the 2010-2011 SSL Summit Series, kicking off in New York City, September 14-15. One of this year's highlighted speakers is Margaret Newman, Chief of Staff for the NYC Department of Transportation. Margaret, who is also quite influential in New York City's overall lighting initiatives, will be able to share the methodology and status of their outdoor LED lighting retrofit programs. Installations include the US DOE cooperative evaluation program on the FDR Expressway, as well as some walking path and sidewalk installations around the city. How big is the NYC opportunity? Only a 10 states have a larger population then New York City does on it's own, so it would seem worthwhile to find out the details... www.SSLsummit.com
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