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DOE Revises L-Prize Competition to Allow Broader LED Sourcing Options
SSLDesign News Staff
June 30, 2009...The U.S. Department of Energy has revised the requirements for the L-Prize, a government sponsored competition to accelerate the development of efficient solid state lighting products to replace standard A-19 and PAR-38 light bulbs. The new rules have made it possible for non-USA based LED suppliers' products to be eligible as components in the winning LED light bulbs. The previous rules required that the LED die or chip must be made in the United States, essentially limiting the competition to U.S. companies using LED die from one or possibly two U.S.-based companies.
The revised rule now states, "A majority (≥75% by count) of the LED die or chip... must be manufactured in the United States. Or, the LED must be packaged in the United States. Packaged LED (also known as an LED device) refers to an assembly of one or more LED dies possibly including the mounting substrate, encapsulant, phosphor if applicable, electrical connections, and optical components along with thermal and mechanical interfaces. "
A third "or" condition in the rule revision effectively opens the door to non-US die and components by stating, "... Or, a majority (≥75% by subsystem and assembly cost) of the final product assembly/integration must be carried out within the United States. This includes all of the applicable: final assembly of the LED die or chip, packaged LED, optics, heat sink or cooling components, and driver and electronics." Eligibility is still restricted to US-based businesses, stating,
and In the case of a private entity, the entity shall be incorporated in and maintain a primary place of business in the United States; and in the case of an individual, (whether participating as a single individual or in a group)."
The rule leaves open the possibility of a U.S. based company purchasing die, packaged chips, or components from a company outside the U.S. and then either packaging 75 percent or more of the die or assembling 75 percent or more of the final lamp product (by cost) in the United States. With the revised rules, many more companies will likely enter their LED-based bulbs for the opportunity of a share in the $10 million prize that the US Congress has required the DOE to put on the table. The revisions also include new requirements in which the correlated color temperature specification is now accompanied by specifications for chromaticity, as well as refinements to the required center beam candle power (CBCP) with regard to PAR-38 entrants. DOE's L-Prize Rule Revision
Avago Announces 3-Watt Miniature High Brightness LEDs
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 30, 2009...Avago Technologies of San Jose, California USA, has released new miniature, high brightness 3-Watt LEDs for solid state lighting applications.
The new ASMT-Jx3x packaged LEDs measure 5 mm by 4 mm by 1.85 mm thick and can being driven to up to 700 mA to provide high flux output.
The company boasts that the reliable LED has a wide viewing angle of 165 degrees and a moisture sensitivity level-one (MSL 1) capability. According to Avago, the LED emitter is ideal for use in lighting applications where space is constrained and typical applications include: portable lighting appliances, street lighting, architectural facade lighting, retail display lighting, backlighting, and a wide range of specialty lighting applications.
The company says it offers good color and light output uniformity. Furthermore, the company contends that it has a maximum allowable junction temperature of 135 degrees-C and can deliver up to 160 lumens at 700 mA. It also boasts a high Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) resistance of 16 kV, which the company says makes it insensitive to ESD. The company notes that the 3W LED is compatible with standard SMT reflow soldering processes and comes in: red, red orange, amber, green, blue, royal blue, cool white, neutral white and warm white colors.
Company News Release
ON Semiconductor Introduces 10 A Supercapacitor-Based LED Flash Driver
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 30, 2009...On Semiconductor of Phoenix, Arizona USA, has introduced the NCP5680, a 10 A supercapacitor-based LED flash driver for ultra-slim cameras.
It is reportedly an integrated LED flash and power management solution with a 0.55 mm low-profile package. On Semiconductor contends that the new flash driver extends battery life and significantly improves digital photo quality
The driver is for photo flash and video light in ultra-slim camera phones and compact digital cameras.
The company notes that the NCP5680 can be combined with the latest thin, prismatic supercapacitors - such as those offered by CAP-XX and licensed by Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Japan with a capacitance of up to 0.9F at 5.5 V. The company says that these components can also be integrated with the high-power LED OSLUX from Osram, an LED specifically designed for camera flashes.
The company points out that cameras of 5 megapixels or more require a high-intensity flash and white LEDs can provide such a flash, but they require up to four times the power that a camera battery can support. On Semiconductor says the integrated driver can also power other high-peak-current circuits in portable systems, such as audio amplifiers.
“The NCP5680, combined with an ultra-thin prismatic supercapacitor, delivers an ideal LED flash and power management solution for slim camera phones and digital cameras,” said Marie-Therese Capron, ON Semiconductor director of low voltage power management products. “This total LED flash solution supplies comparable light energy to xenon flash, but with only half of the comparable solution height, and no need for an extra LED for video capture. Because the NCP5680 enables the Lithium-ion battery to support more power-hungry functions for a longer time, this new supercapacitor-based power management solution enables smart phones to offer ever richer functionality.”
Company News Release
LED Revenues from Notebooks to Reach Over $800 Million in 2010, Electronics.ca Says
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 25, 2009...Electronics.ca, a market research and knowledge firm, predicts that LED revenues from notebooks will more than quadruple from $200 million in 2008 to more than an estimated $800 million in 2010. The forecast comes from the company's new research report according to a new research report that is available at Electronics.ca, entitled "World Market for Optoelectronic Components".
Jamie Fox, a market analyst for the company, says that LED backlit notebooks made up about 10 percent of all notebook sales in 2008. He predicts that in 2010 LED-backlit notebooks will make up 50 percent of all notebooks sold worldwide.
The company points out that although LED solutions are more expensive than cold cathode fluorescent lamp backlighting, they have better power efficiency, offer better color saturation, are thinner, and do not use mercury.
The company indicated that notebook and desktop computer producer Dell, has already publicly committed to using LEDs in all their notebooks by 2010, and other manufacturers apparently have similar plans to at least increase the percentage of their notebooks sold with LED notebook backlighting in 2009 and 2010.
The company predicts that the market for LED Driver ICs in notebooks will reach over $50 million in 2010. Company News Release,
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Dr. Isamu Akasaki to Receive Inamori Foundation’s 25th Annual Kyoto Prize
LIGHTimes News Staff
June 23, 2009... Dr. Isamu Akasaki, a contributor to the commercialization of the blue LED, will reportedly receive the Kyoto Prize from the Inamori foundation for his significant contribution to the betterment of mankind. The $500,000 award will be given to Dr. Akasaki on November 10, 2009. The 2009 Kyoto prize marks the 25th anniversary of the prize which is given each year in three categories. Dr. Akasaki won in the "Advanced Technology" category for lifetime achievement and having developed GaN-based positive-negative (p-n) junctions in 1989 after a decade of research. This development contributed to the commercialization of blue LEDs in the 1990s. An 80-year-old semiconductor scientist, Dr. Akasaki serves both as a university professor at Nagoya University and professor at Meijo University in Japan. Inamori Foundation News Release, LIGHTimes SecondPage members login for more. Guests can view membership details.
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Brooklyn Bridge project frames thoughts on ways to eliminate over-lighting
Tom Griffiths - Publisher
July 2, 2009...Most public, and many commercial lighting projects are typically over-lit by about 30-60% to account for the future depreciation of the lighting sources due to lamp aging, lamp failures, and environmental factors (dirt, dust and such). While the lighting and transportation engineers usually have time-proven answers to how much light is comfortable, or which creates a safer roadway environment, there probably hasn't been much of a discussion about the drawbacks of over-lighting the site, since up until LED lighting's arrival, there hasn't been much of an option. In a recent discussion with Stephen Horner of Tillett Lighting Design, that company's approach to providing functional art highlighted some of the issues, plus it was a pretty neat application success story for solid state lighting.
The background of the story is set on the historic Brooklyn Bridge that connects Brooklyn to Manhattan in New York City. In the past, if someone were to stroll across the bridge to Brooklyn, they would walk down a set of step that takes them to the street level, give a quick look around the dark and somewhat foreboding underside of the structure, and head back up to get out of there and back to "where the action is". A group of merchants in the "DUMBO" (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) got together to try and change that with a sort of "there is more than just the bridge here in Brooklyn" messaging strategy. The concept was for an artistic treatment and information presentation that enticed people to take a few more steps, and enjoy some interesting shopping and dining as part of their 'beyond the bridge' experience. Working with Emphas!s Design and artists Linnaea Tillett & Karin Tehve the DUMBO Improvement District subsequently commissioned the design of a functional art project entitled "This Way".
The project consisted of a few key elements, including walkway lighting down to the street, signage that gave a bit of the Brooklyn pitch, roadway lighting to keep it all enticing, and most importantly, some striking light-tube designs that both pointed towards the stairway entrance, as well as visually took the arriving bridge strollers 'out this way' to see the sights. (The South Brooklyn Network website has a neighborhood-oriented overview of the project as well as a good picture). We'd all love to hear that the whole project was an LED winner, but alas, only part of the project was served by LEDs this time around. Low profile and side emitting metal halides grabbed the stairway and 'this way' arrows (maybe chevrons is a better word), while Beta LED's Edge luminaire took the downlight honors. According to Mr. Horner, who was responsible for the lighting implementation, two key decision factors made the difference to the designers. First was that the LED-based fixtures did a good job of keeping the light going where they were supposed to, pretty much eliminating undesirable glare levels. The second draw was that the Beta luminaires offered a two-level setting for their output, which allowed them to operate now at a level that didn't wash out the artistic features.
That's a very interesting development, as it provided a method of assuring a minimum specified light level now, along with a mechanism to accommodate increasing the light level in response to future degradation, presumably due to an accumulation of dirt, mud and dust that historically affects all kinds of light fixtures. Previously, luminaires met the Department of Transportation's requirement by providing at least 60% more light than actually needed, basically in response to the fact that any other form of high-efficiency lighting has just a single light output level when first installed, which will then depreciate from there as the lamp fades. The 60% margin is what the DOT has found gives them an acceptable service life without having to do frequent bulb changes, or to regular a cleaning cycle. The drawback is that it starts too bright, and wastes energy. LEDs provide a simple answer... when more light is needed, they can turn themselves up. As far as other challenges, Mr. Horner said, "Incorporating the LED lighting really just required us to convince the DOT that it was a viable approach, and that we'd done the due diligence required for that. They were positive about the reduced maintenance, and were very pleased to have an opportunity for an LED-based pilot program where someone else was covering the upfront costs."
While it's a simple concept, it is a revolutionary change to the high-efficiency lighting realm (incandescents do this well, albeit with a notable shift to the warm side of the color spectrum, but fluorescents resist dimming, and most others types of light sources simply can't dim). According to Beta LED's East Coast Regional Sales Manager, Michael Winegard, who started his career with Kramer Lighting prior to it becoming part of the Ruud Lighting family as Beta-Kramer, "We can finally get away from over-lighting our environments. The incumbent technologies never gave us the kind of control over the target efficacy that allowed us to deliver the light only where it was needed, and only in the amount that was needed. Compared to the sharp lumen depreciation curves in metal-halide and other systems, LEDs provide us with something more like 1/2% per year, pretty much eliminating source depreciation as a concern."
In the case of the "This Way" project, the two-level system on Beta's Edge offered a built-in contingency plan should the source depreciate more than predicted, or if it gets really crudded over. In other installations, such as parking structures, they make us of the two-levels to reduce the power consumption when there is no activity going on around the garage. A motion sensor is employed in those cases, allowing the luminaires to standby in a lower consumption power mode, then switch instantly to full brightness when activity is detected. Other manufacturers make use of feedback techniques to maintain output levels as the LED fixture reaches into that last third or so of its lifetime when the actual LED source depreciation may become noticeable. In those cases, the compensation circuitry directs more power to the LEDs to simply "turn them up" to a brightness level that maintains the spec, until they reach a point where the amount of power needed makes it more cost-effective to replace the unit. At that point, it switches them off (darkness being the universal signal recognized by maintenance crews worldwide that a light should probably be replaced). In interior architectural applications, we see similar techniques employed to maintain color accuracy. Cree's LR-6 retrofits, and their recently announced PAR lamp are examples of that capability as they add or subtract some red intensity to compensate for any changes to the tone or intensity of the white LEDs that are responsible for the blue-green-yellow portion of the fixture's output.
Regardless of the implementation, the understanding of this "target efficacy" concept is going to continue to be an important driver in SSL adoption. In a sense, it will take us back to searching out the truly basic criteria of, "How much light do you need, where do you need it, and under what conditions do you need it?" Lighting engineering manuals will see some major revisions as lighting implementors won't have to think in terms of how to overlap in order to minimize the hotspots or how much extra light you need to plan for degradation or how to compensate for re-lamping schedules that lead to a certain number of fixtures being dead at any particular point in time. In fact, we're not far from the time when the LED luminaire sends a text message to the maintenance group to inform them of when it will be failing, so they can efficiently schedule in the replacement before the darkness comes. (But that's another story...).
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