Lighting News Roundup (9 Stories)
May 15th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan
There’s been a lot of energy-efficient lighting news in the past week or so — there was a big lighting event in Las Vegas last week (Lightfair International 2012), and there was big news from other parts of the world as well. Here’s a quick roundup of some of the stories:
1. TerraLUX Inc. announced that “its award-winning Line Voltage Linear LED Engine and coordinating Retrofit Kit have received UL1598C Classification and are now shipping.”
2. AEG Power Solutions (AEG PS) announced “an LED power supply engineered for a life expectancy exceeding that of the LEDs themselves and even the life of the application they are used in. The EP100D Series of long-life, high-reliability, high-performance LED drivers has the highest life expectancy on the market today.”
3. GE unveiled and LED replacement for the 100-watt incandescent light bulb. The LED “packages 27 watts of input power in a standard “A-19” bulb shape. The GE Energy Smart® 27-watt LED bulb incorporates proprietary synthetic jet technology that was enabled by GE’s collaboration with ecomaginationSM Challenge winner Nuventix, creator of LED cooling technologies for energy-efficient lighting.”
4. The Philips EndurLED 100-watt-equivalent is expected to be released this Fall. “The company will add to its EnduraLED line with a lamp that gives off almost 1,700 lumens, or about the amount of light as a 100-watt incandescent, and consumes 23 watts. The product will be available this fall. Philips did not disclose the price but it is expected to be in the $40 to $50 range.” This follows the release of its LPrize LED winner.
The difference between the EnduraLED and the LPrize LED bulb, which gives as much light as a 60-watt incandescent, is efficiency, light quality, and expected lifetime. The LPrize LED operates at 96 lumens per watt, compared with about 74 lumens per watt for the 100-watt equivalent EnduraLED. The CRI of the L Prize, at 93, is substantially higher than the EnduraLEDs, too.
5. Carmanah Technologies Corp. has launched the EG145 solar outdoor street lighting system, the company’s latest addition to its most cost-effective solar-powered outdoor lighting system series to-date. With the addition of this next-generation EG-series system, which provides freeway-level light output from a compact form designed to withstand extreme elements, Carmanah now provides a complete range of solar-powered outdoor lights that address the needs of cost-sensitive markets requiring powerful standalone lighting solutions.
6. Switch Lighting has announced the availability “the only liquid-cooled LED A-lamps that can be used in any fixture, any orientation, and anywhere — indoors and out.” The lights are now in production and were on display at Lightfair 2012.
In addition to its 40-, 60-, 75-, and 100-watt-equivalent lamps, Switch unveiled the “SWITCH3-Way, a 25/50/75 watt-equivalent LED incandescent replacement A-Lamp for use in three way fixtures.”
The company also introduced “technology for a 220/240V driver to expand their full family of LED A-Lamps beyond U.S. borders to the international market. The 220/240V driver lamps are expected to be released in late 2012.”
Vial holding original white light quantum dots on the left and the enhanced quantum dots on the right. (Rosenthal Lab)
7. Vanderbilt researchers have boosted the fluorescent efficiency of white-light quantum dots to 45 percent (the original efficiency when they were discovered 7 years ago was 3%).
“Forty-five percent is as high as the efficiency of some commercial phosphors which suggests that white-light quantum dots can now be used in some special lighting applications,” said Sandra Rosenthal, the Jack and Pamela Egan Chair of Chemistry, who directed the research which is described online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “The fact that we have successfully boosted their efficiency by more than 10 times also means that it should be possible to improve their efficiency even further.”
“We calculate that if you combine our enhanced quantum dots with the most efficient ultraviolet LED, the hybrid device would have a luminous efficiency of about 40 lumens/watt,” reported James McBride, research assistant professor of chemistry who has been involved in the research from its inception. “There is lots of room to improve the efficiency of UV LEDS and the improvements would translate directly into a higher efficiencies in the hybrid.”
Photo Credits: PRNewsFoto/Lighting Science Group
8. Lighting Science Group last week unveiled a new “ultra-efficient J5 security light [that] integrates video sensing with Wi-Fi operation and streams real time imaging to home computer or mobile devices….”
It also introduced the “Definity Motion Activated PAR 30 is 80% more efficient than the 65-watt halogen lamp that it replaces and integrates both motion and ambient light sensing directly into the lamp, eliminating the need for separate controls. User configuration options built into the bulb include time delay, dimming range, and motion and distance sensitivity. Setting a new standard in advanced lighting control, the bulb won the top LIGHTFAIR International 2012 Judges Citation Award.”
And its 4-inch, 9.5-watt Glimpse LED downlight “was selected as a 2012 Next Generation Luminaires (NGL) Solid State Lighting (SSL) Indoor Competition winner. The competition is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Illuminating Engineering Society, and the International Association of Lighting Designers.”
–> Also recommended for you: Energy-efficient Lighting Market in Europe to 2020 – LEDs Emerge as Key Growth Sector due to Price Discounting and Phosphor Shortages Restricting CFL Production
9. The Empire State Building, which requires a team of workers spending 7 hours changing light fixtures every time the building ‘needs’ to change colors, is getting an upgrade. “Thanks to a new, custom LED system created by Philips Color Kinetics, however, the façade and mast of the Empire State Building will now be able to change lighting scenes in real-time, without wasting a ton of energy,” Beth Buczynski of Crisp Green writes.
The building’s owners are working with Philips to replace the existing 400+ traditional light fixtures—old fashioned high intensity discharge bulbs—with over 1,200 state-of-the-art LED fixtures, uniquely designed for the building. Not only is the new system computerized, allowing ESB staff to customize lightings from a palette of over 16 million colors (right now, it has 10), the staff will be able to do program updates to the lights almost instantaneously. The new lighting upgrade is part of the building’s renovation and modernization initiatives and is estimated to use just ¼ of the energy that the previous lighting systems did—reducing the energy consumption by approximately 73 percent.
Impressive. Empire State Building image via Shutterstock
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About the Author
Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.
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