Patricia Glasow is one of the principals in the architectural lighting design firm Auerbach Glasow French. She’s designed and managed lighting projects throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Glasow spoke at Strategies in Light (SIL), an annual conference on the status of and prospects for the solid-state lighting industry, held in Santa Clara, California, from February 22 to 24, 2011. In the last few years Glasow has noticed a trend: architects on every project are asking for solid-state lighting.
And why shouldn’t they? Solid-state lighting is ten times more efficient than incandescent lighting and light-emitting diodes can last 50,000 hours. So what’s the problem? Scott Riesebosch, president of CRS Electronics, an LED lighting manufacturer, said the problem with LEDs is neither the technology nor the cost. He taught a session on designing LED fixtures, also at the SIL conference. “The real problem,” he said, “is extravagant marketing claims.”
An Interplay of Systems
The problem has been a growing concern for the industry. LED lighting is based on LED semiconductor chips themselves, mounted on a carrier that defines a mechanical, electrical, and thermal interface. The carriers are integrated into packages with optics and heatsinks. Those packages are assembled into fixtures, perhaps with additional optics. Somewhere along the line an electronic driver is designed and combined with the rest of the package. Even if the LEDs at the heart of the system are bright, efficient, and long-lived, every step of the process reduces the light output and the efficiency, and has the potential to reduce the lifetime. That’s not even a complete list of the things that can go wrong; so the potential to produce a “bad” product is high, particularly for companies that underestimate the complexity of each step.
Finding the Next Generation
So lighting designers, engineers, and architects who want to take advantage of the impressive capabilities of LEDs have had a difficult time wading through competing product claims. The Department of Energy’s Solid-State Lighting Program is aware of the issues, and they’ve pushed the industry to adopt standard testing and reporting. DOE has also recognized the need for a quick and easy way for lighting design professionals to identify high-quality fixtures, luminaires ready for primetime. DOE identifies these installation-ready fixtures as winners in their Next Generation Luminaire™ (NGL) Competition.
At the SIL Conference, Ruth Taylor, the NGL commercial competition manager, unveiled the latest round of winners. This was the third year of the NGL competition, and — reflecting an industry that is maturing — the competition committee required each submitted product to carry with it extensive documentation and test reports. In 2008, 22 products were selected, out of 68 entries. In 2009, 43 made the cut, out of 126 submissions. For the 2010 competition — reflecting the vibrancy and excitement coursing through the industry — 120 different manufacturers submitted a total of 328 fixtures to the competition. One hundred and ninety were eliminated because of incomplete documentation, and 37 were “recognized.” Juno Lighting Group was recognized for six products, more than any other single company. Out of the 37 recognized products, four received additional accolades as “Best in Class.”
The Best in Class
In the cove lighting category, the fraqtir™ from The Lighting Quotient received the best in class designation. The judges were impressed by the color and the controlled light distribution. The best facade lighting was the Philips Color Kinetics eW Burst Powercore, which impressed the judges with its excellent coverage and illumination control. The best in class task light recognition went to Koncept Technologies’ Equo LED Desk Lamp, which impressed with its unique design and its low price. In the recessed accent lighting category, USAI’s NanoLED took top honors, being acknowledged for the compact size and ease of serviceability.
Lighting designers are naturally “show me” personalities: in general, they want to see how a fixture will perform in its application. So it’s not likely that many designers will use the NGL showcase winners as a “pick and pull” catalog. But, as a step to increasing the ease and confidence with which designers can select which luminaires to evaluate for a project, the NGL winners are a fine place to start.
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