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Monday, December 23, 2013
❄ Festive Recipes for your Holidays ❄
Sunday, December 22, 2013
LED traffic signal lamps last longer, save money in Hampton Roads cities
Not long ago, if you opened the red, yellow or green lens of a traffic signal light in Newport News or Hampton, you would find a 135-watt incandescent bulb, like one you might use at home, set in a bowl-shaped reflector. But for at least three years the signal lights in all 287 Newport News intersections have used LED units, and Hampton just finished switching over to LED units for its 187 intersections
Monday Roundup: Iconic
This week: Three cities' skyline enhancements and chip-scale packaging comes to LEDs.
Three bridges in Little Rock
Philips Color Kinetics supplied the lights for three bridges across the Arkansas River. The energy company Entergy started the ball rolling on the project to mark the organization's 100th anniversary. The unveiling ceremony happened Thursday, with former US President Bill Clinton in attendance, but I haven't found any good footage from that affair. Below is video from the first test of the lights, two months ago (here it is on Vimeo).
A bigger Empire State light show
Speaking of Color Kinetics, we last visited the CK-lit Empire State Building just after Halloween, when the building's owner worked with the lighting design artist Marc Brickman and a local radio station to put on a light show synchronized with music. The iconic building will be lit with four separate light-and-music shows (created by Brickman) on four consecutive evenings leading up to Christmas Eve. The organizers will then monitor social media to evaluate the sentiment for the most popular of the four. That show will be repeated on Christmas Eve.
Clearly, the Empire State Realty Trust is getting better at organizing these choreographies of its 3,900 Philips Color Kinetics fixtures. Eight months went by between the first and second shows, and then the trust pulled off the Halloween extravaganza four months later. Now, in less than two months, it's mounting four new events.
(Source: Wikimedia)
Relighting an Atlanta icon
The facade of the 52-story Georgia Pacific Center had been dark for seven years, because its owner was tired of paying $1,500 a month to light it at night. After an LED retrofit, the tower is once again a marker for the Atlanta skyline, lit by 60 Alpha spot and flood lights from Beacon Products, a subsidiary of Hubbell. Beacon's press release doesn't specify the color temperature of the lighting used, but the product catalogue offers 3,000K, 4,000K, and 5,000K options with CRI from 67 to 80 and efficacy from 91 to 104 lm/W. The LEDs lower the energy bill by 75%.
Chip-scale packaging from Philips Lumileds
LEDInside.com has a moderately detailed overview of Lumileds's new chip-scale packaging technology, apparently based on slides from Jy Bhardwaj, Lumileds senior vice president of R&D. (Philips Lumileds sponsors this site.)
CSP is defined as a fully functional package that is the same size as or slightly (less than 20%) larger than the active area of the LED. CSP is not new in the semiconductor industry, but Lumileds got there first in the world of LEDs. Others are said to be working on CSP, as well.
(Source: Philips Lumileds)
CSP's advantages include better thermal contact to the substrate, higher current densities, lower cost, higher density of packaging, and surface-mount device compliance for high-speed, low-cost automatic attachment to the substrate.
Related post:
— Keith Dawson 
'Tis the Season
[Our own Ron Amok, inspired by Barney Walker's latest (Cartoon: LED by the Nose) dashed off the first doggerel ditty below in a comment to Barney's cartoon. I thought this newly revealed talent deserved wider notice. Links added to the named community members. Ron penned the second parody for this publication. — ed.]
Randolph the LED-nosed Blogger
You know Amok, Ed, and McCarthy,
Eafpres, and the Lenks,
Karl, Barney and Bill, and
Alfred, Robin, and Steve
But do you recall
The most famous blogger of all?
Randolph, the LED-nosed blogger
had a 680nm nose
and if you ever saw it
you'd say it had a 1.8eV bandgap.
All of the other bloggers
used to laugh and call him nerd
They never let poor Randolph
Comment with a single word.
Then one bloggy Christmas eve
Dawson came to say:
"Randolph with your intellect so bright,
won't you write a blog for me tonight?"
Then, even semiman loved him
as the bloggers shouted out with glee,
Randolph the LED-nosed blogger,
You keep blogging on ALL LED!
Blue Christmas
I'll have a blue Christmas without YAG
It'll be so blue just thinking about YAG
Mixing red, green, and blue for RGB
Won't give us the same CCT, if YAG's not put onto my LED
And when rendered-blue snowflakes start falling
That's when those blue LED salesmen'll stop calling
You'll be doing alright, with 6000K of daylight
But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas
You'll be doing alright, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, 450nm Christmas
Navigant Research: Smart Lighting Controllers and Sensor Annual Market Revenue to Reach US$ 2.7 billion by 2020
As falling prices for LED lighting systems drive up adoption rates of LED lamps in the coming years, the adoption of intelligent lighting controls is also expected to accelerate. Intelligent lighting controls, including occupancy sensors, photosensors, and networked controls, offer building owners and managers the same central monitoring and management capabilities for lighting systems that they are accustomed to having for their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. According to a recent report from Navigant Research, worldwide revenue from occupancy sensors, photosensors, and lighting network control gear will grow from US$ 1.1 billion annually in 2013 to nearly US$ 2.7 billion by 2020.
“The market for lighting controls in commercial buildings has expanded and transformed dramatically in recent years, as creative ways to visualize lighting usage and new strategies to manage lighting energy consumption proliferate,” said Jesse Foote, Research Analyst, Navigant Research. “Pure-play startup companies are leading this wave of innovation, but the large, traditional lighting companies have begun offering a range of intelligent lighting control products, as well.”
Helping to drive this transformation are increasingly stringent building codes, which have begun requiring controls for more and more applications. In both the United States and Europe, new regulations will set a high bar for overall lighting energy reduction, according to the report. These reductions will require the adoption of occupancy sensors, photosensors, and other intelligent lighting technologies.
The report, “Intelligent Lighting Controls for Commercial Buildings”, analyzes the global market for lighting controls for commercial buildings, including both new construction and retrofits. Sensors, ballasts, drivers, switches, relays, controllers, and communications technologies are examined, with a specific focus on networked lighting controls. The report details the market drivers for these technologies, as well as barriers to adoption, and includes profiles of select industry players. Market forecasts for unit shipments and revenue for each type of equipment, segmented by region and building type, extend through 2020. Forecasts are also broken out for control equipment in buildings with networked lighting controls, as well as for wireless lighting controls and LED drivers. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Navigant Research website.
Friday, December 20, 2013
The Incandescent 'Ban'
We're all well aware that the EISA restrictions on manufacture & import reach 40W and 60W incandescent bulbs come January 1. The media is now busy telling the rest of country.
We have written extensively about the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which among many other goals established minimum levels of efficiency for light bulbs manufactured or imported into the US (see the "Related posts" below).
EISA didn't "ban" incandescents, or any other particular technology, but that has become the common shorthand way to refer to the phase-out of the most popular sizes of the energy-wasting bulbs.
Public awareness lacking
Osram Sylvania has been conducting an annual "socket survey" since EISA became law. This year's was just released, and found that 59% of Americans say they hadn't been aware that 60W and 40W incandescents will begin to disappear from store shelves next year. (Most were somewhat aware of the incandescent phase-out.) Thirty percent, twice as many as last year, declared that they will begin hoarding incandescent bulbs and will continue to use them.
The press is on the story.
From the middle
Fox News actually is "fair and balanced" on the topic. The stress is on the opportunities for small businesses in the new era of lighting. The reporter mentioned phosphor supplier Intematix and bulb maker Switch as examples, and quoted Corey Egan, CEO of controllable-lighting startup iLumi, who was just our guest in a live chat on All LED Lighting.
The Huffington Post has an informative video news segment, not stressing LEDs so much as evenhandedly covering the field of incandescent replacements including CFLs and efficient halogens.
Even the Weather Channel gets in on the coverage, dispelling "5 Myths About the Light Bulb Ban."
From the right
News and opinions sites that lean to the right on the political spectrum are continuing to beat the drum of overreaching government functionaries ignoring the wisdom of the marketplace. National Review's piece is titled "Don't Tread on my Light Bulbs" and calls government agents "G-men." The National Legal and Policy Center refers to the phase-out as having been implemented "in the US government's anti-liberty wisdom," and opines that Cree, by taking advantage of government tax breaks and subsidies, is "trying to do a 'land grab' of the alternative lighting market."
These opinions persist on the far right despite the fact that EISA was enacted by large majorities in Congress during a very "red" administration, and despite the fact that the size of the majority favoring a future with more efficient lighting has not changed in four years of Sylvania's survey (see illustration).
But all in all, conservatives are making less noise about the phase-out than they did when 100W incandescents hit the wall in 2012. Clean Technica wonders at the source of this sudden quiet, and speculates that it may be just another instance of the right wing "kick[ing] up a huge storm only to discover that, after the dust settles, most folks are supportive of a change for the better."
I would be curious how opinion about the incandescent phase-out actually does divide across the political spectrum. It would not surprise me to learn that only those on the extreme right are pushing against the change. Sylvania's demographic survey questions did not collect data on respondents' political views, unfortunately.
Related posts
- US House Blocks Enforcement of Energy Standards, Again
- Shattering the Incandescent Light Bulb Ban
- Repeal the Ban!
- Now Is the Time to Ban CFLs!
- Monday Roundup: Sticky
— Keith Dawson
Supertex Introduces Dimmable Low Cost LED Driver Solution for Bulbs and Tubes
PS30 offers smooth dimming to extinction for a wide variety of dimmer types such as leading edge dimmers, trailing edge dimmers, and dimmers with microprocessor controls. It implements a PFC LED driver solution, operating from a 10V shunt regulator derived from the power supply snubber, and provides for a simple design by eliminating feedback components and the optocoupler typical in isolated solutions. It minimizes line induced brightness variation, and protects against open circuit failure with over voltage protection.
Two unique features, covered by filed patents, enhance the performance and value of PS30. It is designed to implement a simpler, lower cost open loop solution. The potential limitation of open loop design is that the output choke tolerance normally results in variation in output current amplitude across product builds in production. PS30 includes proprietary control techniques that largely mitigate this output current variation. It also includes proprietary dimming circuits that ensure proper operation with different triac dimmers. It controls the timing of the power stage and activation of auxiliary loading to eliminate concerns of erratic SCR firing and the resultant flickering. Its circuitry ensures stable operation during light load conditions and a consistent starting point for the zero crossing phase detection.
"PS30 provides a low-cost solution for bulb/tube replacements and similar applications," states Alex Mednik, Director of Applications Engineer for Supertex. "PS30 allows the use of a single flyback power converter stage with a simple inductor to minimize the component count, cost, and size.”
The PS30 is available in a lead(Pb)-free/RoHS compliant 10-lead MSOP package (PS30MG-G). Samples are available from stock. Lead-time for production quantities is 4-6 weeks, ARO. Pricing is US$0.42 each in 1K quantities.
For additional information, please visit the PS30 LED driver website or download the datasheet
About Supertex:
Supertex, Inc. is a publicly held mixed signal semiconductor manufacturer, focused in high voltage interface products for use in the telecommunications, networking systems, flat panel displays, and medical and industrial electronics industries. Supertex product, corporate and financial information is readily available at www.supertex.com.
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