Latest News From DOE’s Technical Information Network for Solid-State Lighting
For those of you with a global role or who do business in the North American market, here is the latest news from the DOE’s Technical Information Network for Solid-State Lighting (TINSSL).
Reports
Guidance for dimming LEDs. A new GATEWAY report, Dimming LEDs with Phase-Cut Dimmers: The Specifier’s Process for Maximizing Success, provides general guidance and step-by-step procedures for designing phase-controlled LED dimming on both new and existing projects. It also provides real-world examples of how to use those procedures.
Subjective evaluation of LED PAR38 lamps. The latest CALiPER report extends the findings of Application Summary Report 20 to focus on subjective evaluation of beam quality, shadow quality, and color quality. A subset of the LED PAR38 lamps evaluated in Report 20 were assessed by IES members, and the key findings provide valuable insight on user preferences and the variability among today’s LED PAR38 lamps.
Pricing and efficacy trend analysis. A new DOE report, SSL Pricing and Efficacy Trend Analysis for Utility Program Planning, provides application-specific projections to help utility and efficiency program managers prioritize by LED application or category. The report assists in defining delivery and education approaches, and allows estimation of energy savings potential and appropriate incentive levels to help overcome price barriers.
Color stability of LED products. Failure of LED products has largely focused on lumen maintenance, but data from the DOE GATEWAY and CALiPER programs shows that color shift may be a cause of early failure for some products. In contrast, long-term data from the L Prize® program shows well-designed LED products can have excellent color stability. DOE’s report, Color Maintenance of LEDs in Laboratory and Field Applications, details the metrics used for quantifying color shift, provides example data, discusses known mechanisms of color shift, and provides guidance on how to monitor performance and evaluate warranties.
Changes for LED Lighting Facts®. Manufacturers now have the option of grouping related products as a family and testing only one member of that family, calculating the performance of the other family members based on the performance of that one representative product. In addition, a new verification testing program is under way, designed to ensure that the performance information listed in the LED Lighting Facts product database remains reliable and accurate.
In other LED Lighting Facts news, a new portal for Federal users has been added to the website to provide acquisition guidance for lighting products. The FEMP Portal is pre-populated with LED products that have been verified by the LED Lighting Facts program and meet the FEMP-designated performance requirements for 6 categories of exterior lighting products used for general illumination.
Updated SSL Manufacturing R&D Roadmap published. The DOE roadmap serves as a guide for manufacturing R&D priorities, to reduce costs and enhance the quality of SSL products. It represents industry consensus on the expected evolution of SSL manufacturing, best practices, and opportunities for improvement and collaboration.
LRC forms Light and Health Alliance. The Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has formed a collaboration among members and practitioners to enable the broad adoption of lighting for human health by producing factual information based on research and by visualizing future applications.
DesignLights Consortium® releases final testing lab requirements. The DLC now requires that product testing for DLC applications be conducted at an approved laboratory appropriate for the performance being evaluated. These tests include IES-LM-79-08 Approved Method: Electrical and Photometric Measurements of Solid-State Lighting Products, In-situ Temperature Measurement Tests (ISTMT), and IES-LM-80-08 Approved Method: Measuring Lumen Maintenance of LED Light Sources. The DLC held a webinar on October 29 to review the requirements and address general questions.
Check out the Illumination in Focus article about the Washington, DC, Metro system lighting project. Plans for the project involve conversion of the lighting in 25 parking garages using LED products and adaptive controls, plus an innovative financing and services model that includes installation, monitoring, and system management by the manufacturer.
Did you see the New York Times article, “This Little LED of Mine”? The article looks at lighting market trends, noting that LED sales at retailers like The Home Depot and Bulbs.com have doubled in the last few years, reaching roughly 20% of their lighting totals. Another Times article announced that the Big Apple will follow Los Angeles’ lead with plans for a massive street lighting conversion project, to replace all of its 250,000 streetlights with LED.
WEBCASTS
Register Now! On December 3, DOE will host a 60-minute live webinar on CALiPER 20.1: Subjective Evaluation of Beam Quality, Shadow Quality, and Color Quality for LED PAR38 Lamps. Michael Royer of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will detail key findings from this latest report, which extends the findings of Application Summary Report 20 to include subjective evaluation of PAR38 lamps by IES members. The webinar will explore the report findings and discuss what attributes to look for to increase your chances of getting an LED PAR38 lamp that has favorable lighting quality.
Register Now! On December 5, the Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign will host a webinar on Lighting Controls for Parking Facilities. Marina Badoian Kriticos of the International Facilities Management Association will provide an overview of the campaign, followed by a brief review of lighting controls for parking facilities from Michael Myer of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Holly Blomquist of Harwood Engineering Consultants will provide the results of a parking structure retrofit utilizing efficient equipment and multiple controls, resulting in energy savings of 45%.
Did you miss the webinar on pedestrian-friendly nighttime lighting? When it comes to outdoor lighting, the industry has understandably focused on footcandles and uniformity, efficacy, pole spacing, and cutoff. But those are not the chief criteria for all neighborhoods. Presenter Naomi Miller of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory addressed color rendering, safety, and adaptation. The presentation is available for download and the video will be posted in early December.
26 Nov