Sololuce announces 560-lumen Power Giant lighting module

Power Giant Sololuce Srl, a new company in the field of solid-state lighting based in Milan, Italy, has developed a new light engine based on chip-on-board (COB) technology.

Marco Nichetti, Sololuce's CEO, says that COB provides more engineering freedom, rather than being limited by existing packages.

"Also, COB is a technology that can incorporate electronics, optics and thermal managemet all in one," he says. "Regarding RGB systems, no more “tri-chromatic” shadows will be displayed; the color mixing will be simply perfect."

At the beginning of August, Sololuce Srl Milano announced the Power Giant series of solid-state lighting fixtures based on COB technology. "The basic idea was to substitute a complete MR16 dicroic lamp module –including a dimmable 220Vac switching electronics - with a technology able to provide a real life span of 30,000 hours," says Nichetti.

Wall illumination using RGB device The luminous flux had to be more than 500 lm – 560 lm to be precise – and warm white light at a colour temperature of 3500K and a CRI>90 was required, using a 38° viewing angle reflector.

The Sololuce engineers chose a custom COB solution using 16 large, high-power (1 x 1 mm) chips, with an approximate power of 15W – in comparison a standard dicroic bulb would use 35 W.

If the ambient temperature is going to be more than 45°C, the brightness of the module can be adjusted by varying the drive current. This feature is very important in order to assure the life span expected for the module.

The hole applied in the ceiling in order to install this product is 70mm. This diameter is exactly the same used for normal dicroic lamps fixture.

RGB kit Nichetti says that the platform will be in mass production by the end of 2005. The company's brightness roadmap shows more than 800 lumens by mid-2006, in warm white (3500K) color.

Immediate applications for the Power Giant are hotels, showrooms, jewlery stores, restaurants and pubs, and general illumination.

At the same time, Sololuce Srl has introduced the same module using RGB technology. With external electronics able to drive the RGB COB module, is possibile to have 16 million colors and an “intelligent white”, able to shift from 6000K up to 3000K. The luminous flux is more than 350 lm in white at 3500K.

The electronics use the DMX-512 protocol in order to link all the modules together.