Lighting industry still learning how to apply advanced LEDs

Aug. 24, 2006
Some lighting designers view LEDs as a troublesome technology that is only really useful for color-changing applications, but at the same time the LED community is moving to address many of the concerns voiced by the lighting industry.
Courtesy of KSLD "White light is boring – color is the only reason why we get excited about LEDs," announced Dominic Meyrick, Lighting Principal of Hoare Lea, a specialist lighting design consultancy, in an impassioned talk at the "Applying Advanced LEDs" conference, held on June 28 in London, UK.

However, there were many other speakers and audience members who could appreciate the benefits of using white LEDs in different applications, while at the same time acknowledging the myriad of challenges still to be faced.

The lack of industry standards is a recurring issue. In a panel session, Kevin Dowling, Vice President Strategy and Technology at Color Kinetics, listed a number of organizations that are actively developing standards, procedures and metrics for the solid-state lighting industry. "There is rapid activity but it's never fast enough," he said. "Standards must make sense for the manufacturers, the specifiers and the end users."

The industry has to decide what characteristics to measure, the methods of measurement and also identify accredited laboratories to perform the measurements, said Dowling. Required metrics include luminous flux, efficacy, lifetime, color rendering index (or an updated replacement), light distribution, and binning.

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