Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for Sept. 16, 2020. I’m sitting here two weeks prior to our virtual “Renaissance of light quality: SSL industry swaps focus from efficiency to architecture” event. And I believe I’m seeing some convergence of thoughts about the future of solid-state lighting (SSL) where round two of the revolution is focused on application efficacy, truly leveraging the tiny LED form factor, and positively impacting society far beyond cutting carbon emissions.
Let me explain. Our upcoming event was conceived based around the concept of quality, and specifically quality relative to application being more important than efficacy going forward. SSL will deliver energy efficiency inherently. Now let’s harvest other benefits and grow our business sectors.
We had two pieces of breaking news the first two days of this week that I think reinforce that message. First the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) and the IWBI (International WELL Building Institute) announced the signing of a joint MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) covering future collaboration. We haven’t posted a dedicated news item on the announcement; it’s very simple in scope yet very important in impact. Lighting for health and wellbeing is critical to the future of the LED and SSL sectors. The organizations will jointly promote and promulgate related standards, guidelines, and metrics going forward. The WELL standards for buildings are extremely important for people working long hours in indoor offices. If you need some background on WELL, see one of our prior feature articles on WELL buildings.
The second news item that supports my thesis here is a research report created by the team at RTI International under contract to the US department of Energy (DOE). The DOE story is about a new “thing” — not a metric but more a concept for a way to contemplate the sum of a series of metrics or characteristics — that judge an SSL product in far more diverse ways than efficacy or building power density. LAE (lighting application efficiency) will encompass electrical efficiency, optic efficiency, spectral efficiency, and intensity effectiveness. You might just call it quality of light relative to people and applications. Now this effort is just getting started. There is much research to be done. But it’s clear we need to modify spectrum to encourage desired outcomes, and we need to measure results and efficiency relative to service in specific applications. It’s extremely promising to see the DOE take this path.
That brings me back to our Renaissance event in two weeks. We have a simply fantastic program planned. And the Closing Plenary will be can’t miss. Our Carrie Meadows has described it in detail. The panel will focus on opening doors to the inspiration that delivers a renaissance. Michael Kershner, CEO of Innovative Lighting Consultants, will present and moderate a panel that includes Chuck Swoboda, Chip Israel, and Sero Cardamone.
We also have more of our September issue content for you in HTML form this week. Some might consider it the ultraviolet (UV) issue, just as this newsletter sometimes looks that way. But peruse the content down below. We have coverage of intellectual property (IP) issues relative to germicidal UV-C in the face of a pandemic, developments in calibration of UV test instruments, and advances of UV in water applications beyond disinfection.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 748-6785, [email protected]