Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for Feb. 10, 2021. The LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) sectors got off to a virtual start last week in terms of industry-specific events. The US Department of Energy (DOE) partnered with the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) to host a four-day virtual workshop. Virtual is good in that it expands the audience that you can reach, yet I think we all value in-person meetings and networking opportunities. Here’s hoping for acceleration in the COVID-19 vaccine program.
Our Carrie Meadows has posted a piece about some of the workshop presentations. Specifically, she wrote about a session on data-centric building design and operation. I found the summary very interesting and especially that reliance on data is perhaps the path toward zero energy. Carrie has just posted some additional coverage on the workshop today, with more to come.
In a normal year our editorial, event, and sales team would be moving at a furious pace about now preparing for Strategies in Light and the Sapphire Awards Gala. But as most of you know, we have postponed our events until Aug. 24–26 when we believe we will be able to hold an in-person event.
Still, you need to take action now on the Sapphire Awards. Entries are open. The Early Bird deadline is a couple of weeks away. Technologies that came to market in 2020 or in early 2021 are eligible for entry. And remember we added Design Excellence Awards sponsored by the LCA (Lighting Controls Association) that will focus on projects with innovative controls implementations.
In business news, both Signify and Osram announced quarterly results. We covered the Signify story in another newsletter already, but it’s linked below for your convenience. Osram, meanwhile, had improving numbers in its most recent quarter and noted horticultural lighting as a surging segment. The company is in the midst of a major transition after being acquired by ams. And Osram is moving forward with the plan we reported on previously to divest its smart-lighting-focused programs.
Speaking of horticultural lighting technology, we deployed our monthly HortiCann newsletter earlier in the month and promptly news on the topic broke. Lumileds has launched a new line of mid-power broad-spectrum white LEDs that are packaged to withstand the harsh environment including sulfur exposure. And in that same article we covered a horticultural SSL installation at a Canadian tomato farm by Fluence.
We’ve got a lot of our content from the January/February issue linked down below. I would definitely recommend that you read the article by Allison Thayer on the concept of subadditivity relative to the circadian system. The article is a third offering of a four-part series that will conclude in the next issue. Also, I’ll note just for the record that the byline is attributed to the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute because the work behind the series was undertaken at the LRC. As many of you know, Allison and others from the LRC have recently joined Mariana Figueiro’s new team at the Light and Health Research Center at Mount Sinai.
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]