March-April 2016

March-April 2016 | www.lightexpress.in

>> ENERGY EFFICIENT LIGHTING & DESIGN MAGAZINE

The Benifits of Natural Lighting!

Advanced Wireless Lighting Control!

Focus on Future Light+Building 2016

Visible Light Communication!

Connected Lighting Systems!

Global LED Lighting!

C u at C-star !

Find out more at www.c-star-expo.com

Consolidated Knowledge C-star will not only bring together retailers from all over the world but will also be the leading platform for international knowledge exchange. C-star will feature a comprehensive supporting program, which will be held simultaneously to the show, and includes: C-star Retail Conference EuroShop Retail Design Award C-star Forum Designer Village C-star Retail Tour Don't miss this unique opportunity to expand your knowledge and your business network!

C-star Retail Conference The conference will deal with the topic "Local Heroes", and will invite leading retailers from around the world to present their practices in developing retail localization strategies.

Date: 18 – 19 May 2016 Venue: Shanghai New International Expo Centre Session 1: Local Heroes: Customer Research, Retail Session 2: Local Heroes: Retail Design, Retail Technology More information about C-star Retail Conference:

www.c-star-expo.com/program.html

Register for C-star and Conference now!

register.c-star-expo.com

C-star at a glance

Where: N4-N5, Shanghai New International Expo Centre Projected 200 exhibitors Germany Pavilion Italian Lighting Zone

March-April 2016 | www.lightexpress.in Founder Editor-in-Chief Late Mr. Kanwar NS Managing Editor Reny Singh Editors Amrita Singh Sarvjit Kanwar

ENERGY EFFICIENT LIGHTING & DESIGN MAGAZINE

China Correspondent & Reporters Ying Wei-Beijing Bao Tian Tian - Shanghai Xing Guang Li - Guangzhou Assistant Editor/Correspondent Vishwapreet

Energy Efficient Lighting Electric lighting burns up to 25% of the average home energy budget.

The electricity used over the lifetime of a single incandescent bulb costs 5 to 10 times the original purchase price of the bulb itself.Light Emitting Diode (LED) and Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFL) bulbs have revolutionized energy-efficient lighting. CFLs are simply miniature versions of full-sized fluorescents. They screw into standard lamp sockets, and give off light that looks similar to the common incandescent bulbs - not like the fluorescent lighting we associate with factories and schools.

LEDs are small, very efficient solid bulbs. New LED bulbs are grouped in clusters with diffuser lenses which have broadened the applications for LED use in the home. LED technology is advancing rapidly, with many new bulb styles available. Initially more expensive than CFLs, LEDs bring more value since they last longer. Also, the price of LED bulbs is going down each year as the manufacturing technology continues to improve.

LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) are solid light bulbs which are extremely energy-efficient.

When first developed, LEDs were limited to single-bulb use in applications such as instrument panels, electronics, pen lights and, more recently, strings of indoor and outdoor Christmas lights.

A significant feature of LEDs is that the light is directional, as opposed to incandescent bulbs which spread the light more spherically. This is an advantage with recessed lighting or under-cabinet lighting, but it is a disadvantage for table lamps. New LED bulb designs address the directional limitation by using diffuser lenses and reflectors to disperse the light more like an incandescent bulb.

LED light bulbs use only 2-17 watts of electricity (1/3rd to 1/30th of Incandescent or CFL). LED bulbs used in fixtures inside the home save electricity, remain cool and save money on replacement costs since LED bulbs last so long. Small LED flashlight bulbs will extend battery life 10 to 15 times longer than with incandescent bulbs.

Secretary & Legal Advisor K.Surinder Circulation Surekha Gogna Production, Design & Degital Media Rakesh Sharma Marketing & Sales Lina Catherine Amy Lan Anna Mi Technical Advisors Alex Van Bienen/Lily - Nederlands Public Relations Director (UK) Mike Steele Advisor Internet Sukhbir Singh International Advisor (Australia) Andrew S. McCourt Germany Representatives Julia Rittershofer Steffen Schnaderbeck India (Head Office) D 182 PR House, Anand Vihar, New Delhi 110 092 INDIA Tel: +91 11 22141542 | 4309 4482 Fax: +91 11 22160635 info@lightexpress.in www.lightexpress.in

K 2016 – pointing the way forward for the world's plastics and rubber industry

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few weeks before the closing date for registrations, Messe Düsseldorf is recording extremely lively demand for exhibition space.

With a few weeks to go before the closing date for registrations for K 2016, one thing is already certain: the fair will again provide a complete overview of the world market of the plastics and rubber industry. Some 3,000 exhibitors will be attending the world's premier fair, which is taking place from 19 to 26 October 2016. Demand for exhibition space is extremely lively, and all 19 halls of Düsseldorf's fairgrounds will once again be fully occupied. Companies from all continents have already registered to present their innovations in the following exhibit categories: - Raw materials, auxiliaries - Semi-finished products, technical parts and reinforced plastics - Machines and equipment for the plastics and rubber industry.

"Thanks to its unparalleled breadth of offering and the unmatched internationality of exhibitors and visitors, the fair is in a class of its own worldwide. It is the place where key decisions for products and processes and problem-solving are taken, and it points the way forward for the whole industry for the coming years," says Werner M. Dornscheidt, President and CEO of Messe Düsseldorf. "We are delighted that demand for exhibition space is again extremely buoyant.

The companies from the world of plastics and rubber know that they can look forward to an excellent springboard for their business success every three years in

Düsseldorf. Registration for K 2016 is still possible until 31 May 2015."

The presentations of exhibiting companies at K 2016 will be supplemented by a special show illustrating the potential of plastics and rubber for forward-looking applications. With reference to examples from different sectors, it shows the extent to which their diversified properties shape our lives today and the contributions that they can make in the solution of important everyday problems. The special show is being organised by the German plastics industry under the auspices of PlasticsEurope Deutschland e.V. and Messe Düsseldorf.

Another highlight of the supporting programme at K 2016 will be the Science Campus, the forum for research and teaching. The Science Campus provides a compact overview of the activities and findings of university and scientific organisations and helps to intensify dialogue between research and industry.

Current information on everything to do with K 2016 and the industry is available at www.k-online.com.

Regularly updated, reports from science and research can be found here along with articles from the international trade press. The gamut of information provided by the website also extends to a complete overview of the other events for the plastics and rubber industry in which Messe Düsseldorf is involved. The service is rounded off with a list of the world's most important trade media and a retrospective of K 2013.

K 2016 is taking place over the entire area of the Messe Düsseldorf

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Special show at K 2016 – Plastics shape the future Ever since plastics were first processed into telephones, light switches and radio housings a century ago, their diversity and presence in everyday life have increased enormously. Synonymous with innovation, safety, comfort and virtually unlimited scope in applications and design, polymeric materials have meanwhile conquered all spheres of life. Without plastics and rubber, it will not be possible to master the huge challenges of the future. They are a byword for resource-conserving technologies, progressive mobility, the protection of food and drinking water, innovative medical technology, energy efficiency and sustainability.

During K 2016 in Düsseldorf from 19 to 26 October, the special show "Plastics shape the future" will highlight the developments that are already taking shape and the visions that may become reality tomorrow. With reference to examples, the show demonstrates to what extent plastics are making their mark on modern living spaces – functionally, aesthetically and sustainably. Attention is also devoted to economic and environmental matters, and even problematical issues like marine litter, for example, will be addressed.

Multimedia presentations and innovative stand design will enliven the programme of the special show in Hall 6, consisting of information and entertainment blocks, activities, keynote talks and rounds of discussions.

Ideas from school pupils and students on how to shape the future will not only be the focus of the traditional Youth Day on the Sunday of K 2016 (23 October), but will provide fresh stimulus every day of the fair. "Plastics shape the future" promises telling insights and perspectives on the future for exhibitors and trade visitors to K 2016 as well as for the media and the general public.

In 2016, the special show, a project of the German plastics industry under the leadership of PlasticsEurope Deutschland e.V. and Messe Düsseldorf, is supplementing K's exhibition array for the 9th time. The world's foremost gathering of the plastics and rubber sector will again be covering everything the industry has to offer. Some 3,000 exhibitors from all continents will betaking part, and all 19 halls of Düsseldorf's fairgrounds are already fully booked. Some 200,000 trade visitors from all over the world are expected at K 2016.

K 2016 is open daily from 10 am to 6.30 pm from Wednesday, 19 October, until Wednesday, 26 October 2016. All details can be found at www.konline.com and on the social networks Xing: https://www.xing.com/net/pri4bd1eex/k2013 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/K.Tradefair?fref=ts Twitter: https://twitter.com/K_tradefair

Project Review 01.2016

Customer care in a new light – Showroom Blaha Office The office furniture manufacturer Blaha in Austria is one of the foremost suppliers in its field. At its headquarters in Korneuburg, the company operates a showroom displaying furniture systems and acoustic systems with eye-catching effect.

At once presentation and sales area, communication forum and workspace, the architecture requires a sophisticated lighting system. ERCO’s Opton spotlight with flexible Spherolit technology lends itself perfectly to the implementation of a complex lighting concept.

Project data Project:

Showroom Blaha Office Korneuburg / Austria

Client:

Franz Blaha Sitz- und Büromöbel Industrie GmbH Korneuburg / Austria

Architecture:

Architectural office of Eichinger oder Knechtl, Vienna / Austria

Photography:

Gustavo Allidi Bernasconi Vienna / Austria

Since its opening in 2001, the Blaha showroom, introduced as an ‘Office Ideas Centre’, has served both business and private customers. It is located in a remarkable building, which is based on plans drawn by the architectural office of Eichinger oder Knechtl.

In premises with a floor space of around 4000 sqm extending over three levels, the furniture brand presents a diverse mix of high-quality products. Its range includes assorted furniture and acoustic systems offered with a variety of textiles, surface options and colours.

The lighting in the showroom was behind the times and needed upgrading. A new lighting concept was required that would meet a diverse set of requirements to the high standards of Blaha. The lighting was to give structure to the spacious facilities, yet accentuate individual products and product ensembles

effectively. This comprehensive undertaking stipulated a minimum number of luminaires with the lowest possible wattage to achieve this end – without compromising on the visual comfort.

LED light for perfect colour rendition The central criterion, however, was to ensure optimal colour rendition. The products by Blaha feature a remarkably wide selection of textiles and surfaces, most of which are available in a variety of colours. Blaha promotes these materials and their colour variety with attention-grabbing installations. The contract award, therefore, hinged on natural and brilliant colour reproduction that would reveal the wide array of colours with its many subtle nuances – especially in the pastel range. With a luminaire range based completely on LED technology since 2015, ERCO offers light of a brilliance and precision that predestined it for this lighting task.

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Project Review 01.2016

Copyright: ERCO GmbH, www.erco.com, photo: Gustavo Allidi Bernasconi

Visible Light Communication Finds Its Applications

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isible light communication (VLC) is a particularly exciting technology in an industry that is already going through exciting technological change. This technology, popularly used in applications such as fiber-optics, now shows promise for general lighting due to the advent of LED lighting.

The potential is to create spaces that actively communicate with users.

WHAT IS VLC? VLC is a free-space optical wireless communication technology that uses visible light to transmit data across distances.

The concept is simple. Varying the intensity of a beam of light can be used to encode information. So simple that humans have been using optical communication since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. You

can try this at home by simply turning a flashlight ON and OFF to send Morse code.

Light travels 186,000 miles per second, so communication across long distances is virtually instantaneous.

In the modern era, technological advances allowed us to modulate the light at higher frequencies, allowing richer information. Light can be transmitted across a free space (e.g., lasers communicating between two buildings) or across a medium (e.g., fiber optics).

With the advent of LED, a new idea in VLC is to use general lighting to communicate with users in a space as a replacement or supplement to Wi-Fi. While traditional light sources present practical limitations, LED lighting can be modulated at very high frequencies, with a cycle as short as nanoseconds. This

concept, called Li-Fi, could be a solution to RF bandwidth limitations as the visible light spectrum is 10,000 larger than the radio spectrum.

indoor positioning. The second is targeted communication with mobile devices. While there are numerous potential applications, the initial focus is retail stores.

As a bonus, VLC doesn’t cause electromagnetic interference. The light can transmit information either directly or reflected from a surface. It can do so while dimmed. However, light cannot penetrate obstacles such as walls.

INDOOR POSITIONING

This ambitious concept is still being developed. Meanwhile, manufacturers have moved to develop VLC for specific building applications, and these solutions, now being demonstrated, will be commercially available soon.

These manufacturers are focusing on two extraordinary capabilities of luminaires that both illuminate and communicate with light. The first is using LED lighting as a network for

Seven out of 10 Americans have a smart phone or tablet, according to Opus Research. Today’s smart phones and tablets feature navigation through use of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite signals. These signals bounce around inside buildings, however, making indoor GPS positioning ineffective.

A number of approaches can be used to achieve indoor positioning, of which VLC is now a contender. A building owner installs VLC-enabled LED general lighting. The luminaires are overlaid onto a digitized map of the space. In a retail store, this would include showing the store

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layout and merchandise locations.

The user downloads a loyalty app to their mobile device. The app enables positioning and provides user access to the digitized map.

When producing light, the luminaires emit their unique codes, which are read by the mobile device’s camera.

By combining the two, the system calculates exactly where on the map the person is as well as their physical orientation. Accuracy ranges from less than four inches to less than four feet.

The benefit is wayfinding. In a store, a user could determine where they are and locate areas and merchandise within a store, which may be referenced via an app-based shopping list. In a mall or airport, a single app could guide the shopper through multiple venues and public spaces.

Users concerned about privacy can simply opt out. Either by not downloading the app or, if they have the app, but not taking their phone out and turning it on in the venue.

TARGETED COMMUNICATION VLC offers the ability to go beyond

wayfinding by allowing organizations to communicate with users and provide a more meaningful experience. Consider retail. The infrastructure is there. According to Deloitte Consulting LLP, in 2012, more than 60% of mobile shoppers used smart phones while in the store, and 85% of consumers were using retailers’ native apps or websites during shopping trips.

This could include product advertising, coupons, cross promotion and upselling messages for specific merchandise; virtual greetings; friend locator; guided tours and storytelling; and gaming such as treasure hunts.

The possibilities, which vary by application, are numerous.

In the future, retail stores may end up competing another level—who can deliver the best digital experience for their customers.

Products The VLC system consists of VLCenabled LED luminaires; mapping and application software, which typically will reside on a Cloud; and a database that houses a diagram of merchandise locations and luminaire

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location coordinates.The luminaires are general lighting luminaires but with a modulator installed on a separate board or embedded in the LED driver. VLC functionality is part of the luminaire, so installation is the same. Aside from VLC functionality, the luminaire would be selected using the same criteria as selecting any other good lighting product.

They will be sold through familiar lighting industry channels.

Coverage is seamless and wall to wall. Systems are highly scalable.

Solutions are being developed by GE, Acuity Brands, LG Innotek and Philips. Some of these companies are working with technology

partners such as Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (Lumicast VLC technology) and ByteLight. Acuity and GE have commercialized the technology and have been working with retailers to implement trial installations.

A GENERAL ROLLOUT IS EXPECTED IN 2016.

Manufacturers are focusing on delivering good VLC-enabled lighting. Integrating hardware and software into a single delivered solution may fall to authorized resellers, partners or other players.

These firms will produce custom apps for organizations to leverage the VLC capability into a meaningful user experience.

Green Proving Ground Program Studies Advanced Wireless Lighting Controls

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traditional lighting control design deploys manual switches and simple controls such as load scheduling to control large zones of luminaires.

Even when occupancy sensors are installed, these devices are typically assigned to large control zones.

Increasingly stringent commercial building energy codes have made control zoning more granular.

Emerging control strategies such as

daylight harvesting (daylightresponsive lighting) became recognized based on proven effectiveness, resulting in a layering of strategies. Additionally, smaller control zones generally increase responsiveness, flexibility and energy savings. However, individual luminaire control, with a lighting controller installed in each luminaire, increases equipment costs.

The greatest potential to save energy

is with advanced lighting control systems that feature three capabilities. First, all applicable control strategies can be layered in a hierarchy of control zones. Second, zoning can be precisely matched to the application, potentially resulting in a mix of larger zones with zones as small as individual luminaires, which increases responsiveness while allowing personal control of overhead general lighting. Third, these systems provide a central mechanism for calibration, sophisticated programming, measuring and monitoring.

Wireless lighting control systems are now available that are designed to simplify installation while potentially reducing material and labor costs associated with control wiring, making highly granular zoning more cost-effective. Radio-frequency (RF) wireless controls originally gained popularity in the residential market.

They entered the commercial market after technological improvements and the development of wireless mesh network standards. As such, RF wireless is a relatively young technology in commercial lighting control, albeit one with significant

potential. The General Services Administration (GSA), the agency responsible for Federal real estate management and products and services procurement support, studied deployment of advanced RF wireless control systems in two Federal buildings. The study, conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) for the agency’s Green Proving Ground (GPG) program, sought to quantify the performance of wireless lighting systems.

Two buildings were selected for installation. One is the 16-story Appraisers Federal Building (San Francisco, CA), the other the 8-story Moss Federal Building (Sacramento, CA).

The Appraisers Federal Building consisted mostly of open office spaces with some private offices and other spaces. Occupancy sensors and manual switches were already installed before the study.

The GPG study included an LED luminaire retrofit combined with wireless controls, and with one controller per luminaire allowing individual luminaire control.

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The Moss Federal Building also consisted mostly of open office spaces with some private offices, corridors and meeting spaces. Each space already had manual switches and/or occupancy sensors, and in some cases, time scheduling systems. The GPG study saw installation of wireless controls with existing fluorescent luminaires in three locations on two floors, with multiple luminaires assigned to luminaire-based controllers.

At both locations, control software was used to assign luminaires to control zones that typically included four to six luminaires. Photosensors were installed in control zones configured within perimeter daylight zones. Wireless occupancy sensors were installed, typically one per control zone. In private offices, an occupancy sensor, dimmer-switch and, if the office had a window, a photosensor were installed. The system was then tied to an Internet server enabling facility operators to program and monitor the lighting using a web-based interface.

The LBNL researchers studied each site before and after the retrofit, which included site visits, energy measuring, photometric study (light levels and color quality) and occupant satisfaction surveys.

A month of performance data was collected for luminaires in three control zones, one in Appraisers and two in Moss, so as to estimate average lighting power density and annual energy consumption. This formed the baseline. Various lighting scenarios were then implemented and monitored to identity energy savings resulting from various control scenarios.

The lowest energy savings (9%) were at one site at Moss, with savings mostly produced by reducing after-hours operation of the lighting. Energy savings were dampened by programming that kept the luminaires at a dimmed (20%) level during periods of no occupancy, as opposed to previously being turned OFF by occupancy sensors. The highest energy savings were at the other two Moss sites, 42 and 47%, which

was produced by a combination of after-hours lighting reduction, institutional tuning and daylight dimming.

At Appraisers, the LED luminaire retrofit reduced lighting power density by 55%, from 0.97W/sq.ft. to 0.44W/sq.ft. Total energy savings, including the wireless controls, increased savings to about 69%.

The LBNL researchers were able to disaggregate the performance of various control scenarios. In one Appraisers location, relative to a basic time-based control strategy, occupancy sensors were found to produce 22% energy savings, with an additional 10% for institutional tuning and 7% for daylight harvesting (noting daylight harvesting was implemented on about a third of the luminaires in this group). In all, advanced wireless controls were estimated to save about 39% lighting energy compared to timescheduling control.

The researchers concluded, “Overall, this study found that implementing advanced wireless control systems can save significant lighting energy.”

They noted that savings are not guaranteed, being dependent on baseline control conditions, such as whether an existing system already has occupancy sensors installed, and baseline site conditions, such as prevalence of daylight.

At Appraisers, the LED lighting system with advanced wireless controls reduced average light levels from about 57 to 37 footcandles, which was found to be satisfactory as it was above the 30 footcandles deemed appropriate for the tasks performed in the space.

The occupant satisfaction surveys found occupants perceived the new lighting conditions and control performance favorably, with overall comfort increasing.

At Moss, average light levels remained fairly consistent before and after the upgrade. Occupant satisfaction, however, was slightly reduced after the retrofit in terms of

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perception of comfort, light levels and control performance. The researchers believe that fluorescent lamp failures resulting from the lamps not being properly seasoned prior to dimming (see NEMA-LSD-23-2010), coupled with commissioning errors and existing wired occupancy sensors applying legacy zoning onto new workstation and controls layouts, may have influenced these results. Use of wireless occupancy sensors could have improved the control performance, as wireless sensors can be relocated easily without rewiring to better align with new workstation layouts.

In a retrofit situation, the project must carry the entire installed cost of the control system, though if luminaires are replaced, installation labor can be economized. In a new construction scenario, return on investment is based on the incremental cost of the new controls over an energy code-compliant solution.

The LBNL researchers concluded, “With paybacks ranging from 3 to 6 years, adding wireless advanced lighting controls to lighting projects is a compelling opportunity in new construction and major renovation.”

Global LED Lighting Trends Reveal Significant Growth and Product Development

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urope is the largest geographic market segment—accounting for 23 percent of the global lighting market share, followed by China at 21 percent and the US at 19 percent. Industry analysts predict significant growth over the next decade. Product development managers and electronics engineers in the LED lighting market strive to continue growing right along with the industry trends. To succeed in developing LED designs that flourish in the current market, however, they must incorporate reliable circuit protection technologies that deliver a strong return on investment (ROI).

This LED market report reveals the present state of the market, trends for several LED segments and

projections for global growth. It highlights the need for industryleading circuit protection solutions from a reliable manufacturer and specifies the ideal protection devices for several LED applications.

Present State: LED Market is Shining Bright Recent statistical data supports the pivotal position of LED technology in the global lighting market. Global LED lighting market penetration is expected to reach 31 percent in 2015, according to a recent article from LEDinside. In addition, LEDinside has reported that the global commercial LED lighting sector will reach $26.7 billion in 2015. Some of the most common applications for LED lighting are outdoor, residential and architectural. Outdoor LED lighting is quickly

gaining popularity for tunnels, roadways, traffic lights, parking lots and garages. According to Strategies Unlimited, 2013 revenues for outdoor LED lighting were $0.7 billion. The firm also reported that nearly two million LED luminaires were installed in tunnels and roadways in 2012. IHS Technology stated that out of the 140 million streetlights installed worldwide in 2013, 19 million of them were LEDs Residential applications for LEDs include lighting in kitchens, hallways, dining rooms and bathrooms. When compared with other lighting technologies, only LED lighting can be used as a comprehensive replacement for fluorescent lighting.

LEDs can be used in multiple rooms throughout the home, are available in several varieties and offer a technology that is relatively easy for consumers to learn. McKinsey’s 2012 lighting market report revealed that residential is the largest general application segment for LED lighting.

In 2011, it represented almost 40 percent of the general lighting market.

According to MarketWatch, the architectural segment is the secondlargest end-user segment for LED lighting. For architectural applications, LEDs are used in both decorative and functional lighting.

Decorative LEDs are used to illuminate fountains, pools, gardens and statues. For functional applica-

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tions, including building facades and landscaping, LEDs provide visibility and enhance safety on residential and commercial properties.

In response to the current LED market trends, manufacturers are making significant changes in their operations. IHS reported that manufacturers are placing a greater emphasis on vertical integration, focusing on chip-on-board modules and light engines in 2015.

Moving down the supply value chain to products that form the intermediate steps between LED components and lamps/luminaires may be an attractive strategy due to the low-profit margins for LED components.

Both Phillips and Siemens, top players in the LED lighting market, have separated their lighting work from their core business to enable faster response-to-market dynamics and to achieve higher profitability. In addition, GE has taken steps to start producing its own LED circuit boards and may spin off its lighting business in the future.

FUTURE PROMISE: LEDS LIGHT THE WAY TO OUTSTANDING GROWTH Forbes has predicted that the LED market will continue to grow throughout the next decade, with the global LED market share reaching about 70 percent by 2020.

According to McKinsey, Asia will occupy about 45 percent of the global general lighting market by 2020. The report indicated that rapid penetration in Japan and China is driving Asia’s market-leading

position for transitioning to LEDs in general lighting. In Europe, the current LED value-based market share is approximately 9 percent, McKinsey reported. By 2020, the share is expected to rise to over 70 percent.

Outstanding growth is projected across various LED market segments, including residential and architectural. Forecasts for LED growth in the residential segment are almost 50 percent for 2016 and over 70 percent for 2020, according to McKinsey. For architectural lighting, MarketWatch revealed that Japan and Europe are the fastest-growing regions. McKinsey has predicted that architectural lighting will remain the early adopter for LED lighting, with its market share reaching almost 90 percent by 2020.

The outdoor lighting industry is also expected to grow at a rapid rate.

Strategies Unlimited has forecast that the global outdoor LED lighting market will reach $1.9 billion by 2017. The organization has also predicted that LED street light installations will grow by 400 percent over the next five years.

According to Semiconductor Today, the market share of LEDs in street lighting worldwide will grow from 53.3 percent in 2014 to 93.8 percent in 2023.

SAFEGUARD ROI: CIRCUIT PROTECTION FOR LED LIGHTING INNOVATION Electronics engineers and product development managers are continually innovating LED designs to keep pace with the latest market

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trends. Creating designs for LED lighting applications presents several challenges, including the need to protect the LEDs’ electronics and circuits from lightning, transient surges and electrostatic discharge (ESD). These electrical threats may jeopardize the safety of personnel and endanger the consumer’s ROI. Failure to use proper safeguards could also lead to compliance issues with regulatory and safety standards related to overvoltage transients.

Outdoor lighting applications have a much better chance of delivering their full ROI with the proper implementation of surge protection devices (SPD) such as the LSP05LSP10 Series from Littelfuse.

Circuit protection technologies are vital for safeguarding the vulnerable electronics and circuits within LEDs. To prevent LED lighting from experiencing failures within an investment payback period of about five years, high durability and reliability are essential. Before selecting a compatible circuit protection device, it is important to find a manufacturer who understands LED lighting industry standards and the safety issues associated with designing LED retrofit lamps and outdoor luminaires.

As the global leader in circuit protection, Littelfuse recommends protection devices for LED driver and power converter circuits used in a variety of lighting applications.

Littelfuse manufactures a variety of fuses, varistors, surge protection modules (combination of varistors)

and TVS diodes for LED lighting applications. To ensure compliance with industry standards and reliability, the company performs extensive product testing.

Orion Launches High Lumen LED Retrofit for Public Lighting Solutions Orion Energy Systems, a leading designer and manufacturer of highperformance, energy-efficient retrofit lighting platforms, today announced the launch of the new High Lumen LED APOLLO Troffer Retrofit and twenty new LED products and luminaires for commercial, industrial, and retail facilities. The High Lumen LED APOLLO Troffer Retrofit is available in 7000 (2x2 and 2x4) and 9000 (2x4) lumen packages, expanding its use to now include broader retail and education applications. As the newest entry in the industry’s first patented LED Troffer Retrofit suite, this product features quick ship and easy installation, attractive design, optimized light delivery, and maintenance-free performance. The High Lumen LED APOLLO Troffer Retrofit is an ideal upgrade for schools, commercial, and retail facilities seeking to replace energy-consuming T8/T12 fluorescent troffer fixtures with high efficiency LED light sources.

New products now available also include: Seven (7) LED Emergency and Exit lighting product options.

Ten (10) LED Exterior lighting products ranging from Wall Packs, Flood Light, Canopies, Garage, Area Street, Area and Site, Low-Profile Multi-Purpose Canopy, Garage, and Multi-purpose Architectural Flood fixtures.

LED Stairwell fixture with ultrasonic integrated motion sensor ideal for both interior and exterior applications.

LED Industrial Pendant High Bay for warehouse, distribution center and manufacturing facility applications.

“This product launch strengthens our position as the full-service retrofit leader in the lighting industry by broadening our ability to replace inefficient lighting technology with easy to install, highly efficient LED solutions,” said John Scribante, Chief Executive Office of Orion Energy Systems. “Orion is unique given our deep expertise in the successful execution of thousands of retrofit and upgrade projects. That knowledge inspires product innovations that reduce job-site costs and stress, maximize one-for-one replacements as well as rebates and incentives, and guarantee energy savings for years to come.”

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Everlight Electronics Introduces a Highly Reliable, Compact Optical Switch for Office Equipment Everlight Electronics, a leading player in the global LED and optoelectronics industry, introduces a new member of its ITR series of reflective sensors for use in printers, copiers, scanners and for non-contact switching environments like a proximity sensor.

The reflective type opto interrupter ITR1201SR10A/TR is a light reflection switch which includes a GaAs IR-LED and an NPN phototransistor with a highly photosensitive receiver for short distances, operating in the infrared range. Other key features are a fast response time, a very stable collector current, a cut-off visible wavelength of below 700 nm and an improved MSL (moisture sensitivity level) from level 4 to 3.

A characteristic of EVERLIGHT’s ITR product range is the double molding manufacturing process. Compared to the traditional glue dispense manufacturing process, doublemolding results in a smoother surface which not only enhances the look but also raises the reliability. A flat profile of only 1.5 mm makes the new ITR1201 is even more compact.

Everlight’s reflective and transmissive optical ICs of the ITR family are Pb-free and RoHS compliant.

Everlight’s highly accurate and sensitive, ultra-compact optical switch ITR1201 integrates an IR emitter and a silicon phototransistor in a plastic double moulding housing. (Structures and materials depend on demand of client).

Hong Kong Is Slowly Dimming Its Neon Glow

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ONG KONG — For nearly four decades, a giant neon cow sus pended above a steakhouse in Hong Kong’s Western District was a neighborhood landmark. It was where, if you were giving directions, you told someone to get off the bus or to take the next left. A glowing bovine beacon nearly 10 feet long and 8 feet tall, cantilevered over the street, you couldn’t miss it.

It was supposed to be an Angus, said Iry Yip, the manager of Sammy’s Kitchen. The sign was designed in 1978 by her father, Sammy Yip, the restaurant’s founder, who at 84 still sits behind the cash register. But the sign maker decided that longer legs would look better, hence the world’s only known long-legged, bluish-white Angus, with “Sammy’s Kitchen Ltd.” emblazoned across its flank in green in English and in red in Chinese.

But in 2011, the city’s Buildings Department decided the sign was unsafe and ordered it removed. After an unsuccessful campaign to save it, the sign came down in August. “It feels like something is missing,” Ms. Yip said. “The street has gotten so empty.” Since the mid-20th century, endless towers of flashing, throbbing neon have defined Hong Kong’s landscape as much as Victoria Harbor and the skyline of densely packed high-rises.

“When you think of Hong Kong and visual culture, one of the first things that comes to the fore is neon signs,” said Aric Chen, the design and architecture curator of M+, a museum that is collecting images of Hong Kong’s neon signs online and some of the signs themselves as they are retired, including the neon cow. The Hong Kong immortalized in the films of Wong Kar-wai, the director of “In the Mood for Love” and “Chungking Express,” is awash in neon, Mr. Chen said.

“If his representations of Hong Kong in the popular imaginations are seminal, which I think they are,” he said, “you can’t separate that image from the neon ambient glow.” But the neon of Hong Kong’s streets is dimming. Neon has declined rapidly since the 1990s, sign makers and experts say, as building regulations here have tightened and new signs are made of LEDs, which lack neon’s warmth but are brighter and less expensive to maintain.

The Hong Kong Buildings Department has no record of how many neon signs remain in the city or how many existed at their peak, but the department acknowledges that it removes hundreds of signs a year for failure to meet code. Signs are removed for safety and structural reasons, or when they are abandoned or unauthorized. In a workshop with gray, peeling walls, Lau Wan, one of the last of Hong Kong’s neon sign makers, heated a glass tube on a naked flame, effortlessly bending it into the Chinese character for Polytechnic University.

Mr. Lau, who has been making neon signs by hand since 1957, helped turn Hong Kong nights into blazing, garish days. He created one of the city’s largest and most famous signs, the red-and-white Panasonic billboard that covered an entire building on Nathan Road from 1973 to 1995.

16 | March - April 2015 | Light Express

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 17

According to Guinness World Records, another Hong Kong sign, a 210-by55-foot ad for Marlboro cigarettes, was the world’s largest in the 1980s. It was eclipsed here in 1999 by a giant dragon sign, about 299 feet by 151 feet, Leila Wang, a Guinness spokeswoman, said. Now, at 75, Mr. Lau said he feared that his craft was dying. “I want it preserved, but I probably won’t be able to see it,” he said. His colleague, Wu Chi-kai, 47, is the secondyoungest of the nearly dozen neon sign makers left in the city, and there are no apprentices being trained for the next generation. “Just like every other industry, if the business is good, there must be new blood,” Mr. Wu said. “If no one is joining the industry, the reason is the lack of business.” Neon was a Western import that quickly gained its own vocabulary in China, first in Shanghai, then Hong Kong, combining the ancient Chinese art of calligraphy with modern advertising. Before computer fonts took over, master calligraphers drafted the Chinese characters, making sketches that were traced by sign makers.

Fung Siu-wa, 66, calls himself the champion of the character outlining game.

He still has no computer in his office, where the most advanced piece of technology is a television. Sipping a cup of black tea in his black silk tang suit, he said the work involved spending time learning the shapes of the words, understanding the structures of the characters and catering to the needs of particular industries.

“Every industry has different preference for typeface,” he said. “Restaurants and hotels like more honest-looking characters, while more artistic businesses like salons, nightclubs and karaoke prefer ethereal-looking ones that give a romantic and relaxing sensation.”

Certain tropes have developed, such as the badge-shaped sign that every Hong Kong resident knows as the logo for pawn shops. The design resembles a bat holding a coin in its mouth. The Chinese word for bat sounds like the word for fortune, and the coin symbolizes wealth. What 18 | March - April 2015 | Light Express

the medium itself represents has changed over time. When Hong Kong first fell for neon in the 1920s, it was an indicator of urban sophistication and prosperity. By the 1960s and ’70s, when some neighborhoods here were as chockablock with neon as Times Square, it was considered gaudy, if not headache-inducing. By the 1980s, neon signs were often associated with urban decay and red-light districts.

Today, as they grow scarcer, they have become retro-chic artifacts and objects of nostalgia. Old signs are purchased as folk art by collectors and museums, while modern artists incorporate neon in their work. Mr. Chen of M+ says the signs should remain in their natural habitat, suspended above Hong Kong’s busy streets. But his museum has acquired signs to save them from the junk heap. M+, which for now has no space of its own, hopes to display them when its building is finished in 2019.

Plenty of handmade neon remains in the city for those who notice it. Mr. Chen says most residents do not. “Neon signs are so familiar to people in Hong Kong that, of course, they almost don’t need to think about it,” he said. It often takes a foreign eye, he said, to see the beauty. The sign makers, however, play down any artistic pretension.

As their work began to blanket the city, art was not the point. “The only requirement at that time was to be able to immediately catch someone’s attention among a street full of signs,” Mr. Wu said. “That was the standard.”

Most of the work today, Mr. Wu said, consists of indoor decorative signs for boutiques, bars and restaurants. These pieces may be lovely, and may even be art, but they are obscure. The neon signs Mr. Wu and Mr. Lau once made were seen by a city of seven million. “When foreigners came to Hong Kong, looking at the scenery of the narrow streets, and were stunned by the neon signs, it made us sign makers quite proud,” Mr. Lau said. “We worked so hard for Hong Kong and were actually making contributions.”

Dynamic Future Platform with Excellent Ancillary Programme specifically geared to Retailers

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ower package comprising trade fair, retail conference, ERDA award presentation and Retail Tour From 18 to 20 May 2016 C-star, Shanghai´s International Trade Fair for Solutions and Trends all about Retail, will take place for the second time. Its first edition was already a resounding success with 162 exhibitors from 23 countries and over 5,700 international trade visitors. Even today, four months before the start of the second event, C-star boasts very good reservation figures again with such renowned exhibitors as Barthelmess, Ganter, Geosheen, Hans Boodt, Lago by Group Omega, Megaman, Schlegel, SI Retail and Tegometall already on board.

The very positive response from the outset can be attributed not only to the fact that C-star is precisely tailored to the needs of the Chinese retail market but also that this trade fair is supported by an excellent ancillary programme.

One highlight is the C-star Retail Conference, the premiere of which was already very well received by the top decision-makers in the industry. The Trade Fair as well as the Conference is organised by Messe Düsseldorf (Shanghai) Co Ltd with the support of Mall China (Chinese shopping mall association) and the China Commerce Association of General Merchandise (CCAGM).

Acting as a chairman again will be Dr. Helmut Merkel, former Arcandor chairman and Karstadt CEO who is also an Asian retail market insider.

Co-chairman in 2016 will be Victor

Guo, president of Mall China and vice chairman of the Asia Shopping Center Council. This year’s C-star Retail Conference comes under the motto “Future of Retail – Local Heroes with Global Potential”. While big players often suffer from economic crises or respond to developments in the industry rather sluggishly, local business actors prove time and again how agile they are. Embedded and grown up in a specific environment they give proof of the fact that their business models work very well over and over again, especially because they know their customers’ needs so well. Even in times of crisis they are in a position to adapt and respond to market trends well. The C-star Conference addresses the issues by asking: “What can we learn from these local heroes? Which values make them so unique?”

The exciting panel of speakers includes such experienced CEOs and retail professionals as Victor Guo (President MALLCHINA, Beijing); Allesandra Cama (Managing Director GFK, Asia); Weilong Li (CEO, President and founder of “Happy Family”); Kurt JOX (Managing Director, Home Furniture Market, PORTA Service & Beratungs GmbH); Heinz Hackl (CEO René LEZARD); Horst Jostock and Bernhard Huber (Managing Directors ALETE GmbH); Nikolaus, Soukup (Managing Director Hornbach, Hong Kong); Kai Moewes (Managing Director RICOSTA Shoes); Dieter Brandes (Managing Director KonsequentEinfach and former ALDI manager);

Ingo Marten, Product Manager TSystems, “Digital Division”; Rüdiger Gollücke (CEO Myfairnet AG); Klaus Striebich (Managing Director ECE Projectmanagment GmbH & Co KG and President of the German Shopping Mall Association). The complete conference programme can be accessed at www.c-starexpo.com.

Another highlight in the ancillary programme for C-star is the presentation of the coveted EuroShop Retail Design Awards 2016 (ERDA). For what is already the ninth time now these awards for the world’s best retail store concepts will be presented by Messe Düsseldorf jointly with the EHI Retail Institute. In the “EuroShop years“ (2017 being the next date) the ceremony takes place in Düsseldorf, in the years in-between the C-star in Shanghai provides the ideal setting for this renowned industry award.

During C-star 2016 the award will be presented as part of a festive ceremony at the Kempinski Hotel Pudong on the evening of 18 May. All those not only wishing to benefit in Shanghai from the innovative trends and solutions of the international exhibitors and the

insider knowledge shared at the Cstar Conference but also to immerse themselves in the Chinese retail world can take the C-star Retail Tour.

This study trip is offered by the EHI Retail Institute in cooperation with Messe Düsseldorf. Featuring on the agenda are visits to leading shopping centres and retail stores.

The store visits are performed on 17 May, the day before C-star. The study trip itinerary includes the stores ShangXia, Bosideng and 10 Corso Como as well as the Reel Mall, to name but four destinations.

Admission to C-star as well as participation in the ancillary conference programme and the presentation of the EuroShop Retail Design Awards form part of this EHI Tour. For details on the programme and participation fees contact: Marieke Bossek, Messe Duesseldorf (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., marieke.bossek@mds.cn, Tel.: 0086-21-6169 8309. The next EuroShop will be held in Düsseldorf from 5 to 9 March 2017. The last EuroShop in 2014 attracted 109,496 trade visitors from around 100 countries who wanted to learn all about the facets, innovations and trends in the global retail world, presented by 2,229 exhibitors from 56 nations.

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 19

Adapt the demand for heating, cooling and lighting

KNX automation makes buildings more efficient lighting, heating and cooling depends on both the building use and user behaviour. These are indefinite factors for determining the level of consumption which can scarcely be met using conventional methods.

However, with a dynamic management system, the energy usage can be optimally matched to demand during operation. Building automation with KNX offers the best preconditions for this. It ensures the economical use of energy and thus increases the energy efficiency of the building.

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n light of climate change and increasingly scarce resources, the energy-efficient operation of buildings is gaining in importance.

Essential requirements for this are an energy-efficient architectural design, an insulated building exterior and modern installation engineering with a high level of efficiency. Ultimately, the consumption of energy for

Bus devices regulate and control the generated heating and cooling capacity in line with demand.

Lighting installations are operated more efficiently using sensors and timer programs. The integrated automation system spans all the trades and also enables links with daylight systems, sun protection systems, ventilation flaps and other systems whereby further energy-

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saving potentials can be exploited.

Intelligent capture of consumption data (Smart Metering) as well as coupling with intelligent networks (Smart Grid) opens up new possibilities for further optimisation and increased energy efficiency both today and in the future.

Since the building system technology is available for the electrical installation, KNX functions guarantee savings in energy costs for artificial lighting, heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems as well as other loads. With the further development of the system which has already been in existence for 20 years, the open- and closed-looped control systems have been refined and thus increasingly better results are achieved.

Nowadays, the savings rates that have been achieved in practice are up to 60 percent and more for the lighting while up to 50 percent is possible for individual room control as a practical study shows. Of

course these types of comparisons assume a connection to conventional methods. In the case of renovations in which the building has been improved in terms of its energy efficiency and the installation engineering has been modernised, the control technology contributes to the efficiency gain by at least 5 to 20 percent.

As often occurs in practice, if optimisation of the energy consumption has only been carried out some time after the initial occupation of the building and after experiencing day-to-day operations, the concrete results are persuasive.

RAPID AMORTISATION In the case of at least two projects, direct investment costs for optimising the energy flow are amazingly low compared to the results. An amortisation was carried out immediately. This is linked to the integrated approach and multiple use of the system. Building continued on p22

www.siemens.com/gamma

automation with KNX offers all kinds of benefits: a flexible electrical installation for changes of use and extensions, more efficiency in the management and maintenance of the building, increased security for material assets and people, a higher level of comfort and well-being in the workplace, both in public and residential buildings.

The management of energy savings is therefore only one of these. The total investment costs are thus spread across many benefits. Once the installations and functions have been integrated, further reductions in the energy consumption can often be achieved simply through programming, without the need for additional hardware and installations.

In the projects that have been put forward, almost all of them feature possible savings measures with KNX which often simultaneously serve comfort, safety and economical operational flow.

Switching off and dimming Saving energy means switching the light off when you don’t need it.

This sounds so simple but it is rarely achieved in practice in more extensive buildings with large numbers of people coming and going.

In office buildings, schools, factories, warehouses, hotels, car parks and many other buildings, artificial lighting is left switched on for many reasons. In the case of building automation with KNX, the duty cycle can for example be

adapted to the actual lighting requirement with the help of a timer program. This measure alone can achieve high savings which can be further optimised depending on the room use and building type, for example through using daylight and automatic cutoff when there is sufficient external brightness.

A further enhancement of the automation is constant lighting control which guarantees a comfortable lux value at the workplace through optimum use of daylight.

Presence-dependent and thus accurate demand-based control systems are increasingly being applied – ideal for staircases, corridors or other spontaneously used areas of the building. Lights with presence detectors can also be operated with increased energy efficiency in offices, schools etc.

They then become elements of the room automation, are integrated with the blinds, room temperature control and ventilation and thus offer multiple benefits.

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Regulating the heating and cooling Electronic individual room temperature control promises a clear saving potential. It is therefore the most efficient method of using the heating and cooling energy generated via the heating system or air conditioning system. Demand-based energy use can be achieved via a timer program with a temperature profile or even via the presence signal.

As the temperature variables of all the rooms are available centrally throughout the KNX system, heating and cooling energy can be generated according to demand

and with a high level of efficiency.

In modern, purpose-built buildings with glass facades, fully-automatic sun protection systems are indispensable. Their primary tasks are shading and cooling to ensure the well-being of the people in the building. As these are likewise controlled with KNX, additional functions for improving the energy efficiency are provided in combination with room temperature control and lighting control.

For example: daylight redirection, use of solar energy in winter and automatic night cooling in the summer.

www.siemens.com/buildingautomation

With LED Lights, Automakers Reveal All the Road We Cannot See

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UTOMOTIVE lighting is undergoing a quiet revolution, leading to new vehicle designs and providing enhanced nighttime safety. But while many of the innovations have become common in Europe and Asia, they have been slower to arrive in the United States.

The changes are made possible primarily through the increased use of LED lamps, the same technology used in the newest generation of home lighting. LED lamps are smaller, run cooler and use less energy than standard automotive lamps.

“LEDs let us package light in smaller spaces, so we can create a signature look,” said Shannen Borngesser, an exterior lighting engineer for General Motors.

Headlights and taillights can now be constructed in different shapes and patterns that, much like a car’s tail fins in the 1960s, immediately identify a particular make and model.

Even to the untrained eye, there is no mistaking the front of an Audi with its sharply angled LED daytime lights, the four circles of a BMW’s headlight system or the vertical red strip of a Cadillac Escalade’s rear lights and white blades of its headlights.

Behind the scenes, and mostly in other countries, manufacturers are developing new ways to use light to make nighttime driving safer. By combining LED lamps with cameras, a vehicle’s headlights can be more than just a set of low and high beams, and instead continuously alter their light patterns to exactly fit the immediate road conditions.

An early version of this system has been offered by Opel, G.M.’s European division, in several models for 12 years. Its current version, AFL

Plus (for “adaptive forward lighting plus”) determines the condition of the road and, using a rotating drum inside a xenon headlamp, creates nine variations of the beam pattern.

But it’s the increased use of LED lamps that is allowing manufacturers to fine-tune this technology. Given an LED’s smaller size, cars can pack more bulbs into each headlight, each of which can then be turned on and off to create unique light patterns based on road conditions and the amount of oncoming traffic.

This ensures that other drivers are never blinded by oncoming headlights, while the driver of the vehicle using the system receives an optimal view of the road.

Opel’s AFL Plus system using LEDs will be introduced this summer; it will be able to create 256 beam patterns, said Ingolf Schneider, Opel’s director of lighting technology.

Audi, the luxury division of Volkswagen, has been a leader in lighting technology. Its highperformance R8 includes an optional laser high beam. And five of its sedan and sport utility vehicle models can be bought with an LEDbased high-beam matrix headlight.

The system is so good at not shining light on vehicles traveling ahead of it that the high beam can remain on and adjust itself, even if eight cars are in front.

But American drivers have yet to see the benefits of the new technology.

When those cars are sold in the United States, all those models are fitted with standard headlights.

Regulations in the United States specify that headlights must create a specific pattern. While they can rotate when a car turns a corner, the

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pattern is not allowed to change shape. Because of restrictions like these, “lighting advances are coming from Europe and Japan,” said Stephan Berlitz, Audi’s head of lighting technology.

While Chrysler doesn’t offer vehicles with LED headlights, it is interested in creating a matrix high-beam system similar to Audi’s.

“The industry is very excited by the adaptive driving beam,” said Dennis Novack, the development lead for exterior lighting for Fiat Chrysler.

Manufacturers see other technologies eventually creating even more efficient, attractive and safe lighting.

Opel is in the early stages of testing headlights that will respond to a driver’s eye movements, which are tracked by an in-vehicle camera.

Algorithms and exterior cameras will ensure that a beam’s pattern and direction do not change every time drivers look at billboards or their feet. The system won’t be available for at least five years, Ms. Borngesser said.

Audi conceives of a time when headlights will be able to project patterns, like a foot path on the road to help a pedestrian cross a dark street, or lines to the left and right of a vehicle as it passes through a construction zone, allowing the driver to get a better sense of the size of the constricted road, Mr. Berlitz said.

And while LED lamps have migrated to a vehicle’s rear, creating bright sheets of brake lights, turn signals and taillights that illuminate almost instantaneously, car manufacturers and designers are entranced by the possibilities of OLED, or organic light emitting diode, technology.

OLED light can be manufactured in

thin sheets, giving designers the ability to place light wherever on the car’s body they desire. And because OLED light sources take up so little room, vehicle space could be freed up for other uses or to create other shapes.

Still, the use of OLED light sources is years off, because the technology is stymied by current low light output and high cost.

To encourage the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to change its rules regarding matrix high beams, the Society of Automotive Engineers has been working for over a year to create a set of standards that the government agency could then use as a basis for rule-making changes. Last year, Audi brought a European version of its A8 sedan to the United States to demonstrate its technology to government officials.

But approval, if it happens, will most likely take years, officials say, because changing American lighting regulations is an elaborate and slow process involving testing, public comments and rule making. Once approved, manufacturers then have to fit the changes into their production schedules. “We’re looking at ways to amend the lighting standard to allow systems to provide even better lighting,” said Gordon Trowbridge, a spokesman for the agency. “It’s a frustrating and time-consuming process. We have an obligation that the U.S. government not act rashly.”

New Consumer LED Light Bulbs Are Now Cheaper Than Compact Fluorescents

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ack in 2013, $10 was a sweet deal for a 40-watt equivalent (6-watt) warm-white lightemitting diode (LED) bulb.

Now, consumers can scoop up three LED bulbs for that price with a new offering from GE. GE unveiled its Bright Stik LED last week, a 60-watt-equivalent bulb that is designed to woo consumers away from compact fluorescents, a technology many users were never thrilled with in the first place.

The time is now to capture the market. GE estimates that LEDs will grow in the residential lighting market from 10 percent today to more than 50 percent by 2020. Five years ago, a 60-watt-equivalent LED was about $45.

GE is not alone in driving down prices. Earlier this year, Philips rolled

out a dimmable, warm-light LED for about $5 with utility rebates at Home Depot. The utility rebates are available in more than 40 states. For a non-dimmable bulb, Philips has a current offer of an A19 two-pack for $5. Not to be left out, Wal-Mart’s Great Value brand LED 60-watt equivalent sells for about $4.

By comparison, compact fluorescents at Home Depot sell for about $3 to $10 per bulb.

“As we undergo this lighting technology shift, we collaborate with our vendors to provide our customers with lighting options that save them money and energy,” Joey Corona, Light Bulb Merchant for Home Depot, said in a statement.

“With the GE Bright Stik, we worked closely with GE to develop an affordable LED to replace spiral CFLs that offers superior quality light and function.”

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For consumers who are wary of LEDs after bad experiences with the light quality of early bulb models -- or frustrated by the performance of CFLs -- the range of affordable LED options, both in terms of shape, color, warranty and performance, could win them over quickly once they are lured by the low prices at the store.

And for more savvy consumers who want features beyond just dimming or color options for their LEDs, the price of connected LEDs is also falling and should drop further as connected-home platforms, such as those from security companies, cable providers, Nest and Apple, continue to drive the market.

Purple LEDs to Replace Blue LEDs?

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It is only a matter of time before white LEDs using blue LED chips will disappear from the market,” said Shuji Nakamura at a forum on GaN technology in July organized

by Nikkei Asian Review. The comment from the inventor of the blue LED chip and Nobel Laureate shocked the industry. Nakamura shares a Nobel Prize in Physics with two Japanese inventors Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano for their invention of the blue LED. Yet, Nakamura’s recent remark completely derails his previous accomplishments. Industry insiders in China try to decode Nakamura’s comments to determine whether it reflects embedded flaws in blue LEDs design, or whether his motive is to promote Soraa’s purple LEDs.

Is Nakamura just trying to promote Soraa?

LEDs are basically narrowband light sources made from semiconductor components, capable of emitting wavelengths ranging from IR to UV rays. The first LED wavelength ranged from IR wavelengths to green lights.

Prerequisites for blue LED research included high quality crystal growth technology, and P-type doping technology control in wide bandgap semiconductors. All these technologies emerged in the late 1980s, only then was GaN based systems realized. Additionally, highly efficient blue LED R&D also requires the manufacturing of different GaNbased compounds, while combining it with different types of substrate materials to create a multi-

32 | March - April 2015 | Light Express

layer quantum dot well structure.

Excited by blue LED rays, phosphor coatings on the LEDs can emit different color of lights including green and red. White light is created by combining these colors.

Additionally, merging complimentary colored LEDs, such as red, green and blue can also create white light.

These two technologies have been applied in highly efficient white light sources, and achieved significant energy saving results.

Nakamura pointed out the wavelength of light emitted from blue LEDs combined with phosphor powder is usually not uniform, and there tends to be overtly high blue light peak wavelength values. This can disrupt people’s sleeping

patterns, commonly known as the “blue light issue”. On the other hand, the average white light made from blue LED and phosphor does not contain UV rays. Hence, there are color differences in LEDs, which are sometimes different from natural sunlight, UV rays, and other light sources.

Therefore, Nakamura announced “white LEDs using blue LEDs will eventually disappear from the market”, emphasizing Soraa’s white LED solution is the best.

Nakamura is the co-founder of Soraa, a company that has mostly been selling purple LED chips that combined red, green, and white LEDs that combine blue LEDs with phosphor. Is Nakamura’s remark an

attempt to promote and benefit his company?

also is an expert from the Chinese Society of Rare Earths.

Most LED industry insiders believe Nakamura is trying to promote his company products.

Chao Liang, Deputy General Manager at Jiangsu Bree Optronics, also believed as a scientist and Nobel Prize Winner, Nakamura has reasonable theories and logic reasoning in his negative outlook on blue LEDs.

“It’s quite amusing to see an inventor to belittle his own invention,” said a representative from WhichLEDs. Other attendees agree. “It’s very natural for people to assume Nakamura intent was to promote his business when he made this comment,” said Haipo Wang, Vice President of China Association of Lighting Industry (CALI) and head of Institute of Optoelectric Material Department at Nanjing Tech University.

Others believe Nakamura’s comments were based on his expertise in the field. “Nakamura founded a company focused on purple LED R&D because he saw its potential,” said Wu Hongjian, Chairman of Shanghai Lighting Association. “It is difficult to say whether his remarks were solely based on the company profits.” Wu

Lattice Power Executive Vice President Zhengyi Chen agreed too.

“I believe he based his judgment on his understanding of LED technology,” said Chen.

The advantages of purple LEDs It will be difficult to determine the motive of Nakamura’s comment, but an objective comparison can be drawn between purple and blue LEDs. Purple LED potential and outlook was affirmed by Wu Hong. “White light efficiency is higher when converted from purple LEDs, lighting distribution is more uniform, and has better CRI,” he said. “These can cut energy, reduce carbon emission,

and improve lighting quality. All these carry significant meaning. Even though it has not become widespread on the market because of its high pricing, its advantages are quite obvious.”

What specific advantages does white LEDs made from purple LEDs have?

High CRI. When white light is created from exciting phosphor coated on purple LEDs, the peak wavelength of the blue light is not as intense.

Moreover, the output encompasses all visible light wavelengths. Hence, CRI is much higher, and closer to ideal white light found in sunlight. It has a high red CRI R9, and can reach Ra 95.

High luminous efficacy: Purple LEDs are manufactured using GaN substrates, and the chip is produced by placing GaN semiconductors on a GaN substrate. In short, this is a type of GaN-on-GaN LED. GaN semiconductors have better crystal quality, and higher purple LED luminous efficiency. Its luminous efficiency has risen rapidly.

Purple LED chips are usually triangular, compared to normal LED chips rectangular shape. The triangular purple LED’s luminescent layer has better light emittance compared to square shaped LEDs. Due to purple LEDs high crystal quality and good light extraction efficiency, its wall-plug efficiency (WPE) can reach 84%. Average blue LEDs WPE in general is between 50% to 60%.

Average blue LED chips are manufactured on sapphire substrates. Since GaN semiconductors tend to have a different lattice constant compared to sapphire, mismatches can occur and lead to flaws in the crystal. Mismatches almost never exist in GaN substrates, so the resulting crystals are normally flawless. Compared to sapphire substrate products, crystal mismatch can be lowered to about 1/1000.

Another advantage of purple LED chips is its less likely to have droop issues. Droop occurs when the power from the driver is raised to increase the brightness of the chip, the issue of droop presents

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 33

difficulties in increasing brightness in LED chips. In comparison, GaN-onGaN’s higher crystal quality compared to sapphire substrates reduces droop. Hence, GaN-based products are able to drive voltages five to 10 times higher than sapphire substrate products.

Blue LEDs to exit the market?

High white LED Color Rendering Index (CRI) can be reached by using purple light or RGB phosphor excited by purple LED light. With purple LED chip power efficiency upgraded to a whole new level, more industry experts are preferring purple LEDs. Hence, will blue LEDs eventually exit the market?

Purple and RGB phosphor has reached mass production levels, said a representative from WhichLEDs. Purple LEDs developed to replace traditional fluorescent lamps use high voltage mercury vapor arc to create UV rays, but white light formed from UV LEDs does not have overwhelming advantages. Since blue LED is a primary color, and a necessity in creating white light, it is unlikely to disappear from the market in the near future.

“There are merits and demerits in using blue LEDs to create white light, issues include blue light wavelength peaks, and point light source,” said Wang. “Currently, manufacturers are using phosphor powder technology to lower the intensity of blue light and scale up the light source’s color rendering index (CRI). Light distribution technology can reduce glare,” said Wang. The quality of blue light is also being optimized. “Blue LED researchers are raising energy quality, and believe blue light will become more competitive on the market.”

the market can be compared to taking the university entrance exam, it depends on the exam questions and the person’s test results. It also depends on how others fare on the exam, and who has the most advantages.”

Blue LED is still the mainstream technology used to produce white light, said Zhen Chen. Purple LEDs can be used in high end white LED lighting applications. “Technology plays a small role in determining whether a product will be replaced,” said Chen. “Costs, consumer habits, and mainstream manufacturers choices are some of the main factors affecting a product’s market share.”

“It is difficult to judge at the moment whether purple LED can lead future market trends, and force blue LEDs to exit the market,” said Chao Liang.

“Related policies, material, equipment, supply chain, and support level will all effect industry development.’

Is White LEDs a short-lived technology?

Whether blue or purple LED light sources resemble natural light is unimportant, since the issue of glare and blue light radiation still exist and is harmful to the human eye, according to some netizens.

Additionally, there might be better alternative light sources than LEDs in terms of color rendering, and emitting a gentle and less harsher

The outcome of the race between blue and purple LEDs technology is unclear. Relationship between the two is comparable to LCD and plasma display TVs, even though the two serve the same purpose, different technologies were incorporated to achieve the desired results, said Wang. The race between blue and purple LEDs has been “inconclusive”. “The winner on 34 | March - April 2015 | Light Express

light. Could white LED technology more similar to natural light vanish or will it congregate into a big development trend.

or some application field products.

It is impossible for one type of technology to fulfill every market demand, analyzed WhichLEDs.

Glare is not unique to LED light sources, all high brightness light sources can cause glare, analyzed WhichLEDs. Higher energy light beams can cause greater damage to a person’s skin and eye cells, so glare is not LEDs greatest disadvantage. Glare can be controlled using reasonable luminaire design. In the future, controlling blue light intensity in the white light spectrum can effectively control blue light radiation.

LEDs will remain the most important replacement light source, said Chen.

“By sacrificing brightness and costs, color rendering and gentler light emissions are adjustable parameters,” said Chen. Alternative technologies on the market include OLED and Light Emitting Plasma (LEP), but both are still far from replacing LEDs. The two technologies possess certain advantages in niche markets, but will be used mostly as a supplementary to LED light sources, he added.

Purple LEDs blue light radiation might be even stronger, which makes it difficult to promote purple LEDs. Currently, Philips has added 410 nm wavelength purple LEDs in its Crisp White COB product. It can excite the fluorescent compounds in fibers to emit brilliant white colors. However, such luminaires cannot be used in most mainstream lighting, and can only be used in clothing retail or photo studios. Long term exposure to such lighting environments can greatly damage the skin.

“LEDs are not particularly strong in color rendering, and it is possible for other lighting technologies to achieve very high color rendering index and gentle beam angle. There are corresponding lighting products for every application field. Even though LEDs are not the best replacements, it can replace certain

Other industry experts including Wang and Wu believe Quantum Dot LEDs, OLED, and LEP are still being developed and will not be the final stop in solid state lighting (SSL) developments.

To conclude, WhichLEDs outlined three white LED trends. The LEDs will be applied to meet general lighting market demands, and it will have to possess high energy efficiency.

Lighting expenditure amounted for 12% of global energy consumption.

Future white LEDs will have high color rendering index that is close to natural sunlight. Lastly, LEDs will have high color saturation and white LEDs will be able to cover most of the wavelengths on the spectrum. This development will be partly spurred by developments in phosphor technology.

Higher Occupancy Sensor Resolution Promises Greater Savings truly unoccupied.

savings compared to Scenario #1.

The advent of LED lighting creates an opportunity to increase energy savings by reducing time delays. LED sources are instant-ON and do not experience an appreciable reduction in lamp life due to frequent switching. Theoretically, time delay could be reduced to 5 minutes or less, though a majority of current sensors do not offer settings that low.

Scenario #3: Multiple Sensors and Time Delays: Each workstation has dedicated occupancy sensing. Time delays are set at 30 (Scenario #3a), 20 (3b), 10 (3c), 1 (3d) and zero (3e) minute(s). Multiple sensors for reliable detection are required at the lower time delay settings of 1 and zero minute(s).

To address false triggering that leave occupants in the dark, multiple cheap sensors could be deployed to ensure reliable detection. This is a strong potential for that with networks of luminaire-integrated sensors installed in open office plans.

ccupancy sensors are a proven strategy to reduce lighting energy consumption. As such, they are mandated by commercial building energy codes.

National Research Council Canada (NRC) put these ideas to the test in a simulation study of an ideal office lighting control system. Occupancy data was recorded in a space consisting of six 6×8 workstations in a windowless room over 10 days between 7 AM and 7 PM (12 hours). The lighting consisted of luminaires mounted over each workstation. NRC applied three control scenarios to this application:

Current codes require a maximum 30-minute time delay. Time delay is a field-adjustable setting that determines the amount of time between last detected occupancy and the lights switching or dimming.

Newer codes may reduce that to 20 minutes.

Scenario #1: Timer Control. This benchmark scenario represents the traditional approach of centrally controlling all luminaires via scheduled ON/OFF, with the lights operating the full 12 hours. Energy consumption over the 10 days was calculated at 7.2 kWh.

Shorter time delays translate to higher energy savings. However, very short time delays can produce more frequent switching, which can shorten fluorescent lamp life.

Meanwhile, longer time delays serve as insurance against nuisance switching by ensuring the space is

Scenario #2: Adaptive Central Control. This scenario features central control but with a single local occupancy sensor set with a 10minute time delay. The lights are ON from the time the first occupant arrives until the last occupant leaves.

Energy use: 6.1 kWh, 15% energy

O

NRC evaluated energy savings, comparing these options against Scenario #1, and found:

greater resolution. The researchers offered a scenario where lighting is modularized within the workstation by task, with advanced sensing detecting not just occupancy, but also task being performed. The lighting would instantaneously raise and lower light levels based on location of the occupant and task.

The proliferation of LED lighting is opening the door to new energysaving opportunities with occupancy sensors by reducing time delays.

• Scenario 3a (30 minutes), 22% energy savings • Scenario 3b (20 minutes), 26.4% energy savings • Scenario 3c (10 minutes), 31.9% energy savings • Scenario 3d (1 minute), 45.8% energy savings • Scenario 3e (0 minutes), 48.6% energy savings In “A Quick Timeout” (LD+A, December 2014), NRC researchers Dr. Erhan E. Dikel and Dr. Guy R. Newsham wrote, “Overall, Scenario 3-d seems like the best balance between maximizing savings, with some protection against false negatives.”

They added that a detailed cost analysis and human factors study of the acceptance of this frequency of switching are needed before application in a commercial building.

Regarding lamp life, shorter time delays are ideally suited to LED, though there may be potential for fluorescent. While shorter time delays results in more frequent switching, with associated reduction in lamp life, actual operating time is greatly reduced.

Deployment of LED lighting also provides another opportunity for Light Express | March - April 2015 | 35

Exploring the Urban Fabrics of Light

I

n our discussion with Michael Siminovitch, Director of the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) and the Rosenfeld Chair in Energy Efficiency and a professor in the Department of Design at UC Davis, we talk about adaptive outdoor lighting and the urban fabrics of light. In part 2, we’ll cover how standards, biology, energy goals and other factors play a role in setting thoughtful lighting strategies.

Echelon: Let’s start with some basics. What is adaptive lighting?

Michael Siminovitch: Adaptive lighting is actually a very simple construct. What it means is that lighting changes automatically, according to need.

ECHELON: How did the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) become interested in adaptive lighting?

SIMINOVITCH: The CLTC was established as a true public/private partnership where industry, the utilities, and the public entities here in California—the efficiency entities—looked at the next steps they could engage in to help accelerate the development of sustainable lighting technologies.

About 12 years ago, we started looking at night-time lighting, particularly in the acres of parking lots and exterior lighting where lights stay on for extremely long periods of time, and wondered what we

could do about that. We pulled together an industry partnership to explore what could be done with emerging technologies, with lighting controls, and with solid-state technology, to make a significant impact on the waste of energy and light pollution and light disturbances happening around these lighted outdoor spaces.

We asked, could we dynamically address the lighting according to need, and to do it in a way that preserves safety and security and aesthetics? This isn’t just about turning off the lights. It’s the idea of reducing lighting levels during periods of low activity to save energy, while adjusting lighting dynamically to maintain and accentuate safety.

ECHELON: How did you get started in implementing these adaptive lighting approaches for real-world outdoor spaces?

SIMINOVITCH: One of our early projects, which was the first fully adaptive parking lot in the country, was done here in California with one of our lighting partners. The UC Davis chief of police reviewed the plan and worked with us on the project. Lighting is a very important amenity that supports safety and security and provides proper egress. We wanted to make sure that the people who were the key stakeholders of the safety and security community were really involved in this process.

So we tried dynamically adjusting

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lighting, to bring it down to something like the 50% level—not turning it off—during periods of inactivity, but restoring it very quickly to full level when integrated sensors detected any kind of motion. In our early work with the police department, we found that this kind of bi-

level capability accentuated the sense of security and safety.

ECHELON: How can adaptive lighting help accentuate safety and security?

SIMINOVITCH: Say you’re moving

into a parking lot or going into a pathway and a light all of a sudden becomes brighter because it detects motion. Or say that the lighting level jumps from 50% to 100% because it senses motion. It heightens your awareness that somebody is there, or there’s

movement. For security professionals, if they’re watching a nighttime area lit at 50% and suddenly one area brightens, they can pay attention and maybe investigate that area.

ECHELON: What are some other

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 37

ways that adaptive lighting can be useful, beyond the obvious energy savings of diminishing light levels when 100% isn’t necessary?

SIMINOVITCH: Let’s look at how adaptive lighting is evolving. Initially, the controls are onboard each fixture, and it’s sort of a singularity.

The fixture gets installed in the field and it offers sensor control and the bi-level functionality we’ve discussed. You get good energy savings and it works well, but it opens the doors to other opportunities. The next step is to use strategically located sensors that communicate to one or more fixtures. With this kind of networked lighting, you can centralize the control sensing capability. Being able to make decisions locally and

then communicate them regionally, as the Lumewave from Echelon controls do, is an attractive concept.

In a pathway or road or large parking lot, you can sense at one point and RF communicate to multiple fixtures, downstream or upstream.

You can also report back to a home base. Now you’ve got really good energy reporting, and energy reporting is critical in controlled networks. Knowing what time specific lights were on is important for energy policy and also for safety and security functions. Energy reporting tells you when something’s not working, so you can improve your maintenance functions.

ECHELON: Where is this kind of

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networked, adaptive lighting being used today?

SIMINOVITCH: The University of California at Davis (UCD) has the largest networked university campus in the United States. Over 1600 points of outdoor lighting is fully networked [using Lumewave by Echelon technology]. UC Davis plans to add to the network and add

more in the near future. We’re learning all kinds of very interesting things about the flow of traffic, the flow of people, how lights are being used, and at what time.

It’s a way to really understand how our urban fabric of lights are actually used. And I think this is going to be tremendously informative as we evolve new lighting systems around the whole adaptive lighting paradigm.

Focus on the future: COMPLEMENTARY PROGRAMME AT LIGHT + BUILDING 2016 SHOWCASES NEW PRODUCTS AND TRENDS Multi-faceted offering for all trade visitors: information gathering at lectures by experts in their field, special events to support the up-coming generation Light + Building is a fixed variable when it comes to lighting and building services engineering. The trade fair, which runs from 13 to 18 March 2016, is a firm entry on the calendars of national and international manufacturers and trade visitors. The sector will be meeting up in Frankfurt am Main on six days that will focus on the over-arching

central theme “Where modern spaces come to life: digital – individual – networked”. Business contacts will be established for the future and new products presented.

With a lot of new information collected, new business partners and orders in the bag, everyone can look forward to a successful future.

Light + Building is all that: sector

platform, showcase for new products and roadmap for the future.

To complete the picture, Light + Building also offers, in addition to the presentation of product innovations on the part of the exhibitors, a comprehensive complementary programme. This involves reports from experts in their fields on current developments in the sector and, in a series of lectures, they will be presenting examples of best practice. On top of that there are award ceremonies for innovations in products and design trends.

The latest trends will be displayed in special shows and younger members of the profession will find support and sponsorship, as well as having events staged specially with them in mind. At the forthcoming event, the emphasis will be placed on safety and security technology, building information modelling (BIM), digital building and trends in the lighting market. There is a multifaceted and broad range of offerings on specific topics for all trade visitors, including architects, engineers, planners, interior architects, designers, tradesmen and women, wholesalers and retailers, as well as for those working in industry.

Experience the future: new products, trends and sector knowhow.

The new special show Digital Building picks up on Light +Building's motto, “Where modern spaces come to life”, and puts flesh on the bones of the notion of “digital – individual – networked”, using examples of a variety of technical solutions. The focus of the

special show is on “Rooms in nonresidential buildings”. The special show provides models for the use of the technology and the systematic networked integration of the components within modern rooms.

The latest developments in various different areas of building services engineering are to be presented on individual 'technology islands' as part of networked systems. To complement the 'technology islands' there will, in the central area of the special show, be a display of the kinds of possibilities and options for applications that open up with the increasing digitisation of building services technology. The demonstration will be presented with the help of two example applications in an office.

Building Performance offers trade visitors the opportunity to find out more about issues relating to lighting and integrated building services technology in a series of seminars and lectures. In their lectures, wellknown and respected experts in their field from Germany and from abroad will consider in detail the latest developments and technological solutions and invite discussion about them.

A particular attraction for architects, interior architects, specialist lighting retailers and designers is the Trend Forum, which presents the trends in the home for 2016/17 exclusively at Light + Building. The Forum stages various home scenarios and showcases selected products, integrated in unusual room designs.

At the heart of things are four main stylistic trends, which are picked up on in diverse life-style scenarios. The Trend Forum will be designed and

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 39

realised by the internationally wellknown Trend Bureau, bora.herke.palmisano.

Several times a day, there will be guided tours that go into greater detail about the scenarios staged and provide facts about current trends in the home.

The E-House, organised by the ZVEH (Central Association of the German Electrical and Information Technology Industry), demonstrates what networked building services technology and intelligent energy management look like from the point of view of the end consumer. The 'energy-saving power plant' shows, in a realistic context, the effect of the energy revolution in practice and how it is already possible, today, for energy efficiency and increased comfort, convenience and security to go hand in hand.

The debating format offered by Futurecourse brings together, at Light + Building 2016, representatives from politics, commerce and industry at the world's largest trade fair for lighting and building services engineering. Over the four days of the trade fair, two or three guests at a time will discuss current issues in a chaired debate. Following on from this, the audience will be able to raise questions of their own.

Futurecourse is part of the Technology Forum which is being organised jointly by Messe Frankfurt and the Association of the German Electrical and Electronics Industry (Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie e.V. - ZVEI) and is aimed at encouraging dialogue between exhibitors and visitors.

electrical and information technology trades have the chance to learn about the latest techniques and installation procedures in practical situations at a series of workstations.

A certificate, recording their participation, will be available for those who complete the course and try their hand at all stations.

The prevention of accidents and health and safety at work are at the centre of concern in the safety at work seminars. This section is offered to young people already training in the relevant professions and provides specialist information about increasing safety in the workplace. Participation is certificated at the end of the course.

The safety at work seminars are being organised in cooperation with Hesse / Rhineland-Palatinate Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Association (Fachverband Elektro- und Informationstechnik Hessen / Rheinland-Pfalz - FEHR) and the employers' insurance association, BG ETEM. Young Design offers an opportunity for young designers to showcase their lamp creations. This area is sponsored by Messe Frankfurt and offers creative young talents the ideal platform on which to make contact with both industry and a specialist public and to introduce themselves and their work.

The promotional area for innovative young companies aims at facilitating the entry of young companies into the marketplace and enables them to present their products at a leading international trade fair.

Promoting the future; focus on the skilled professionals of tomorrow Focus on the world of tomorrow with 'Meeting Point Future'. The title encompasses various projects that support the younger generation.

This special institution has become established within the framework of the complementary programme and is aimed at both visitors and exhibitors.

The area is organised in collaboration with the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium fĂźr Wirtschaft und Energie - BMWi). So that companies can present themselves in an appropriate context, a joint stand will be organised for each of the product groups: Lighting, Electro-technology and Home and Building Automation.

In ‘Workshop Street’, young trade visitors and trainees from the

At the Job Exchange exhibiting companies can offer vacancies

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Light Express | March - April 2015 | 41

directly to the visitors and make contact with them while still at the show.

In the University Area, universities and colleges working in the fields of architecture, lighting design, building services engineering and building services technology will be presenting their current projects and providing information about the many and varied courses on offer.

Under the title of 'Industry meets Students', the German Association of the German Electrical and Electronics Industry (Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie – ZVEI) and the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (Verband der Elektrotechnik Elektronik Informationstechnik e.V. – VDE) are organising the Jobday.

Students in or beyond the second semester of courses in electrical engineering, information technology and physics will be able to establish contacts with well-known companies in the electrical and electronics industries.

AWARDS FOR THE FUTURE: AWARDS AND AWARD CEREMONIES The Design Plus powered by Light + Building competition presents innovative and ground-breaking products offered by exhibitors represented at Light + Building who work in lighting, electrical and electronic engineering as well as in home and building automation.

The award-winning products will be selected by an international panel of experts according to the following criteria: technology, ecology and design. The competition is open to students and recent graduates in product and industrial design, as well as architecture or interior architecture. The awards are presented by Messe Frankfurt and organised by the German Design Council, the German centre of excellence for design.

The German Lighting Design Awards are presented annually and reward planners, projects and concepts relating to 'light as a building material'. A special display at Light +

Building will provide information about the German Lighting Design Awards, the winners and the 2016 event..

The Innovation Award for Architecture and Technology is aimed at architects, planning engineers and manufacturing companies. It underlines the importance of architectural quality in the field of building services technology and rewards the architectural features of products and conceptual solutions which successfully achieve highquality design whilst at the same time fulfilling stringent technical criteria.

The focus of the ZVEH/ZVEI Energy Efficiency Award is the application of internationally recognised standards for integrated systems of home and building technology, and their contribution to energy efficiency. Prizes are awarded in the categories of residential dwellings, non-residential and commercial buildings and applications in one's own company.

When it comes to the AIT Award – an award that is open to entrants from anywhere in the world – the choice is between the best projects in the field of architecture and interior spaces. The eight categories range from Public Buildings to Luxury Interiors. A high-calibre panel of adjudicators selects from several hundred submissions. The resultant selection is presented at Light + Building, and the best of them receive an award.

A look into the future: installations at the 'Luminale' festival in Frankfurt am Main A cultural highlight at Light + Building is Luminale. This Biennale of Lighting Culture takes place at the same time as the trade fair in both Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach and offers a programme of entertainment and interest for visitors to Light + Building.

To View the Magazine Light Express Online, Please visit: www.lightexpress.in

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Light Express | March - April 2015 | 43

Light + Building 2016: Where modern spaces come to life: digital – individual – networked The world’s biggest trade fair for lighting and building-services technology brings together around 2,500 exhibitors in Frankfurt am Main Design and technology in harmony: new products and trends in 22 exhibition halls "Where modern spaces come to life: digital - individual – networked" is the motto of Light + Building 2016. The combination of lighting and building-services technology makes Light + Building the leading international trade fair with a spectrum of products unrivalled in terms of depth and breadth. The industry presents intelligent solutions, future-oriented technologies and current design trends that not only make a building more economically efficient but also increase the standard of comfort, security, safety and architecture, as well as improve the user’s quality of life.

All market leaders have signed up for the trade fair from 13 to 18 March 2016 and the Exhibition Centre will be fully occupied. “We are delighted with the very good response from the exhibitor side, which shows that, with its combination of design and technology, Light + Building depicts the sector in its entirety and is the perfect platform for it.

Therefore, we are confident that the coming edition of the world’s leading trade fair for the sector will be a complete success and are looking forward to the highlights to be seen there”, says Wolfgang Marzin, Chairman of the Board of Management of Messe Frankfurt.

Light + Building is in tune with the times and spotlights the subjects of topical interest to the sector. Thus, emphasis will be given not only to the latest trends in the lighting market and the influence of light on people but also to networked security, the intelligent house, building automation and efficient energy manage-

ment.

One of the main themes of Light + Building 2016 will be on innovations in the field of safety and security technology. The integration of various security systems, such as video surveillance and admission control, and networking and incorporating them into the automatic building-services technology of smart homes and buildings, are important aspects of interest to both the sector and users.

At Light + Building 2016, visitors will be able to see all the latest products in this connection. Thus, numerous exhibitors will be showing their innovations and solutions for networked safety and security.

Moreover, many of the events on the complementary programme will be specially tailored around themes relating to safety and security technology, e.g., expert lectures that explain current developments and describe the practical benefits of networked safety and security.

On the six days of the fair, the approx. 2,500 exhibitors present all the latest trends from the sector, which are also taken up in the multifaceted programme of events and subjected to an in-depth review in expert lectures – a perfect blend for trade visitors wanting to inform themselves fully. Additionally, the international trade fair provides a clear overview of the market: it is divided into three main sectors – lighting, electrical engineering and home and building automation – in which national and international exhibitors present their products in 22 exhibition halls.

Design and technology in perfect harmony The demand for a pleasant working and home environment is greater

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than ever before. Parallel to this, there are growing expectations on energy efficiency, safety and security, and comfort. The ever greater digitalisation and networking of electrical installation means users can benefit from individual solutions.

This important aspect is also in the

forefront of Light + Building through the integration of design and technology, which go hand in hand and only “bring modern spaces to life” when combined to made innovative and future-oriented complete systems.

‘Modern spaces’ are also the

subject of the Digital Building special show, which reflects the motto of Light + Building, ‘Where modern spaces come to life’ and illustrates the leitmotif, ‘digital – individual – networked’ with a variety of technical solutions. The focus of the special show is on ‘rooms in

functional buildings’. Digital Building shows examples of the technology and the systematic and networked interaction of the components in modern buildings. The latest developments are presented systematically and interlinked for various aspects of building-

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 45

technology.

Digital light regulation: new dimensions for lighting design With well thought-out and networked lighting control systems, it is not only possible to illuminate rooms perfectly but also to exploit various aspects, such as luminous colour and dimming to the full. Human centric lighting, i.e., the impact of light on our productivity and feeling of well-being, is a groundbreaking trend theme, which is becoming increasingly important for planning new buildings and making lighting a part of architecture.

The trend in public-space planning is towards a multifarious and individual use of forms in lighting design. In the case of urban lighting, the result is not only maximum efficiency but also savings in costs. Visitors will be able to discover and learn about these and other trends, including design trends, for themselves at the world’s biggest platform for the lighting market, Light + Building.

Around 1,650 manufacturers will present the complete spectrum of products and services revolving around the subject of light: design luminaires in styles ranging from modern to classic, technical lighting and lamps of all kinds and for all applications, as well as a huge selection of lighting components and accessories. Visitors will be able to see tomorrow’s lighting on the 16 floors of Halls 1 to 6, 10 and the Forum. For example, design aficionados will be able to gain new inspiration in Hall 1. In Hall 3, visitors will find future-oriented technical innovations while, in Hall 5.0, the focus is on outdoor and street lighting. Decorative lighting for the contract and home are to be seen in Halls 5.1 and 6.1.

Valuable synergies in three product segments: electrical engineering, home and building automation and lighting.

Through the combination of all technical disciplines, building automation plays an important role: the increasing use of networking and digitalisation in electrical installations increases the quality of life in both business premises and private dwellings. At Light + Building, the industry presents solutions and technologies aimed not only at low energy consumption and modern expectations of safety and security but also individual creative opportunities and a high degree of comfort.

For the electrical-engineering sector, the combination with home and building automation makes Light + Building the world’s most important platform for intelligent building-services technology. Trade visitors will find a vast range of products and services for energy-efficient building-system solutions, electrical installation and building infrastructure in Hall 8.0 while, in Hall 11.0, everything revolves around el s, e.g., architects, engineers, planners, interior architects, designers, craftspeople, the retail / wholesale trade and the industry – from special exhibitions, via expert lectures, to trend presentations.

View Light Express Magazine online at: www.lightexpress.in 46 | March - April 2015 | Light Express

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 47

The worldwide standard for home and building control

Web visualization for display and operation of KNX plants IP Control Center – control of lighting, solar protection, heating, ventilation and air conditioning via web-compatible end devices

Ease of operation thanks to straightforward, full-graphic visualization The IP Control Center is a visualization controller of compact design. It features a freely configurable user interface, offering intuitive operation and display of KNX devices. Lighting, solar protection, heating, ventilation and air conditioning can be displayed via web-compatible end devices such as PCs, laptops, smart phones or tablets – matched to user profiles with different access authorities. To handle comprehensive building and room functions, up to 1250 KNX objects are available. In addition, there are powerful application modules for scene control, scheduler programs, alarm reporting and logic functions for use in connection with central control. These modules can be easily matched to holiday schedules, user needs, occupancy times, etc., and can be changed at any time.

Web editor for flexible and intuitive engineering Engineering is straightforward via ETS and the web editor, which is preinstalled for display by any browser. So, no extra software is required. Using the web editor, a wide choice of symbols and operating elements can be arranged per drag-anddrop. The user interface can be configured to meet individual needs by embedding own elements or elements provided by an extensive library. There is a choice of six different styles.

Efficient maintenance and commissioning via KNX interface The built-in KNX interface facilitates commissioning of KNX plant. Using an extra router, KNX plant can be maintained from a remote location.

Highlights ■

Ease of operation thanks to full-graphic and individually configurable user interface

■

Convenient remote control via web-compatible end devices such as tablets or smart phones

■

Straightforward and intuitive engineering via web editor without additional software

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Cost benefit thanks to builtin commissioning interface to KNX plants

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Reduced effort owing to remote maintenance and remote commissioning

www.siemens.com/ip-control-center

Ruining That Moody Urban Glow

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T 13, I covered multiple lamps in my bedroom with variously colored theatrical gels, the better to create a luminary ambience to suit my mood. When I felt sunny, I chose the yellow; when glum, the blue. And hey, I was a teenager. The blue got a lot of use.

In my repellently contented middle age, I don’t seek blue light. Like most sane people, I spurn restaurants whose lighting glares. I recoil from mirrors under fluorescent tubes. I switch on an overhead only to track down a water bug while wielding a flip-flop. Yet each evening from March onward, in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live part of the year, it seems as if the overhead is always on.

Along with other parts of South Brooklyn, Windsor Terrace is an early recipient of the Department of Transportation’s new light-emitting diode streetlights. New Yorkers who have not yet been introduced to these lights: We are living in your future.

Our new street “lamps” — too cozy a word for the icy arrays now screaming through our windows — are meant to be installed across all five boroughs by 2017. Indeed, any resident of an American municipality that has money problems (and what city doesn’t?) should take heed.

In interviews with the media, my fellow experimental subjects have compared the nighttime environment under the new streetlights to a film set, a prison yard, “a strip mall in outer space” and “the mother ship coming in for a landing” in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Although going half-blind at 58, I can read by the beam that the new lamp blasts into our front room

without tapping our own Con Ed service. Once the LEDs went in, our next-door neighbor began walking her dog at night in sunglasses.

Medical research has firmly established that blue-spectrum LED light can disrupt sleep patterns. This is the same illumination that radiates in far smaller doses from smartphone and computer screens, to which we’re advised to avoid exposure for at least an hour before bed, because it can suppress the production of melatonin. The tribute to “the city that never sleeps” was meant to celebrate a vibrant cultural night life — not a town of holloweyed “Walking Dead” insomniacs.

While the same light has also been associated with increased risk of breast cancer and mood disorders, in all honesty my biggest beef with LEDs has nothing to do with health issues. These lights are ugly. They’re invasive. They’re depressing. New York deserves better.

Yet the substitution of LEDs for traditional high-pressure sodium bulbs, whose familiar tangerine glow would have suited my rare upbeat humor at 13, is proving irresistible to many cities because of the economic benefits. Chicago, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Los Angeles have all undertaken mass retrofits. Although three to four times more expensive, the new bulbs are supposed to last two to four times longer than their predecessors, reducing energy costs between 30 and 70 percent.

Thus the advance of this technology has an inexorable quality. Rather than stand in the way and get mowed down, we urban aesthetes are probably better off focusing on the fact that all LEDs are not created

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equal.

Color temperature is measured in Kelvin units. Lower temperatures are warm, in the yellow range; higher temperatures are cool, in the blue.

Sodium bulbs are around 2,200 Kelvin — light in which one might fall in love. The brutal LED outside our

house is 4,000 — light more conducive to dismembering a corpse.

New York’s D.O.T. has also opted for lights that penetrate lower-floor residential properties like ours with rude, invasive lateral glare. Though the D.O.T. claims to have adjusted the angles slightly in disgruntled

neighborhoods, our street’s lights appear untouched.

But LEDs come in warmer spectra.

Even fiscally and environmentally conscientious California has compromised on this point.

Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco have all opted for yellow-rich LEDs. These cities have willingly made the

modest 10-15 percent sacrifice in efficiency for an ambience that more closely embodies what Germans call Gemütlichkeit and Danes call hygge: an atmosphere of hospitality, homeyness, intimacy and wellbeing.

Other municipalities have worked successfully with citizens to

Light Express | March - April 2015 | 51

reconcile energy savings with a more pleasing nocturnal landscape.

In Berlin, in response to outcry over a similar conversion, engineers designed LEDs that imitate the qualities of gaslight. After enough complaints, Davis, Calif., sponsored a variety-pack test street, from which residents ultimately selected not only a lower color temperature fixture, but one with a lower wattage, thus saving the city yet more money.

For New York, it may not be too late to marry practicality and aesthetics.

Specifications could still be revised — though LEDs may last up to 20 years, and once they’re installed citywide it will be too late. So even if you don’t live in a south Brooklyn neighborhood, call 311 to support: — Limiting, per a stalled City Council bill, streetlights to no more than 3,000 Kelvin (think an incandescent “soft white”); — Installing some kind of shade or lens cover to reduce lateral glare; — Exploring ways of dimming lighting in residential neighborhoods; — Suspending further installation until specifications are refined.

My husband claims that everyone will eventually “get used to” these grisly blue-spectrum diodes, and he’s probably right. But then, we’ve “gotten used to” garish big box stores and the foreshortening blight of fast-food franchises that make so many American cities look fungibly frightful. Parents “get used to” a clutter of kitschy plastic toys. Just because one is capable of becoming dully inured to something doesn’t make it desirable.

As currently conceived, the D.O.T.’s streetlight plan amounts to mass civic vandalism. If my focus on aesthetics makes this issue sound trivial, the sensory experience of daily life is not a frivolous matter.

Even in junior high school, I understood that lighting isn’t only about what you see, but how you feel.

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Digital all-round star: The new generation of ERCO Quintessence lighting tools

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ecessed luminaires are the preferred choice in applica tions where the lighting tools need to be deliberately toned down in favour of their lighting effect in the architecture. Prime examples here are administration buildings and educational facilities with their diversity of spatial situations and usage requirements. With the new, fully digital generation of Quintessence recessed luminaires, ERCO has launched a system solution designed to satisfy the highest standards of visual comfort and energy performance, with equal focus on efficiency.

Perfected in every detail, Quintessence offers optimised photometric, electrical and mechanical features that combine to encapsulate almost five decades of highly refined expertise and passion, setting ERCO apart as a leading specialist in recessed lighting systems.

Whereas the first generation of Quintessence recessed luminaires helped shape the transition from conventional analogue lighting tools to the digital age of LED light, ERCO

has now optimised all parameters of the new, fully digital Quintessence generation to feature state-of-the-art optoelectronics. As well as the LED recessed luminaires available as downlights, double-focus downlights, lens wallwashers and directional luminaires, the upgraded range follows its predecessors by embracing surface-mounted and pendant models. With a logical structure across the range, the result allows for differentiated lighting concepts with maximum freedom in design.

Trusted for uncompromising quality, ERCO predominantly uses components developed in-house – from lenses and reflectors to heat sinks with optimised thermal management through to control gear and LED modules – to ensure optimal control of its products, thereby guaranteeing consistent light quality and maximum efficiency in use and maintenance. For enhanced overall efficiency of the lighting concept, the new Quintessence generation delivers further enhancements, such as reduced recess depths, large luminaire spacing and consistently higher light output ratios.

DOWNLIGHTS: THE LIGHT DISTRIBUTION MAKES THE DIFFERENCE The ERCO Quintessence downlights are the first to feature innovative digital photometric solutions that allow the luminaires to be spaced up to 50% further apart, thereby minimising the investment, installation and operating costs. The optical system, consisting of diffuser lens and darklight reflector, produces an extra wide flood distribution, resulting in superbly uniform illumination in the horizontal plane, whilst the cylindrical illumination component ensures good facial recognition.

A 90° emission angle with 40° cutoff supporting the batwing light distribution guarantees optimal glare control – a sophisticated combination of photometric properties that previously proved elusive. The Quintessence range of downlights offers lumen packages as high as 4,400lm, with a connected load of up to 32W. With all of these parameters, the downlights ensure powerful illumination, particularly in rooms with high ceilings, such as reception halls and reading rooms,

whilst the high cut-off angle provides efficient visual comfort.

Offering the familiar diversity of mounting details – round or square, covered or flush – Quintessence downlights integrate seamlessly into a wide variety of architectural concepts, with a minimised recess depth of 136mm that facilitates effective lighting solutions in projects with minimal ceiling voids.

LENS WALLWASHERS AND DIRECTIONAL LUMINAIRES FOR ZONED LIGHT The distinct functional design of the Quintessence range reflects ERCO’s approach to light as the fourth dimension of architecture, recognising its value as a design tool in its own right to structure space, create scenic effect, facilitate orientation and draw attention through dynamic accentuation. With vertical illuminance being a key component for efficient visual comfort, it requires special consideration.

With this in mind ERCO has redesigned the Quintessence wallwashers to deliver superb

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uniformity on vertical surfaces for a bright and open spatial impression.

The special wallwasher lens with asymmetrical light distribution ensures excellent glare control with an unusually good cut-off angle of 80° on the room side. As a result, Quintessence lens wallwashers can be spaced further apart – up to a formidable 50% in retail applications and around 30% in museums – taking cost-efficiency to a whole new level.

The directional luminaires in the Quintessence range are made for applications where objects on walls or in the room are to be accentuated, combining the flexibility of track spotlights with the formally understated mounting solution of a recessed luminaire. The beams can be tilted up to 30° from the vertical and rotated through 360°. With a lens system consisting of collimating and Spherolit lenses, supported by a darklight reflector, the luminaire sets new standards in precise light

guidance with excellent glare control. The three light distributions narrow spot, spot and flood project the light flexibly and without loss onto the target surface – enabling efficient lighting solutions for changing room usage.

From great heights: Double-focus downlights The almost magical performance of double-focus downlights is refreshed with Quintessence offering a lighting tool designed for ambient lighting in rooms with high ceilings, such as reading rooms, foyers or theatres, managing the balance between powerful light and excellent glare control masterfully. To this end, the new double-focus downlights are equipped with a special lens system, consisting of collimating and Spherolit lenses, that directs the light downwards in a precise beam with flood or wide flood characteristic. The light is optimally shielded by a black cone, which largely restricts the view into

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the luminaire. For the same degree of glare-free visual comfort in inclined ceilings, ERCO offers a downlight version with an angle of tilt up to 30°.

The control gear units are integrated in the housing. As well as mounting with canopy, Quintessence pendant luminaires can be fixed to track with a transadapter.

Versatile design with surfacemounted and pendant luminaires Giving consideration to the fact that the ceiling in a building or room may not allow for, or accommodate, installations, ERCO has also designed the two Quintessence luminaires as surface-mounted and pendant models. Defined by a cylindrical housing with focus on simplicity, these lighting tools readily become an aesthetic architectural feature in their own right and add visual accents in the room. Following the system design of its range, they offer the same sizes and lumen packages as recessed downlights. With an emission angle of 90° and a 40° cut-off, Quintessence meets the challenges of efficient ambient lighting extremely well, allowing for large luminaire spacing with high visual comfort.

Optimised for enhanced lumen maintenance The Quintessence range covers lumen packages from 210lm (directional luminaires) th essence generation, this effectively means that 90% of the LEDs in the luminaires still achieve at least 80% of their original luminous flux after 50,000h. The failure rate of individual LEDs – not of the luminaire – after this period is just 0.1%. As well as supporting a long life, ERCO control gear guarantees consistent dimming characteristics. All Quintessence lighting tools can be dimmed down continuously to 1%, with flicker-free digital light that makes it ideal for studio recording. Depending on the model, the luminaire can be dimmed using trailing edge technology or via DALI.