News Updates for the Week of December 31

1.     32,256 Philips LEDs Light the Iconic 2013 Times Square - Philips continues to bring innovative LED technology into the lives of millions by lighting the world-famous Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball. New Year’s 2013 marks the 13th consecutive year Philips has served as the official Lighting Partner to the iconic Times Square Ball. The LED lighting on the Times Square Ball demonstrates the latest in innovative LED technology and ushers in a new era of lighting that delivers energy savings, greater light quality, longer bulb life, and dimmability to existing lighting fixtures.  The same innovative technology used in the Ball is commercially available to consumers to use in their home, and continues to become the new standard in lighting. 12/27 BUSINESS WIRE

2.      Draft 3 Version 1.0 ENERGY STAR Specification for Lamps - The ENERGY STAR Lamps Version 1.0 specification shall take effect in early 2014. To qualify for ENERGY STAR, a product model shall meet the ENERGY STAR specification in effect on its date of manufacture. Comments on Draft 3 are due via email to lamps@energystar.gov no later than Friday, January 18, 2013. https://www.energystar.gov/lamps

3.      The 2012 ENERGY STAR Summary of Lighting Programs - The Summary provides an overview of a variety of programs offered by utilities and other energy efficiency program sponsors in the United States to promote ENERGY STAR certified light bulbs and fixtures, decorative light strings, and ceiling and ventilating fans with light kits.  The Summary includes information provided by energy efficiency program sponsors and describes their current program offerings for 2012-2013 and beyond. Each ENERGY STAR lighting program is summarized with a focus on incentives, marketing and consumer education efforts, program contacts, and other relevant program details. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=activity_search.basic

4.      Optional Guided Tour of L.A.'s Streetlights and Operations Center/Museum on January 29 - The city of Los Angeles has the largest LED street lighting retrofit project in the U.S., if not the world, with more than 106,000 luminaires replaced to date. Led by Senior Street Lighting Engineer Orlando E. Nova, the tour will visit selected outdoor installations and hear about the city's aggressive efforts to integrate remote monitoring systems, adaptive lighting, and controls. 2013 DOE Solid-State Lighting R&D Workshop, January 29-31, 2013 • Long Beach, CA. Register at: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/ssl/longbeach2013_tour.html

5.      tED Magazine's Greenest of the Green Award - Apply for tED's 2013 Greenest of the Green award. Nominations for the 2013 contest will be accepted from Dec. 3, 2012 through Jan. 18, 2013 through electronic submission portal: https://www.formopro.com/mr.asp?2.270235.8 The 2013 Greenest of the Green award will be presented at the 2013 NAED National Meeting; the winning company will be featured in the April 2013 issue of tED. http://www.tedmag.com/greenaward2013/

      6.      Energy-Efficient Lighting Explained: A Guide for Business People Who Aren't Lighting Techies - FREE (reg. $189) - Provided by Real Energy Writers and The Daily Energy Report, this educational guide reveals why lighting is one of the most cost-effective energy efficiency investments you can make today. You will learn about current lighting technologies, the industry's political issues, and what you can do to reduce energy costs. https://www.noesisenergy.com/site/content/energy-efficient-lighting-explained

7.      Cheap Rare Earth Metals Provide a Boost to the LED Industry - A glut of manufacturing capacity and near-collapse in rare earth metal prices is driving down the cost and hence encouraging the rapid take-up of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting. LED lights are based on semiconductors and therefore do not require traditional lamp manufacturing expertise. This has opened opportunities for LED chipmakers to challenge the incumbent incandescent light bulb manufacturers such as Philips, Osram and General Electric. http://oilprice.com

8.      Lightfair International 2013 Expands - LIGHTFAIR^® International (LFI^®) will expand its product presentation and increase its scale in 2013 with the addition of two high-profile categories occupying newly added Hall F space in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center. The 2013 additions of solar power and software accelerate LFI’s continuing growth as the world’s largest annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference. The new categories will advance its footprint.  Solar and software naturally complement the core LFI product mix with systems and technologies integral to the lighting industry’s broader reach into energy and control innovations. http://lighting.com/lightfair-international-2013-expands/

9.      India Lighting Industry Expects Healthy Growth in 2013 - The LED Industry is expected to reach around US $ 500 million by 2015 in India. Within the segment, LED street light and LED solar light's demand to increase by leaps and bounds in coming years. The industry as a whole faced a tough time specifically in project sales. At the same time, the consumer category still witnessed a reasonable growth, with CFLs continuing to be the growth driver. The advent of reliable LED products will play a significant role in the industry growth in coming years, as major players in the industry are already offering very good value propositions in the market, making this segment very vibrant and dynamic. The lighting industry in India is growing at nearly 17-18% per annum over the last two to three years. 12/29 The Times of India

 

10.  OLEDs on the Road - The automotive industry is one of the markets where new technologies can appear and interact directly with the consumer. One technology that is struggling to find its feet in the consumer world, but could benefit by inclusion in vehicles, is OLED lighting. While there are questions about its efficiency, and high price, being included in an already expensive item would bring it to the attention of the mass market. German manufacturer Audi is known for its innovations in vehicle lighting, having been the first to include LEDs in tail lamps, and then again in the sidelights of a vehicle. It has now begun to pioneer the use of OLED lighting in vehicles-not just as a lens, but to also create cars that can respond to the driver's mood. http://www.plusplasticelectronics.com/lighting/oleds-on-the-road-71130.aspx

Monthly Special Feature

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OLEDs don't get as much publicity as LEDs, because they're a good five to seven years behind their inorganic cousins in terms of commercial deployment. But they have considerable potential to save energy, as well as a number of other advantages. So where do we stand with OLED technology today?

Over the past two decades, the widespread use of LEDs in calculators, cell phones, televisions, indicator lamps, and related applications has driven the combination of basic research and manufacturing development needed to produce LEDs that are commercially viable for general illumination. OLEDs, on the other hand, are relative newcomers and find themselves at a critical stage of their development when it comes to general illumination. While they've had success as displays in handheld devices and show great promise for use in flat-panel TVs, the commercial demand for them has not been anywhere near as broad as it's been for LEDs and has been much more recent, so that OLEDs haven't benefited from the same kind of investment. As a result, they still face a host of challenges in becoming adopted for lighting applications.

One of the biggest challenges is price. The current price of an OLED panel is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,500/klm–compared with around $30/klm today and falling rapidly for an LED A-type lamp and $4/klm for a fluorescent T8 lamp and ballast. For OLED luminaires to be cost-competitive, the panel price needs to come down by at least a factor of 75 – to ~$20/klm or less – by 2020.

The root cause of this problem can be attributed to the nature of OLED devices. Because OLEDs are large-area, diffuse light sources, they require larger amounts of costly materials and precise manufacturing control and handling over large areas. Increasing the brightness of the OLED panels reduces the device area needed to achieve a given light output, which in turn leads to lower materials and manufacturing costs. Thus, developing an effective low-cost, scalable light-extraction approach would have the biggest near-term impact on efficacy and cost.

And while increasing the lumen density of the OLED panels can have a large impact on the cost of both panels and luminaires, this can't be done at the expense of panel lifetime. Developing stable novel materials and device architectures that have even higher efficiency and are suited to low-cost manufacturing are the other main challenges. In addition to increasing the efficacy of devices, materials costs need to be simultaneously reduced. In terms of materials, this includes substrates with light-extraction enhancement layers, the organic emission and charge transport layers, and the encapsulation materials and approaches. In terms of device architecture, a low-cost approach needs to be developed that yields consistent performance over very large areas. But merely improving the design of materials and device structures won't be enough to reach DOE and industry cost targets. Reaching those targets will require increased production volume and manufacturing experience.

What about OLED performance? Considerable advancement has been made in the past year or so, with efficacy up to 60 lm/W, CRI ~80, and brightness increasing to levels considered appropriate for general illumination. But OLEDs have the potential to become much more efficient, so significant headroom remains–particularly in light-extraction efficiency (which is now 70 percent) and reduced operating voltage. There's also room for improvement in the internal quantum efficiency and spectral efficiency of the panels, as well as in the driver and optical efficiency of the luminaire. Making all of these improvements will allow OLED panel performance to reach 190 lm/W, and OLED luminaire performance to reach DOE's 2020 target of 140 lm/W. However, these gains need to be developed while keeping costs competitive with other lighting technologies.

As for the future of OLEDs for general illumination, many feel that it hinges on differentiating them from other lighting technologies and demonstrating how they can be complementary rather than an either-or alternative. That shouldn't be a hard sell, given the inherent advantages OLEDs have. OLEDs can be configured as large-area, diffuse sources whose soft light can be viewed directly, with less need for shading, lenses, diffusers, louvers, or parabolic cells. This makes them ideal for general ambient lighting. On top of that, they can be molded to almost any shape when made on substrates that are thin and flexible, which allows them to be integrated more tightly into architectural designs. This not only shatters conventional conceptions of what a luminaire should look like, but even blurs the distinction between luminaire and light source and opens up such intriguing possibilities as windows that give off their own light at night.

A number of OLED products that are available on the market today show that the future has already begun. For example, Lumiotec came out last year with a portable flat panel equipped with a hook, which can be hung from any projection. And Acuity Brands now offers four separate families of OLED luminaires: Revel™, Kindred™, Trilia™ and Canvis™–the latter featuring a luminous surface that changes shape by interacting with building occupants through gestural control.

OLEDs are not likely to replace LEDs, but they clearly have the potential to become a viable part of SSL that makes us more energy-efficient while helping to transform the lighting landscape. And although it may take time, they're moving closer to that point with each passing year.

New Report on OLED Lighting Materials Market - Industry Analyst firm NanoMarkets has issued a new report on the OLED lighting materials market. In the report the firm projects that the OLED lighting materials market will grow from its current value of approximately $1.7 million in 2012 to over $1.1 billion in 2019 and surpass $1.3 billion in revenues in 2018 as OLED lighting moved beyond luxury luminaires and designer kits and into larger, general illumination applications. Additional details about the report are available on the NanoMarkets website at: http://www.nanomarkets.net/index.php/market_reports/report/oled_lighting_materials_market_forecast_2013