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November 5, 2009...The 2009 SSL Design Summit just wrapped up its November 3-4 run in Jersey City, New Jersey, on the shores of the Hudson river, right across from Manhattan's world trade/financial district. Delivering a few beautiful evening views of the New York City skyline, it isn't hard to soak in the big picture of just how massive the opportunity for solid state lighting is. There are a lot of fixtures on that island, with many of them on 12 to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also saw an economy in pain. New building is negligible, vacancies are clearly visible good ideas that save operational expenses are being welcomed. We took the hint from a number of beleaguered end of year travel budgets, and in consultation with our planned speakers, we have shifted the LA/Long Beach Summit out into early 2010, specifically Jan 20-21. We like water, and the venue we're finalizing with the shift is very "on the water". Logos and announcement changes are in process, so if you spot a leftover December date, fear not. (or, in the words of our hotel's "security command center" on Wednesday morning blared out nearly continuously from 5:45 to 6:15 am.... "please disregard the alarm"... may I disregard your "disregard" announcement and please go back to sleep now?). It's all good.

At this 2009 Summit, thought leaders came together and elements of the industry shared and learned. That's what it's all about, because frankly, there aren't all that many individuals involved in the process of leading a market. While 80/20 applies in many "numbers and results" types of analysis, when it comes to "the human factor", the "3% rule" is more the norm. That rule simply postulates that when 3% of the people have the passion to lead something, and it rings true with, the majority of the other 97%, the 3% can then proceed to make something happen. Revolutions come from the 3%. It happened in India with Ghandi and his followers, around the 1920s, and still earlier, with the 13 colonies that formed the United States when they had had enough with excess taxation and lack of representation to address their grievances. (Nothing personal against Great Britain, they just had a bit of a run going on. Similar numbers were in play when czarist Russia turned over, and when the French monarchy fell). It's human nature. Think about your high school prom planning committee, or the number of "superstars" in the typical sports organization, and you get the idea.

The Summit, as with our other conference events, has always been about the strength of the agenda. It's never just a list of topics and speakers thrown up based on whoever says "yes" to an invitation, or as a response to a "call for papers". It's a topic flow, based on the assessment of our informal advisory board, including the co-chairs, key contributors and our network of industry friends, all aimed at making the industry stronger and moving it forward faster. As one of our lighting decision-maker attendees wrote this morning, "This was the only seminar that I have had attended on SSL other than at Lightfair, and feel that it was not only complete in scope, but that the speakers really wanted to be there. As a past employee of [three huge names in lighting/lighting componentry], I just wanted to tell you that your effort, attitude and professionalism are world class." So what did we learn? One big thing was that these LED things are working really, really well. LED-based luminaires are still tricky to get right, but the LEDs aren't the sticking point any longer.

If we agree that the most fundamental burden of progress in solid state lighting falls upon the shoulders of the LED manufacturers, their understanding of where the technology can go, and how to get there, we're looking at a pretty select group of industry leaders that make a big difference. Sure there a few other smaller LED innovators that might bring forward such a good idea that they eventually join the leaders, but as it stands, if you have Osram, Nichia, Cree, and Lumileds in the same room, you're looking at the companies that are shaping the fundamental message of the LED lighting industry (no slight intended on Toyoda Gosei, Seoul Semi, or Epistar who are all big volume players, they're just not as prominent in shaping the impressions that a market such as ours is built on). What we heard from that group at the 2009 Summit was not so much what they were doing, but rather what they are learning in areas such as standards development, long term testing or while pushing the technology to it's limits (and guess what, the LED is definitely no longer even close to the weak link in the chain when it comes to luminaire color consistency or lifetimes). Be sure to check into the agenda to see what Osram's Jian Jiao and Cree's Ralph Tuttle, were there to share... and keep in mind the backstory that those learned gentlemen are also the past two chairs of the NGLIA.

One portion the engendered some lively discussion concerned Cree's findings that have come out of their LM-80 testing program, which in a nutshell is suggesting to Cree that depreciation curves for LEDs in their first 5000 hours may potentially be meaningless when it comes to predicting the ultimate (or 70% lumen maintenance aka "L70") lifetime of their devices. In Cree's testing, they found that while a number of factors will affect the variance and depreciation (or appreciation in some samples) of their power LEDs in the first 5000 hours, that after things settle down, they may be seeing a different, and much flatter depreciation curve. If that bears out in testing across their future product lines, and if other manufacturers see the same type of "2-step" curve down the road, it may ultimately cast some doubt on the specific relevance of the Energy Star commercial requirement requiring 94.1% lumen maintenance to be a presumed predictor of that minimum 35,000 hour lifetime that Energy Star is looking for. We don't intend to suggest that if a manufacturer can't make the 94.1% cut-off that the industry should simply "trust them" that things will flatten out later on and everything will be fine. The point is that such a 2-step curve, which appears to be there in some other manufacturer's LM-80 data, and which Cree reports it found when testing other manufacturer's products, might imply much longer lifetimes that any of us have imagined. I would throw in the personal analogy of when I purchased my first music CDs. It was brand new technology, and the best manufacturers of the day could offer was an expectation that "they should last at least 5 years", but that ultimately they didn't know if the materials would hold up over the long term. 20 years later, I haven't had a single CD from that original collection bite the dust due to material degradation.

At the luminaire level, we were pleased to hear from Lightolier (now Philips Lightolier), and Elumen, two companies that made the cut with regard to our vetting criteria, earning a place to talk product, not just theory. Both were able to offer keen insights into product consistency over time. In the case of Lightolier, VP of Strategic Development and Innovation Ken Czech, shared details on the Calculite product which was last year's "Most Innovative Product" winner at Light Fair International. The Calculite takes a remote phosphor approach as the way to isolate the customer from generational changes so that tomorrow's available downlight matches the brightness and color consistency. The theory is simple, blue emitters are very efficient, and constantly getting better, so shoot as many of them as you need to at a phosphor target that effectively acts as the "lens" of the downlight. As blue LEDs get brighter, Lightolier uses less of them or drives them more gently to produce a product that puts out the same amount and color of light, while simply using less power, from generation to generation. The same principle applies to making brighter versions as well (just keep the same number of LEDs and you get more lumens from the same power in).

Elumen, produces roadway and area lighting products, shared a bit on how their streelights have placed a lot of intelligence into the driver functions (driver = power conversion + control functions), to basically allow them to take whatever approach the market is most desiring. Ben Frank shared that as currently implemented, they use their built-in feedback mechanisms to maintain the overall lumen output within the prescribed range throughout the life of the product. As the LEDs output degrade on hot nights or over their many tens of thousands of lifetime hours, they tweak up the current, as needed, to maintain a constant light level. If the market is demanding longer life rather than constant output, they could just as easily allow lumen depreciation to a certain pre-set level before beginning the compensation, which tends to mess with the whole concept of L70 types of lighting design approaches. Plus with the intelligence built in, there are obviously a range of options in how to handle such things as "end of life" notfication, including shut-off, dim or later, "phone home". Right now, those aren't user programmable functions, but when one of the kick off speakers was Margaret Newman, Chief of Staff of the New York City Department of Transportation, is it just maybe possible that one of the largest streetlight consumers in the world shared some of their vision of what the market needs?

It's good to have those 3% willing to invest in the industry's knowledge base. More reports to follow, but don't expect all the details here... Long Beach will be the place to be.

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EPA Sets New Timeline for Energy Star Program Enhancements for 2010SSLighting Design News Staff

Mitsubishi Corp. Reaches Settlement with Professor Gertrude Neumark Rothschild in Patent DisputeLIGHTimes News Staff

Osram Produces 104 lm/W Warm White LED Prototype; Introduces Ambient Light SensorLIGHTimes News Staff

LRC Demonstrates Photometry System for More Efficient Streetlighting DesignsLIGHTimes News Staff

Epistar Achieves 110lm/W Warm White 1W and 3W LEDsLIGHTimes News Staff

SemiLEDs Switches to 4" Wafers to Meet Customer Demand for LED LuminairesLIGHTimes News Staff

Low Cost Crystal Growth Among New DOE Funded Research ProjectsLIGHTimes News Staff

Philips Lumileds Releases Luxeon Rebel LEDs for the Automotive IndustryLIGHTimes News Staff

Cree CEO Discusses Economy and Energy with Energy Secretary ChuSSLighting Design News Staff

Dominant introduces H-Series InGaN LEDsLIGHTimes News Staff

Summit 2009: What we learnedTom Griffiths - Publisher