Quality of light and the - Philips Lighting

iNtERViEW
Designing with
Where to next?
the infant digital lighting technologies that i have been working with over the last
decade are starting to grow up. it is no longer terrible toddler or unruly teenager
technology anymore, but polite young adult technology with a serious view on the
world. i am quite excited these days to see more and more innovation and to be
involved in more and more adoption and specification of latest LED solutions.
We have major projects now being specified with LED light sources like Fortimo.
it is not just the flagship projects but more significantly for me the day to day bread
and butter projects, however we have a long way to go until we reach majority
adoption and penetration into the market with LED.
Peter Earle MsLL,
specification Manager,
Philips Light source technology
I have closely watched the white LED progress in the last ten
years. LED white light has come on in leaps and bounds in the
last couple of years and I work with it on a daily basis these days.
Fortimo LED Lines at around 135 lm/W are outperforming
fluorescents. Fortimo SLM modules are rendering saturated
colours like ceramic metal halide does. Colour consistency over
lifetime is solved. Seeing is believing.
It will be interesting to see how the industry will adopt and use
this light source that has become actually useful. Who is innovating
with luminaire design and who is squeezing this new technology
into old forms or just copying other designs?
// Module approach vs peak design
Some fixture designs use modules, some use peak designs.
A peak design is a design where the manufacturer designs his
own LED boards using componentry – he will source his own
PCBs, source his own LED chips, source his own resistors, ICs
and connectors and so forth. He will build his own LED board.
This gives him total control over the LED solid state system and
the design-in to his luminaire. This is great if he has the in-house
resource and expertise to do this, but not all manufacturers do.
The upside is he gets this total control to choose – the downside
is that as soon as he has introduced his new LED luminaire into
his catalogue, the technology is probably outdated.
An LED module is basically an LED chip package encased in a
module body that allows it to be easily fixed into a luminaire.
With less technical challenges than a peak design, the designer
can reach production prototype stage and product launch more
quickly. If the module supplier also supplies drivers and cables,
provides detailed technical design-in guides and recommends
other component suppliers for items like reflectors and thermal
solutions, and say a system warranty for 5 years for instance, then
the luminaire manufacturer has all the means and comfort he
needs to launch a great LED fixture portfolio that will stand the
test of time.
I am concerned by people who say they are concerned about the
module approach. They may think the module approach is about
squeezing a new technology into an old format. In fact I think they
might be missing the point or have a different agenda. A modular
approach helps to future-proof a design and offer design freedom.
We know that LED technology is improving at a
fast rate, so if a luminaire is designed together
with its LED board and electronics as
an inseparable unit, a peak design,
then the LED technology inside that
luminaire quickly becomes out of date.
If the luminaire maker tools up for a
modular approach, and the module
technology improves every 6 months,
then there is no need to retool the fixture
line to upgrade the light source to the next
generation. And as the light source supplier innovates
and releases better and better module and system technology,
that innovation is passed on to its customers, the luminaire
manufacturers, for no extra cost. How good is that?
Kristian Krogh, co-founder of EQ2light, a London-based lighting
design company with global clients, comments: “Our customers
are becoming increasingly aware of LED and the advantages of
LED schemes. Toughening energy legislation and smart salesmen
have led them to LED for some years. However, as some of these
older installed schemes mature, some have shifted (in colour) and
malfunctioned. So whilst many of our customers are still open
to LED schemes most are not intending to wed themselves to
one manufacturer for the next ‘50,000 hours’. They are therefore
keen to have the opportunity to replace the LEDs with another
manufacturer’s units if this becomes necessary.”
Kristian summarises: “Modularity will start to offer this possibility,
whilst we are perhaps not quite there yet, the idea that we can
swap units as simply as swapping a Decostar for a Masterline
is not only appealing but necessary. This will offer the ‘apples
for apples’ comparison and start to eek out the less factual
manufacturers, turning the wild west LED revolution into an
understandable and accountable market place for lighting
professionals as well as end users.”
// Standardisation?
It is clear there is no standard industry method of getting the LED
light source into a luminaire, either in existing entrenched form
factors or new form factors. Everyone is doing it in their own way.
Some manufacturers take into account that a lighting designer
or consultant will have to try and specify his luminaires and his
technology, others may not even consider these things. To help
www.philips.com/lightspec
with this, Philips offers a design-in support service, through the
Application Engineering team based in The Netherlands.
Of course when using Fortimo technology, quality and reliability
is assured. The team also has expertise and growing experience
of other adjacent technologies, like diffuser materials, thermal
management and optical designs.
Although Philips can help to a point, the luminaire manufacturers
now have to step up to the plate and innovate using LEDs – that
means LED lamps, LED modules and in some cases LED peak
design boards. There is no legislation, norm or guideline that says
a downlight that’s been a downlight for the last 20 years has to
continue to be that downlight form factor for the next 20 years,
but retrofitted with LED. A more innovative design approach
might be that the luminaire designer thinks about and asks himself
for each application, ‘where do I want the light from the luminaire?
What types of effect do I want to create, whilst still meeting local
norms and regulations?’ Then he can decide what type of light
source is needed and which luminaire and optical form
factors are therefore necessary. The freedom that
the Fortimo and Xitanium technologies bring to
the design process can help immensely here.
The old forms aren’t necessarily the only way
to do it anymore.
// Design innovation
I see lots of glare and some pretty awful beam
qualities far too often. I have also seen some excellent
new designs. It is obvious that the market has not yet settled on
form factor designs or how to effectively and efficiently design in
LED technology on a day to day basis.
Tim Downey, Senior Partner at leading UK-based lighting design
company studioFractal agrees: “The latest LED technologies allow
us to integrate lighting into all the surfaces in any space, permitting
much greater flexibility, dramatic lighting effects and significantly
reduced operating costs. We focus on how to get the light to
exactly where it’s needed, utilizing direct, indirect, focussed and
diffuse lighting techniques.” – studioFractal have designed spaces
that are perfectly lit but without a downlight in the ceiling in sight.
Even more impressively, it is not immediately obvious to the users
in these spaces where the light is really coming from. Tim adds,
“Lighting technology is advancing at a far greater rate than many
of the lighting equipment manufacturers can handle. We often
find ourselves with a new LED product – but no luminaire to put
it in. We are also still seeing outdated lighting products, designed
around CFL or ceramic metal halide lamps – with retrofitted
LEDs. These are simply not good enough now. More and more
we are designing specific lighting installations using the latest LED
products but without traditional lighting fittings. We are designing
more with translucent or reflective surfaces than we are with
luminaires.”
The debate about where the innovation will come from regularly
focuses on Philips and the other light source manufacturers –
along the lines of, ‘come on guys where’s your latest stuff, where’s
the latest board, module, binning technology?’. Well, it’s time to
widen the lens and start to look to the luminaire manufacturers
to ask a similar question – ‘how will you innovate with your
designs using the freedom brought by light source technology
like Fortimo?’.
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