SSL Technology Update: TALQ consortium, LightSavers, GE prod
Harvard Engineering,
Kingsun, Philips, Schréder, Streetlight.Vision and Thorn Zumtobel have partnered to create the TALQ Consortium to define a network-management standard.
Increasingly municipalities and utilities are networking street lights both to automate the detection of failed lights and the maintenance process AND to enable fine-grained control of light levels to maximize energy savings. But today's network systems are largely proprietary.
TALQ does not intend to influence the actual wireless or power-line network implementations, but will focus on the software-management interface to the various networks. The goal is to ensure that a lighting control and management system from one company can work with networked street lights from another. The consortium plans to deliver a network management interface standard by the end of the year.
LightSavers project
The Climate Group, in partnership with Philips Lighting, has released a formal report of the LightSavers project that encompasses outdoor LED lighting projects in 15 trials spread across 12 cities globally.
Released as part of the Clean Revolution Campaign at the Rio+20 Summit, the report concludes that solid-state lighting can provide significant energy savings along with social and economic benefits to citizens. It also reveals that 68 to 90% of residents surveyed prefer LED-based lighting. This data is based on surveys conducted in Kolkata, London, Sydney, and Toronto in conjunction with the trials.
Outdoor products
GE Lighting has introduced the new Evolve LED Scalable Cobrahead street-light family spanning 3000 to 21,900 lumens in output
The new street lights come in four fixture sizes that allow a scaling of the number of LED modules in each model. Combined with new reflective optics, the design can deliver more pavement patterns than prior Evolve products.
GE says that the range of products in the family can meet any municipal code. That means that a city could choose to light everything from residential streets to high-volume roadways with the same fixture family.
Product recognition programs
The US Department of Energy has launched the outdoor section of the 2012 Next Generation Luminaires competition.
Initial submissions to the competition are due August 3 with product samples due for testing September 7. The program is designed to help proliferate LED-based lighting by identifying products lighting designers will feel comfortable specifying and installing. Winners will be announced at the Strategies in Light conference next February.
