The Urban Renewal Authority (URA) of Hong Kong will spend about HK$270million on green upgrades for Wan Chai's Lee Tung Street and Kwun Tong town center. The green initiative is to encourage developers and the community to adopt more environment-friendly practices, authority chairman Barry Cheung Chun- yuen said Sunday.

The City Council of San Ramon, U.S. will consider another application for federal economic stimulus money for a $215,600 grant to replace city parking lot lights and street lights with energy efficient LED ones. According to a city staff report, installing the energy efficient lights could reduce city energy costs by 50 percent. LED street lights also last 50,000 to 80,000 hours longer than traditional lights.

In Tenderloin district of San Francisco, U.S., the city government has installed "smart" LED (light-emitting diode) street lights, which is part of a wide effort by the city to cut spending and reduce energy use. The LED panels are connected to servers over existing power lines, from which the city manages the operation of the LEDs. Based on data retrieved from the panels, management consoles can remotely turn off or dim lights depending on time, weather and traffic.

Taiwan’s first Automotive Optic Design Center (AODC) has recently been inaugurated by the Automotive Research & Testing Center (ARTC) of Taiwan, with the aim of vertically integrating the island’s automotive-lighting industry. ARTC president Joe Huang (second from left) signed IAH and DLS technical-transfer and consulting agreements with private companies.

TT electronics Optek Technology has just announced its new multi-chromatic tuned light engines to provide lighting designers with highly consistent LED color matching capabilities. The company’s chromatic tuning process produces solid-state lighting solutions with high module-to-module consistency, such that differences in color temperature of each light engine are indistinguishable to the human eye.

AIXTRON and Semileds has just announced their successful cooperated fabrication of GaN-based blue LED chips on 6-inch sapphire wafers. Not only were optical results encouraging but also the process is sufficiently close to production compatibility that the company should soon be able to reap the rewards from larger wafers.

The 20th annual LIGHTFAIR® International (LFI)Innovation Awards (LIA) ceremony took place before the opening of the 2009 LFI trade show on May 5. The industry’s most innovative products and designs introduced in the past 12 months were celebrated at the Awards. Each individual product among the 218 submissions LFI received this year was judged by an independent panel of renowned lighting professionals, and the winners are:

Nexxus Lighting, Inc. (NASDAQ:NEXS) and QD Vision, Inc. today unveiled the world's first quantum dot lighting solution that combines the efficiency of LED lighting with the warm color of incandescent bulbs. The new lamp integrates a quantum dot optic with cool white LEDs to produce color-rich, true incandescent, warm white light which can provide over 80% energy savings and lasts up to 25 times longer than comparable halogen lighting alternatives.

National Semiconductor Corp. and Nuventix, Inc. today unveiled a new electronic drive and thermal management reference design that simplifies development of high-brightness light-emitting diode (LED) bulb fixtures that replace incandescent or compact fluorescent light bulbs in standard sockets. The new LED electronic drive and thermal management reference design will be demonstrated in Nuventix's booth #3260 at the Lightfair International conference in New York from May 5 to 7.

For those who are interested in creative ideas and innovative technology concepts, the “LED – Emotionalize your light” idea contest to be started online this May will offer an exciting opportunity. Via an easy submission procedure, the participants can put their own light design online, and all the participants will have the chance to win valuable prizes amounting to 7000€.

Cree announces a prototype version of the LR6 LED recessed downlight that consumes just 6.5 W of electricity, resulting in 665 lumens, an efficacy of 102 lumens per watt and a power factor greater than 0.9.

Shown at LIGHTFAIR International in New York, the high-efficiency LR6 prototype features TrueWhiteTM technology, resulting in a 92 color rendering index and a 3500 K color temperature.

Luminus Devices, Inc., today announced the introduction of the SST-50 White PhlatLight® LED, the first 5.5W monolithic large-chip LED in a surface-mount (SMT) package. The SST-50 is designed to integrate directly with existing LED lay-outs and enable the next level of performance required by fixture designers to deliver LED-based solutions for mainstream applications in the general, architectural and portable lighting markets.

OSRAM Opto has released the new ultra-white Oslon SSL LED in a package measuring just 3 x 3 mm. The Oslon LED has a typical luminous efficacy value of 100 lm/W, and features simplified thermal management, high reliability and a beam angle of 80°. The Oslon LED is an LED in the 1 W class and meets the requirements for use in general lighting, like in spotlights, desk lights and ceiling floodlights.

Endicott Research Group (ERG), known for its expertise in powering CCFL and LED backlights for LCDs, is developing new LED driver solutions for the solid state lighting market. Leveraging technology developed for its CCFL inverters and LED backlight drivers, ERG will be introducing a family of Smart Force(TM) LED drivers that combine full-function power supplies with energy-efficient controllers for commercial, industrial, architectural and other SSL applications.

At Lightfair International 2009, PerkinElmer, Inc. yesterday announced the introduction of its new LED fiber optic illuminator that exceeds the brightness levels of 150-watt halogen technology while using fifty percent less power.

Nuventix, Inc., innovator of SynJet® active thermal management solutions, announces the general availability of the SynJet Universal DLM cooler for the Philips Fortimo/Lexel LED Downlight Module. This Nuventix active cooling product is the most compact and low profile luminaire available in the market today.

The campus of Bosque School in southern Albuquerque, U.S., is soon to get a new appearance with clean technology. The school will replace its nearly 100 outdoor light poles with solar-powered LEDs that are controlled by smart technology to shut on and off automatically.

Base on NeoPac Universal Platform for solid state lighting, NeoPac built high brightness (4,400 lumen) , high CRI (~90) LEDs light module for stage spotlight application.

CIL (Custom Interconnect Limited), a  UK supplier of electronics manufacturing services to the European electronics industry, will display an extensive range of LED based designs on Stand LED46 at the euroLED 2009 to be held at the Ricoh Arena on June 3rd and 4th.  The company will also demonstrate its ability to provide bespoke packaging of both bare-die LEDs and the assembly of pre-packaged parts from manufacturers such as Lumileds, Cree and Osram.

The Luxeed multicolor keyboard released last year has got its new 2009 update now. The incredibly colorful keyboard is powered by 430 colored LEDs, which can all be sequenced using the included Windows software.

Cyberlux Corporation, a U.S.-based provider of LED lighting solutions, announced last week that it has begun production of fluorescent fixture replacement products delivering 31% improvement in energy per visible lumen and a performance life-time rating of 75,000 hours, which is ten times of the typical fluorescent tube performance of 7,500 hours. The Cyberlux ArcLight LED Lighting System products will address the large opportunities for high-efficiency replacement lighting products in the commercial, Federal, state and local government markets.

Cree, Inc. announces it is demonstrating the newest addition to its lighting-class XLamp® LED family—the XLamp XP-G LED—at LIGHTFAIR International in New York, May 5-7, 2009. The cool white XLamp XP-G provides 139 lumens and 132 lumens per Watt at 350 mA. Driven at 1 A, the XP-G produces 345 lumens, which is 37 percent brighter and 53 percent more efficient than the brightest XR-E LED. The XP-G LED has the highest lumen density of any available lighting-class LED, and it is based on the XLamp XP family package.

Macroblock announced its newly-developed 8-channel and 4-channel constant current LED drivers –MBI1828 and MBI1824, for the application of LCD monitor and high brightness LEDs. Since LED contains no mercury and provides highly directional light source, it is suitable for backlighting applications to provide high brightness. By high voltage process technology, MBI1828 and MBI1824 are designed to light up cascaded LEDs in single channel with high luminance.

At the SMT (Systems Integration in Microelectronics) fair in Nuremberg, Leica Microsystems is presenting its innovative LED illumination modules for stereomicroscopes, which offer optimum illumination even for difficult material samples. Thanks to modern LED technology, operating costs are significantly lower than for conventional halogen illumination. 

Henry Schein, a distributor of healthcare products and services, has introduced a pen-style, MAXIMA LED Curing Light with Ramp-Up.

Cyberlux Corporation, a LED lighting solutions provider, has introduced a new line of portable lighting systems, the WhiteEye Tactical Illumination Systems, to address the large opportunities for white-only portable lighting in the military, law enforcement, first responder and commercial markets.

Intematix Corp., a innovator in phosphors, LED components and solid state lighting modules today announced the release of a new series of high-efficiency power LEDs.  The new Cetus “E-series” products boast efficacies of up to 100 lumens per watt (lm/w) for the cool white versions, and 97 lm/w for warm white, and will facilitate wider adoption of LEDs in general and outdoor lighting.

Cree, Inc. has lately introduced the LRP-38 LED lamp. Now shipping in volume, this light provides a tightly-focused beam, exceptional color quality, extended life and unmatched energy-efficiency.