Ilumisys‘ LED replacement tubes featured at LightFair 2009
Every other year, LightFair International, the biggest and brightest (in my opinion) lighting show comes to New York City. This is my second time attending this amazing show and I was not disappointed. In fact, they should have renamed the show “LEDFair” since 90% of the exhibitors were showing off their LED lighting in some fashion. With over 20,000 visitors, 475 exhibitors and a multitude of seminars, everyone was yearning to learn how to brighten their world with the newest green technologies.
The atmosphere at LightFair was so upbeat compared to the International Builder Show in Las Vegas this past January. Perhaps lighting just puts everyone in a good mood or there was such excitement about all the new products. It was nice to be surrounded with hope and the possibilities that the world will be getting back on its feet and the LED market will absolutely be leading the way.
New Governmental Involvement
Many exhibitors spoke about the Department of Energy’s involvement in creating a standard for LED lights. In the past, the marketing of LEDs was akin to the wild, wild west mentality. No standards. The DOE and the Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance have taken a step in the right direction and partnered to create the SSL Quality Advocates, which is a voluntary pledge program assuring that the LED lighting is marketed accurately.
“SSL Quality Advocates introduces the Lighting Facts ™ label, similar to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Nutrition Facts label. The Lighting Facts label provides a quick and simple summary of product performance data as measured by the new industry standard for testing photometric performance, IESNA LM-79-2008. The Lighting Facts label reports product performance results in five areas: lumens, efficacy, watts, correlated color temperature (CCT) and color rendering index (CRI).”
In addition, the Underwriter Laboratories has created minimum safety requirements for the component parts of a light emitting diode. See this article about the standards.
First Class Exhibitors
CAO Group’s Dynasty LED bulb
So, what were my favorite exhibits?
- Philips seems to have bought a zillion companies such as Lightolier, Hadco, and Color Kinetics. They featured their new 600 Lumen LED bulb (similar to a 40 watt incandescent bulb) among other great LED offerings. See more information about the 600 Lumen LED bulb from the Company here.
- Cree featured its new Par-38 reflector type LED lamp for directional lighting for such purposes as retail or museums displays. See more information from the Company here.
- CAO Group featured its Dynasty® B10 Candelabra LED bulb. Comparable to a 20 watt incandescent light. (I am hoping that they are able to make a 40 watt comparable bulb that dims to replace similar incandescent ones.)
- Ilumisys featured its LED tubes to replace fluorescent tubes. (New name is Toggled.)
Although I only listed four exhibitors above, there were so many more exhibitors that I could have listed. In fact, over the course of this year, I will be weaving LightFair podcasts of many of the exhibitors that I interviewed through the website. I don’t want to give your LED overload.
If you love commercial lighting, don’t miss next years’ show in Las Vegas on May 12-14, 2010. You won’t be disappointed.
If you attended LightFair, what was your favorite exhibitors?
Update: Post has been corrected to reflect changes in certain light designations. Thanks to Halogenica of www.greenerlights.blogspot for catching some errors in my article. Greener Lights is a blog from a “Swedish designer with a burning interest in light and green issues.”
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