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HIGHLIGHTS FROM LIGHTFAIR 2010
The lighting industry is continually going through a tremendous amount of change! To keep up, Principal Stan Humphries has enjoyed going to LightFair for the last 20 years. Stan has always found that LightFair provides excellent training for lighting design and the opportunity to view new products at the vendor booths. This year Stan took Derek Felschow and Chuck Langston along. Here is what we found the most interesting.
Light Emitting Diodes LEDs
This year, the LightFair was all about LEDs! It seems as though the technology is taking over. One of the speakers expects LEDs to be in 80% of the light fixtures that we specify within the next 5 years. It is a fascinating development and it is hitting the mainstream now.
LEDs are being developed on three fronts:
The first is significant improvements of the LED chip emitting higher levels of light. In the near future, LEDs will be produced with twice the efficiency of metal halides and fluorescents. Better yet, the LEDs will provide the quality of light and dimming capabilities that we currently enjoy from incandescent.
The second development is with the LED lamps. The lamp incorporates several LED chips to produce light in a package that we’re familiar with.
- The LED equivalent to the basic 60 watt A lamp incandescent. This is the lamp most commonly used, like your basic table lamp or recessed downlight. At this point it is a contest among the lamp manufacturers to see who can produce this first. When they do, the LED will only require approximately 10 watts and will last almost a lifetime for many applications. From what we saw at the show, we’d expect to see this product in less than a year.
- The LED equivalents to the incandescent/halogen PAR lamps are already very popular. It is now a matter of increasing the lighting output of the LED PARs. PAR lamps are the lamps you see most frequently in track and accent lights. PAR lamps for LEDs have been developed to effectively replace the standard 50 watt MR-16 and 75 watt PAR 30.
- The LED equivalent to the 4’ fluorescent tube is another product that is being pursued. At this time, LED tubes only provide 1/3 of the light of the current fluorescent tubes and haven’t been very reliable. So we will continue to see the T-5 and T-8 fluorescent tubes for a few more years.
The third development is with light fixtures, the biggest development being in exterior lighting. One of the important aspects of LED lights is understand where the heat goes. If the light fixture isn’t developed with the proper heat sinks to dissipate the heat, the fixture or lamp fails. Exterior fixtures have larger surface areas to dissipate the heat so we can readily specify exterior fixtures to light most any areas short of a ball field, which may be next.
Not only are the LED exterior light fixtures more efficient and better quality light, they control the light distribution better. For example, a typical shoebox parking lot light mounted on a 20’ pole provides three times the light underneath the fixture than 20’ away from the fixtures. New LED exterior fixtures can provide a box or rectangle of light that provides the exact same amount throughout the distribution pattern of the light fixture. Wow! Okay, maybe you have to be a lighting designer to say “Wow” to that kind of light control. But that is a good example of one of the intriguing aspects of what LEDs may be doing for us in the future.
Presently, AEC specifies LEDs for approximately 30% of our light fixture package. Low watt metal halide fixtures, T-5 fluorescents, and a variety of other lamps have proven to be more cost effective and perform more consistently. As we have said though, specifying more and more LEDs will be in our future.
Daylighting
AEC has specified several daylight control systems in the past. Anytime you have a clearstory or ample windows it is a good time to consider harvesting daylight for energy savings. For starters, there are two aspects to daylighting design. One is the architectural aspect of planning the clearstory, window wall, and skylights. The other aspect is controlling the interior lighting and controls to effectively daylight the interior of a building.
At LightFair, there was an endless array of products for daylighting. The training courses we attended showed us:
- Where to locate photo sensors
- Types of software
- Cutting edge products that are being used
- Case studies
- Payback analysis
One of our most recent projects, a large recycling center, featured a luminous wall as a prominent feature of the architecture. The vendor for that wall was able to provide AEC point-to-point calculations of the footcandles that wall would produce for different times of the day for this facility. We were able to add that information to our point-to-point calculations to specify the banks of lighting that would be controlled with photo sensors. The end result was a simple set of controls that effectively harvested the light.
In Colorado, we have the best views in the world. The architects we work with do a very good job of opening up a building to capture those views. AEC can plan the interior lighting and controls to effectively daylight the interior spaces of those buildings.
BIM - Building Information Modeling
BIM as applied to lighting design is still at its infancy. Architects and structural engineers are at the forefront of BIM. The key aspects that our course covered were:
- Only a handful of MEP and lighting designers are using Revit. General contractors are the most typical Revit users. GCs find Revit effective in coordinating and scheduling the subcontractors’ work.
- When lighting and MEP designers do plan with Revit, they are mostly concerned about spatial planning and conflict analysis. Electrical designers are concerned with light fixtures and power panels, not necessarily branch circuits or light switches. Mechanical designers are concerned with equipment and ductwork, not schedules and diagrams. The bulk of the lighting and MEP planning is typically still done on 2-D CAD.
- Vendors have the opportunity to expand their information availability by inserting their product specifications into the blocks that make up the model. In the near future, we may see a light fixture’s specifications and cut sheets integrated into the block that is inserted into the model instead of separately shown on a lighting fixture schedule.
We are looking forward to being part of BIM and look to be planning on 3-D programs such as Revit in the future.
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