Spotlighting the successes at Lightfair: Who won what

By Brian Owen

Welcome to the last day of the trade show day at Lightfair 2012 and the daily recap from tedmag.com. With the early start on the floor at 9:00 am. also comes an early close at 3:00 pm. and with a shorter comes also comes the frenzied and hurried pace to get through and meet with those last few exhibitors that you have not seen.

As an added extra, tedmag.com will bring you one more daily recap on Monday to highlight the presentations from Thursday and Friday, as well as any other items of interest from the Trade Show floor on this final day. In the interim, here is a great information tool about http://www.tedmag.com/uploadedFiles/TEDMag/TEDMag_Home/news/Lighting_Facts.pdf”>Lighting Facts from the Thursday presentation. The Monday edition will highlight the work of the Design Lights Consortium from the Friday presentation.

Now getting to the many honors and recognition of product achievements.

The LFI Innovation Awards

Full details at Lightfair.com

Known as the “New Products Showcase” for many years, this LIGHTFAIR tradition has been renamed and redesigned to focus on both new and truly innovative lighting technologies, products and designs. The LFI Innovation Awards honors industry innovations for lighting-related products and designs introduced in the past 12 months. Each product was judged by an independent panel of lighting industry professionals. To be eligible for the Innovation Awards, products must have been brought to market during the 12 months prior to LIGHTFAIR – or are being introduced on-site at this year’s event.

Each Award has its own criteria:

Most Innovative Product of the Year Award – Recognizing the best of the best; the event’s highest honor.

Technical Innovation Award – Recognizing the best leap forward in lighting technology.

Design Excellence Award – Recognizing outstanding achievement in design and application.

The Judges’ Citation Award – Recognizing product excellence that merits special attention (at judges’ discretion).

Most Innovative Product of the Year – Cast Lighting – LED Perimeter Light

7 watts 24-volt LED luminaire provides lighting along perimeter fences on extensive property boundaries for the military, temporary fence companies, and others.

Technical Innovation Award – Juno Lighting Group by Schneider Electric – WarmDim LED Downlights

4, 5 and 6″ IC LED downlights emulate incandescent dimming offering 600 lumens at 3000K in residential and hospitality type interiors.

Note: Also winner of the LFI IA for Recessed Downlights (Wall Washers Directionals Modulars Multiples)

Judges’ Citation Award – Lighting Science Group – DEFINITY™ Motion Activated PAR 30

Dimmable LED short neck PAR 30 available in three beam spreads with an integrated motion sensor.

Ballasts Transformers LED Drivers – Osram Sylvania – PRO-Flex LED Drivers for EMerge

Dimmable drivers with OEM selectable current from 300 to 1500mA and 3 interfaces: enOCEAN Wireless; 0-10Volt; and DALI.

Commercial Indoor (all linear Fluorescent Troffers Suspended Surface LED OLED) – Cooper Lighting & Controls – io lili 2′ x 2′ LED Recessed Indirect Luminaire

2′ x 2′ recessed indirect with low profile center medallions for general lighting delivers 35 FC at the workplane while consuming only 0.85 watts per square foot.

Conventional Lamps Retrofit / Replacement LED Lamps – Philips – EnduraLED A lamps

Dimmable 10-17 watt family of A-lamp replacements for 60 and 75 watt incandescents including the 10W winner of the DOE’s L prize®.

Note: Yesterday we reported that the Philips L Prize Winning 60-watt replacement has received Energy Star qualification and that it will appear on the Energy Star qualified products listing soon. This was good news as this product can be deployed into rebate programs in the US and Canada.

Recessed Downlights (Wall Washers Directionals Modulars Multiples) – Juno Lighting Group by Schneider Electric – WarmDim LED Downlights

4, 5 and 6″ IC LED downlights emulate incandescent dimming offering 600 lumens at 3000K in residential and hospitality type interiors.

Note: Also winner of the LFI IA Technical Innovation Award

Roadway / Parking Garage – Hess America – ADELIE by THORN

Elegantly styled 51 watt indirect LED post-top for pedestrian scaled spaces adds ambience with form and glare-free illumination.

Track (Surface Mounted LV Cable Rail Undercabinet Shelf) – Intense Lighting – MBW2 – Wall Wash LED Track Luminaire

LED track wall wash with a rectangle light distribution delivers 3000 lumen uniform vertical illumination in 4 color temperatures.

Note: Intense also took one of the three Next Generation Luminaires Design Competition Best in Class designations for the same product.

Next Generation LuminairesTM (NGL) Solid-State Lighting (SSL) Design Competition

Full details at http://www.ngldc.org/

Fifty-three commercial LED indoor lighting products were recognized for excellence by the fourth annual Next Generation LuminairesTM (NGL) Solid-State Lighting (SSL) Design Competition at LIGHTFAIR on Thursday.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and the International Association of Lighting Designers, NGL was launched in 2008 to promote excellence in the design of energy-efficient LED luminaires for general illumination in commercial lighting applications. The competition began evaluating indoor and outdoor products separately in 2012.

Compared to previous years, the 2012 NGL indoor results show a marked improvement in luminaires for general commercial applications – in particular, recessed modulars (i.e., troffers) and linear pendants, which generally demonstrated higher efficacy than fluorescents, with comparable lighting quality. Less-dramatic improvement was seen this year in categories such as downlighting, wall washing, and accent lighting, which were already strong in previous years of the competition. Overall, initial cost remains an issue, as the judges frequently noted.

The idea behind NGL is to make it easier for lighting designers and specifiers to find LED lighting products that are worthy of specification. This means recognized products have to measure up on many fronts. NGL entries are judged on lighting quality (including color, illuminance, light distribution, and glare), appearance, serviceability, efficacy, value, dimming, and rated lifetime – and the bar was raised even higher this year, to reflect improvements in the technology.  “This is not just a one-dimensional contest,” said DOE Solid-State Lighting Program Manager Jim Brodrick. “Beauty alone won’t cut it – the winners have to really ‘walk the walk.’”

A total of 187 products were proposed for submission to the 2012 NGL indoor competition. But because of the stringent documentation requirements – which were even stricter than they were last year – only 114 actually made it to the judging phase. The rest were rejected either because they weren’t ready for market or because their manufacturers couldn’t supply the required documentation, which covered such things as LM-79 test reports and LM-80 life claim documentation. These performance documents helped ensure that actual performance matched what was claimed.

Of the 114 products that were judged, 53 – representing 15 lighting categories – were chosen as “recognized” winners, meaning that they were considered worthy of specification.

Three of the 53 were given the additional designation of Best in Class, meaning that they stood out significantly above the other products in their category that were recognized as specifiable:

• Intense Lighting’s MBW2 LED Track accent  lighting fixture

Note: The same Intense product also took the LFI Innovation Award for Track (Surface Mounted LV Cable Rail Undercabinet Shelf)

• Albeo Technologies Inc.’s H-Series LED high-bay luminaire
• Lithonia Lighting’s ST Series LED utility/general purpose luminaire.

The winners of the 2011 GE Edison Award competition were announced at a special awards presentation and dinner reception on May 8^th on the eve of this year’s LIGHTFAIR in Las Vegas. The GE Edison Award is an annual program sponsored by GE Lighting to recognize excellence and quality in professional lighting designs that use GE light sources (lamps and/or LEDs). Lighting Designers Jim Benya and Christian Monrad were given the 2011 Award for Environmental Design for a University of Arizona project in Tucson, AZ project and Glenn Heinmiller, Paul Zaferiou and Dan Weissman were awarded the 2011 Edison Award for the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. Full details of all awards, eligibility and judging is available at http://www.gelighting.com/na/business_lighting/edison_award/.

Lights out from LIGHTFAIR 2012 in Las Vegas. See you next year in Philadelphia for LIGHTFAIR 2013 from April 21-25.

Tagged with distribution, Exclusive Feature, Lightfair, lighting, tED