Green energy. Everyone wants it, but not in their backyard. An odd thing for a country known for its picturesque windmills dating from the 18th century. How can we once again give green energy the allure it deserves?

NanoLumens and Navori have revealed a new partnership and the development of a unified strategy to provide digital signage networks to end users and system integrators.

It’s important to know how microorganisms — particularly pathogenic microbes — grow under various conditions. Certain bacteria can cause food poisoning when eaten and bacterial growth in medical blood supplies, while rare, might necessitate discarding the blood.

Modern LED outdoor lighting today takes into account all visual levels in an urban space and is not just limited to a norm-standard level of illuminance to light up those elements of the nocturnal cityscape in focus. Rather, this is about placing emphasis on the needs of people in living spaces at night. It's therefore worth brightening up urban spaces with spherical light components to create centres for human communication, creating visual points of attraction, and improving three-dimensional awareness. Moreover, special architectural features should be highlighted and complex space structures brought to life. This increases recognition value for a region and creates reliable guidance and orientation, even at night. In this way, security and wellbeing are significantly improved by lighting quality – always without wasting resources or increasing light pollution.

Delta Electronics, a leading provider of power and thermal management solutions, introduces today, at Light+Building 2016 Frankfurt, a full range of LED lighting solutions featuring the integration of smart monitoring platforms, industry-leading energy efficiency as well as world-class power electronics technology. The DeltaGrid® communication platform, recently installed to support a 5,000+ LED street light project in Taiwan, provides cloud monitoring functionality to improve maintenance productivity of city-scale street lighting networks.  The newly-launched industrial high bay LED lights Staccato series offer industry-leading efficiency of 160 lm/W and wireless connectivity via Zigbee for smart monitoring and control in green buildings and factories.    

On the biennial Light+Building 2016 organized by Messe Frankfurt, Samsung Electronics (SAMSUNG) and Wellmax Lighting (WELLMAX) jointly showcased their collaboration on LED technologies. The smallest 810lm full-beam-angle LED A50 bulb—the Ultron—is firstly released and gained tremendous attention from visitors worldwide.

India will be installing LED floodlights along its border neighboring Pakistan, in the first phase of the project lights in various sections covering districts of Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Granganagar and Barmer in Rajasthan have been replaced, reported Times of India.

Indian city Varansi’s ambitious project to replace old streetlights with LEDs in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency has been delayed, 33,000 streetlight replacements scheduled for completion in September 2015 is long overdue, reported Times of India.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Daintree Networks®—the leader in open networked wireless control, sensing and Enterprise Internet of Things™ solutions for smart buildings—are collaborating on joint solutions involving Samsung’s smart lighting module (SLM). Samsung’s SLM, which will be integrated with LED luminaires from lighting OEMs, enables greater intelligence through device-level processing, as well as enhanced connectivity through multiple embedded communications technologies, including the open standard ZigBee® protocol.  Combining Samsung’s SLM technology with the Daintree Networks ControlScope® networked wireless control solution makes new Internet of Things (IoT) applications possible for smart buildings.

The Fegime Group, the European-wide collaboration of 230 electrical wholesalers, has added the Aurora Group, global manufacturer of energy saving LED lighting solutions, as a preferred supplier of Lighting products in Europe. The agreement will see Aurora Group products being made available to electrical contractors via Fegime’s 1,150 sales points across 27 countries.

LG Display announced that it will invest in a new OLED light panel manufacturing facility. The planned facility will be the first 5th generation (1000 x 1200mm) OLED light panel manufacturing plant in the world. It is to be located in the South Korean city of Gumi, where it will produce a range of OLED light panels.

Xenics USA, Xenics North and Latin American office covering the full spectral range of Xenics' advanced infrared imagers, cores and cameras, has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Laser Components’ North American sales, marketing and distribution office. With this new agreement, Laser Components USA, Inc. will become the partner to sell and market Xenics in-house developed SWIR line-scan imagers with rectangular pixels. This partnership will further extend Xenics position in the North American IR spectroscopy market. The agreement was jointly signed on February 12, 2016 at the Photonics West Trade show held in San Francisco.

Gooee, the IoT platform provider for lighting, has partnered with EnOcean, the world leader in energy harvesting wireless technology, to integrate a BLE based self-powered wall switch module into the Bluetooth Smart Mesh stack; the primary communication protocol in Gooee’s enterprise IoT ecosystem.

Application:  General lighting, Light is quality of life, Medical applications Technology:  LED, Light Management Systems (LMS), Luminaires Target group:  Operators of health care facilities

Essex County Council in UK projects it will be able to save about GBP 24 million (US$ 34.23 million) over 20 years with new LED streetlight installations, but despite energy savings it still plans to implement its part-night lighting scheme, reported local paper Dealer Offers.

With new technology getting smaller and smaller, requiring lower power, University of Cincinnati physics research points to new robust electronic technologies using quantum nanowire structures.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has created a number of useful new resources to help stakeholders understand IES TM-30-15, which describes a new method for evaluating light-source color rendition.

The CLUE has unveiled the three winners of its International Lighting Design Contest, held this year under the theme Lightius Loci. Mr. YeonHo Lee from Seoul, South Korea and his team (WooSeok Jang, DongGyun Ha), have won the first prize of $5,000 for their project DMZ: N38˚; the second prize of $2,500 was awarded to Mrs. Maria-Chrysoula Akrivou from Athens, Greece and her team (Antonis Athanasiou) for Lightening a modern odyssey; and the third prize of $1,000 was awarded to Mrs. Verbeek Kara from Vancouver, Canada, for Salmon Run.

Although rapid technological advances are now allowing highly automated installation processes, the demand for high quality manual work is not decreasing. As a result, industrial workstations at which complex installation tasks are carried out require a high illuminance of up to 700 lx. However, improving the quality of light can often result in higher energy consumption, thus higher costs. In fact, however, this high illuminance is only needed at individual workstations; traffic routes or storage areas often only need 200 lx. The solution to this problem has been developed by Zumtobel with its ATIVO multisensor. The principle is incredibly simple: A task-based, flexibly adaptable zone control system ensures that the light is reduced according to time and activity in places where it isn't required. At workstations that demand a high level of concentration to ensure good productivity, the lighting level is increased. For added safety, the lighting level in general areas and corridors is also increased. The motion sensor recognises when people or vehicles are in the corridors and dims up automatically. The ATIVO DALI IP64 Kit that is already available is specially designed for detecting light and motion in even high-ceiling rooms. The contrast sensor system with its intelligent object detection is, unlike normal PIR and radar sensors, not only much more accurate, but also quicker – and therefore less prone to error. The ATIVO Sensor DALI Kit can be used in a wide variety of situations, including sports and multifunction events halls, industrial, production and assembly facilites, even in high-bay warehouses and logistics centres. In these situations, the sensor can precisely detect motion in rooms with ceilings between 6m and 20m.

Heavyweights in durability, yet sleek in design, MaxLite’s new series of LED Hazardous Location fixtures is designed to meet the challenges of lighting environments where safety and efficiency matter most.

Maturation of LED lighting technology has driven LED manufacturers to highlight smart lighting and control systems at Light+Building 2016, which takes place this week at Frankfurt Fair and Exhibition Center in Germany. Below is a summary of major manufacturers new smart lighting products, and trends we’ve observed:

China officially released13th Five-Year Plan, a crucial document that not only underpins China’s development in the following five years, but clearly demonstrates the country’s economic deployment that could create booming investment opportunities. But exactly which market sectors and emerging trends will follow the newly- released plan? Should LED display vendors invest in the right market, their revenues could potentially soar.

At the biggest international biannual lighting show, Light +Building 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany, exhibitors try to dazzle visitors with innovative technology or breathtaking visual effects. Samsung, though, has taken a more down to earth approach this year and removed some of the wow factor. Instead, it is focusing on acquiring orders and sealing business deals with products already in the mass production phase at the show.

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) announced that ANSI Accredited Standards Committee C136 revised ANSI C136.15-2015 Roadway and Area Lighting Equipment—Luminaire Field Identification. This standard provides a simple, uniform method for identifying the type and wattage rating of luminaires used for roadway and area lighting. Types include high-intensity discharge, fluorescent, compact fluorescent, light-emitting diode/solid state lighting, induction, and plasma technologies.

Disinfection applications are usually associated with UV LEDs, but one research team from China led by Chaowen Xue has recently demonstrated an alternative solution to ridding most bacteria with visible light range LEDs.

Today at Light + Building, the world’s leading trade show for lighting and building services technology, Samsung Electronics and Silver Spring Networks announced a partnership to develop a networked LED street lights solution, helping to cut costs and simplify connected lighting componentry for luminaire manufacturers.  This will accelerate the road to smart cities for municipalities, utilities, transportation departments and other outdoor lighting network operators.  

Philips Lighting, a Royal Philips company and global leader in lighting, is helping to drive the adoption of the smart home by partnering up with Dutch telecoms company KPN, French insurance firm AXA and French energy company ENGIE. With lighting considered to be one of the main interests in the connected home along with energy and security , collaborations such as these not only help drive the adoption of the Internet of Things for homes but also deliver energy savings and peace of mind when away from home.

Qualcomm announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Atheros, is working closely with Acuity Brands in the commercial deployment of LED lighting fixtures/services (marketed by Acuity Brands as Bytelight™ Services) that use Qualcomm® Lumicast™ technology to bring indoor positioning capabilities and services to retailers. Unlike RF-based technologies, Lumicast uses visible-light signals transmitted from LED fixtures to deliver indoor positioning. A regular smartphone, using apps enabled by Lumicast software, receives the light signals through the front camera to determine its position and orientation with exceptional precision and speed.

Soraa, the world leader in GaN on GaN™ LED technology, announces its support for advances in color science and the new TM-30 method released by the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES). TM-30 uses an optimized calculation method to preclude the errors found in the color-rendering index (CRI), the current industry standard.

Philips Lighting, a Royal Philips company and global leader in lighting, announces its first connected lighting indoor positioning win in the Middle East with United Arab Emirates (UAE) based retailer aswaaq, one of the world’s most innovative supermarkets and community malls. The new system uses lights that act as a positioning system which allows customers to use smartphones to access new location based services. This empowers the retailer to provide a smooth shopping experience for their customers, which may help boost sales and customer loyalty. Working with Philips on the project is Aisle411, a leader in digital store mapping. Philips Lighting is partnering with the US company to extend its indoor positioning offering to deliver a comprehensive end-to-end capability, including professional services such as digital store mapping, product search and analytics.