Signify news comes in hot on July top stories list

I know we do cover a lot of news from Signify, but to be fair, it is still one of the world’s largest lighting companies. There’s usually a lot happening at the organization and it’s liable to make our top headlines many months out of the year. I’m just so surprised there wasn’t an ams Osram story in the top four of July’s posted articles, I might fall out of my chair.

1. Upper-air disinfection goes to the playhouse

Signify’s mercury-vapor-based, 254-nm ultraviolet C-band (UV-C) fixtures have debuted in two Dutch theaters — not in the performance halls themselves but in other areas of the Royal Theater Carré and Theater de Ruchte. Although LEDs Magazine chief editor Maury Wright wrote in his latest column that “UV-C LEDs are critical to a profitable germicidal business wave,” we have also found throughout the pandemic that many companies are basing their UV-C disinfection products on the conventional mercury vapor technology due to the higher costs and lower radiometric power of UV-C LEDs.

2. Signify narrows in on smart lighting acquisition

In a recent headline we didn’t really see coming, Signify acquired UK company Telensa, which uses a narrowband communications approach to smart street lighting. The potential for the technology to be used in shorter-range applications means that Signify can target smaller municipal customers who want lower-cost solutions (but smart city capabilities) with its expanded connected lighting offerings.

3. Replicating HPS? — But make it better

I was a little bit baffled by this one, because I live in a small town where only some parking lots have outdoor solid-state lighting (SSL), and I can’t see very well under the familiar orange glow of the incumbent high-pressure sodium (HPS) lights in our local area because my vision is not sharp even with eyeglasses. But our third most popular article from July is a news story about the latest packaged LEDs from Luminus, Lumileds, and Nichia. Now I’m not taking issue with the mid-power LEDs from the former two companies, but the latter had me confused at first with its release of new outdoor-focused LEDs with a warmer CCT range (1800K to 2500K options) for a “nostalgic” ambience. Then Maury explained that the Nichia LEDs will have a color rendering index (CRI) of 70 — which purportedly blows the clarity under HPS lights out of the water because contrast will be more visible.

4. Technology was the word of the day

Even as our contributing editor Mark Halper has been reporting the apparent slow retreat of the ams Osram organization from connected lighting and the Internet of Things (IoT), he recently shared the Acuity Brands has altered its messaging to prominently place its “Intelligent Spaces” as a high priority. It isn’t the first time the word “technology” has been pushed to the forefront of a lighting company looking to stake its place in the modern SSL world. And it probably isn’t the last because smart buildings, connected lighting, and controls bring a more advanced level of integration to the built environment. On that note, although it went live this week and isn’t in our top July content, make sure you read Clifton Stanley Lemon’s latest preview for the Strategies in Light online conference, which provides a refreshing roundtable discussion on the evolving business and implementation of lighting controls.

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