Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for May 15, 2020. My friends in Germany are surely excited for the return of Bundesliga football matches this weekend. It will be an interesting social experiment to see games from such a famous league with no fans present. I doubt I will be in front of a TV for a 6:30 AM Pacific kickoff on Saturday, but I’ll be watching the later match for sure and my son’s favored Bayern Munich when they play on Sunday.
I’ve always known I spend too much time and energy on sports, but after two months of streaming content I normally would never have watched, I can say I’m ready for German football. I simply hope the matches are safe for the players and the professionals that must be present to conduct the event even in the absence of fans in the stands.
We had a very interesting story break this week with regards to characterizing LED light quality. Bridgelux has developed a concept called Average Spectral Difference (ASD) that is a numeric percentage measure of how closely an LED source compares to reference illuminants that are commonly used to represent perfect light. Bridgelux says that the metric represents naturalness of light. The concept seems solid, although the solid-state lighting (SSL) industry really has no proof as to what constitutes a perfect or a natural light source.
We also have the latest chapter of the ongoing saga regarding the ams acquisition of Osram. The company hopes to soon receive regulatory approval for the acquisition. But ams still needs to refinance the bank loans that covered the acquisition.
Down below we have a curated section of articles relative to the use of LED-based tubes or TLEDs as a replacement of fluorescent tubes. I remain unconvinced that such retrofits deliver great value and I know they don’t deliver the greatest light quality. But they remain among the simplest paths to SSL retrofits for a commercial and industrial (C&I) space.
A week ago in this newsletter, I promised news coming about our first 40 Under 40 class. Unfortunately, my thinking on the announcement was not aligned with the rest of our Endeavor LED and Lighting Network team. Everyone else was assuming we would hold the list a secret until releasing the news in our July/August issue. I apologize for the mistake on my part.
I do want to remind you that the call for abstracts is out for Strategies in Light 2021 presentations. I know next February seems forever away, but our conference planning team and the Strategies in Light Advisory Board expend great effort in making sure the conference is fantastic. It takes time. So get those abstracts in.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 748-6785, [email protected]