Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for July 21, 2021. Making decisions about which news stories to pursue is an inexact science for an editor. A lot of the press releases that cross our inbox get posted just as they arrive, as press releases in our Company Newsfeed section — it’s something like our version of a newswire. Some news releases, or story tips, stand out for us and demand more attention because of the perceived significance to our readers and value we can add in terms of analysis or background. In those cases, we will write bylined news articles generally supported by additional questions to the source of the news. As you can imagine, our bandwidth for bylined news is limited.
Sometimes I just find a refreshing topic that I can see a way to expand on with background comparisons and more. I must say that was the case this week when I decided to pursue the story from Thorn about lighting an alpine ski piste for an international competition. The story afforded an immediate opportunity to forget the fires ravaging the North American West, the unbelievable floods in Germany, and the overall escalating climate crisis. For a part of the week, my mind went to a tranquil Austrian winter scene.
But the story also really introduced some new angles, literally and figuratively, to solid-state lighting (SSL) specification in professional sports venues. Looking back at the story this morning, I did not stress enough the challenge of a venue with a 27° gradient at some points. The venue placed a premium on high vertical illuminance levels and uniformity. Moreover, the lighting had to support the range of an international competition with HDTV coverage to recreational usage of the piste.
Strategies in Light is now just over a month away. Conference co-chair Clifton Stanley Lemon has contributed another interview with one of the featured speakers at the conference. Robb Pope is a practitioner of an art called digital placemaking that uses LEDs among other tools to establish a visual identity for architectural works. The interview with Pope is very interesting and makes that session a must-watch at the event.
We also have an interesting SSL project for you this week in the horticultural application. It’s actually a larger AgTech story where a Quebec farmer is using controlled environment agriculture (CEA) techniques to raise young apple trees while also growing lettuce using vertical farming and more. It continues to amaze me just how varied in cultivar and creative indoor growers have become.
Attendees of the HortiCann Light + Tech Conference will learn much more about total environmental control in CEA this coming Sept. 28–29. We will reprise a Plenary Growers panel that Erico Mattos, executive director of the GLASE (Greenhouse Lighting and Systems Engineering) Consortium, will lead featuring Tessa Pocock of Shenandoah Growers, John McMahon at Schuyler Greens, and Tamman Serage of Revolution Farms.
Also before I close, I’ll note that our content is just coming online today for the July/August issue. Subscribers can peruse the full issue using our digital magazine platform. We have several of the articles linked down below in their HTML form. I was a bit grumpy when I wrote the column of our newsletter last week. I was decidedly tired of the germicidal ultraviolet topic (GUV) and COVID-19 as the driving force behind that topic. But seeing the issue in full, I’m proud of both the UV-C work and the breadth of the issue overall.
Plus the July/August issue is our largest issue in some time. It gave us an opportunity for the breadth I mentioned a moment ago. For example, there is an excellent article covering the wide range of display technologies by Mike Casper of Azumo. The article explains how LEDs and other light sources are utilized in an exhaustive list of display options for applications ranging from portable consumer devices to outdoor control systems.
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) 208-9442, [email protected]