IESNA's 27th annual Street and Area Lighting Conference (SALC) held this year in Denver on October 12th through 15th. It’s reported that the event broke previous records for attendance with over 500 people present.
This year LED technology took the center stage as several of the conference's sessions were devoted to the topic. The Monday morning session was kicked off with a keynote address by Tim Brossart of Xcel Energy. His talk focused on the growing energy demand in Colorado and how to meet that demand by implementing clean energy policies and managing demand through efficiency and conservation programs along with upgrading to advanced "smart grid" technology which allows customers to choose when, how much and what kind of energy to use.
Mr. Borssart's talk was followed by at tag-team session entitled "Recent Developments in LED Outdoor Lighting - Case Studies from Around the Nation" and included presentations from Bruce Kinzey, Senior Research Engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Mary Matteson Bryan, Lighting Portfolio Manager at PG&E; and Christopher Ruud, Executive VP of Ruud Lighting. Mr. Kinzey's talk centered on the DOE's Caliper and Gateway programs and specifically on the recent installation 20 LED luminaires on the St. Anthony Falls Bridge (I-35) in Minneapolis.
Ms. Matteson discussed updates on the third phase of the Oakland demonstration project which involved updating the luminaires to the latest LEDWay product from BetaLED resulting in a 52 percent reduction in energy compared to HPS and improving the payback period to 12 years compared to 20 years with the previous LED fixtures. She also discussed a new pilot program in San Francisco which will be evaluating several manufacturers' products for replacing 100W HPS fixtures. Finally, Mr. Ruud's presentation featured several examples of outdoor LED lighting installations and gave specific arguments in favor of LEDs such as improved system efficiency and reduced cost of ownership. Two key points he made were: "don't settle for a luminaire that does not perform to your standards" and "lighting results with LEDs are totally predictable if you have the right information."
Ms. Matteson and Mr. Kinzey continued the next session entitled "Emerging Technologies: Opportunities and Issues for Outdoor Lighting." Ms. Matteson shared why utility companies should be interested in SSL in order to reduce energy demand. According to her, nationwide annual consumption from street lighting is 178,000 GWh which represent 23% of all lighting consumption. SSL has the potential to save up to 44,700 GWh per year. Mr. Kinzey went into additional depth concerning the advantages of LEDs such as superior optical control but also mentioned some of the issues such as thermal management and life cycle costing. Another topic that was discussed throughout both sessions was illumination standards. LED fixtures tend to have better uniformity while meeting minimum light level requirements even though they have a lower average illuminance.
The morning session concluded with a talk called "LED Reality Check" given by Mark McClear of Cree. He went into detail on several topics such as how LED luminaires need to be designed as a system, whether LEDs are really green, testing standards, and misinformation and exaggerated claims by some manufacturers. That led into a higher level discussion on the overall precepts guiding sustainable street lighting by Denise Fong, a lighting designer and Principal of Candela. Ms. Fong offered several key goals including using more efficient and longer-lasting sources, reducing light pollution, using sources with less mercury, and providing the ability to dim and control individual fixtures plus self-report lamp outages through networking. This included not just LED sources, but also induction and ceramic metal halide. The afternoon presentations wrapped up with a presentation given by Greg Miller of Carmanah Technologies Corporation on the topic of solar LED area lighting. Mr. Miller boiled it down to the essential issues: while there are a number of advantages for solar powered lighting, such as eliminating the need to dig trenches and run cables, there are also challenges such as panel efficiency, battery lifetime, and solar resource availability, especially in Northern geographical zones.
Following the afternoon presentations were networking breakout sessions. One session was devoted to emerging lighting technologies, but once again the focus was on LEDs. The discussion focused on several issues such as power quality and transient issues for LED drivers, looking for third party photometric reports, and payback on energy and maintenance savings. A large portion of time was also spent talking about standards, especially RP-8 with respect to SSL and emphasizing minimums and uniformity instead of averages. It was pointed out that the standard also does not adequately address reducing light levels when light is not needed or adjusting for ambient conditions.
This year's conference seemed to mark a distinct step forward in the adoption of SSL in the street lighting industry. Although there was a great deal of talk about LEDs, the general feeling among many was that there is still a long way to go until the technology is ready for widespread adoption. We'll continue the installment next week with details of Day 2, as well as insights into the "streetlighters" concerns regarding LED-based luminaires.
