L.E.D.

by Bob Johnstone

  The coolest product Paolini had seen in the last few years - and many others shared his opinion - had sprung not from the lighting industry, but from an Italian university. Paolo Di Trapani was a physics professor at the University of Insubria in Como, just outside Milan. He had been inspired by a book called Light and Color in the Outdoors by Marcel Minnaert, a Dutch astronomer, which was originally published in 1937. For more than a decade Di Trapani performed experiments attempting to reproduce natural light indoors. In particular, he wanted to replicate Rayleigh scattering, the phenomenon that turns the sky blue. In 2009 he formed a company, CoeLux, to produce artificial skylights. “We have attempted to rebuild the sky,” Di Trapani told Lux magazine, “to recreate a material that diffuses light just as the sky does.” The material was a layer of plastic several millimeters thick peppered with nanoparticles that mimicked the subtle variations caused by the atmosphere. Light was produced by LEDs calibrated to the same wavelengths as the sun. The quality of the light could be altered by manipulating the size and placement of the LED hot spot, the portion of the fixture meant to represent the sun. Each fixture modelled sunlight from a specififi degree sunbeam that produced an equal balance of light and shade. It could turn the darkest basement into a solarium.

  “Daylight is still the gold standard for illumination,” Paolini commented, “all the stuff that daylight does is a model for what we ought to try and do in other areas.” The CoeLux skylight produced the effect of a realistic sun surrounded by a clear blue sky, bathing those beneath it in what appeared to be warm sunlight. To stand under it was an almost magical experience. “It’s doing something that would be almost impossible to do without solid-state lighting,” Paolini said, “and it provides an experience that’s enjoyable.” There was, of course, a catch. Not for nothing was the CoeLux skylight known by wags as “the oligarch light,” because only the likes of Russian billionaires digging enormous basements under their London mansions could afford to pay the tens of thousands of dollars that it cost. However, a second generation of skylights featured lower prices. Indoor lighting would never be the same again.

  Brightness could be dimmed; color could be tuned. But in the struggle to control light, there remained one last aspect to tame. That was, how to shape the light that LEDs produced? The need was becoming urgent as the tiny lights kept getting brighter. Poorly-designed LED fixtures could be “glare bombs” that caused office workers to shield their eyes to avoid being blinded by the light. Typical solid-state ceiling troffers align a row of LEDs along one edge of a sheet of plastic. Light emerges from the face of the plastic at right angles to its point of origin. To reduce glare, the light is passed through a diffuser. But this causes light to be lost, reducing efficiency. It also makes it hard to distribute the light in precise patterns.

  QuarkStar, an unusual “virtual” startup with nodes in, Silicon Valley, British Columbia and Las Vegas, tackled the glare problem. Its high-powered staff included industry luminaries like Bob Steele, Brent York, and Roland Haitz (who, though in his late seventies, was still filing for patents right up until his death in 2015). The company was led by Louis Lerman, a maverick high-energy physicist with an exotic resume that listed land development, robotic aircraft, and a novel theory on the origin of life. Using advanced optical design, QuarkStar adapted edgecoupling to configure a unique system that cut losses and enabled light to be sculpted. The system boiled down to three parts: a coupler, a light guide, and an extractor, in effect a light chisel that sculpted light into the desired distribution. All three components were made from the same transparent plastic, meaning that manufacturing was intrinsically lowcost. Adjusting the angle of the chisel and the degree of transparency of its surface made it possible to sculpt a range of symmetric and asymmetric patterns, including some that were impracticable using conventional lenses and reflectors. QuarkStar’s Department of Energy award-winning next-generation luminaires system gave fixture designers precise control over where illumination went. It ensured that no light was emitted in the field of view of people working in the space below, thus eliminating glare.

  There was also a need to change the shape of light in real time. A dynamic approach to light shaping was being pioneered by LensVector, a San Jose, California, startup, based on work by Tigran Galstian, a physicist at Laval University in Quebec. LensVector’s beam-shaping technology was originally applied to compact lenses that could add optical features like autofocus to smartphone cameras. It uses liquid crystals to shape, steer, and focus light without recourse to mechanical means. The beam from an overhead light is controlled via a smartphone app. Users can change from a 10-degree spotlight to a 50-degree flood and anywhere in between, without changing the light source. The system could be used at a restaurant, for example,, to toggle between a focussed spot when customers were reading the menu and an intimate flood when they were eating; one table could be low-lit for a date, while its neighbor could be brightly lit for a group gathering. The system could also be used at a store or an art gallery, where displays and exhibits change often, making it easy to alter how they are illuminated. LensVector’s technology was, according to veteran lighting designer Jim Benya “one of the most exciting breakthroughs in lighting we’ve ever seen.”

  In addition to light shaping, other trends were also emerging. One was the use of voice activation to turn lights on and off at home. Switches would become obsolete. A boon for the bone idle who could not be bothered to get out of bed, voice activation was more importantly a godsend for the disabled and wheelchair-bound. Tech giants like Amazon (Echo), Apple (HomeKit), and Google (Nest) recognized the appeal. For example, you could use Apple’s virtual assistant Siri to control your home lighting via verbal commands. Another trend was personal control. This was of special importance for the workplace. Studies indicated that giving employees the ability to adjust the lighting to suit their preferences - ageing eyes need more light, younger ones less - improved their mood and made them more productive. Lighting companies were latching onto these trends. They realized that a lamp or a fixture that could do something more than just be a replacement represented a new value proposition. People might be prepared to pay more for such enhanced functionality.

  Energy ef ficiency had driven the solid-state lighting revolution, with remarkable results. “When I started in this business in 1973,” Jim Benya told Randy Reid, editor of Edison Report, an industry newsletter, “we designed office buildings at six watts per square foot of electric lighting. When we compare that to an office building today, we’re using ninety to ninety-eight percent less electricity than we did forty years ago. That’s how good we’ve done and we’re not done yet. LEDs are taking us to allnew low levels. By 2020 we could be doing general lighting - schools and office buildings - at 0.2 watts per square foot.” However, as lighting systems began to be equipped with controls and connected to the Internet, a problem loomed. “In order for those systems to be worthwhile, to be cost-effective, they’ve got to save some energy,” Benya explained. But smart systems had to be on all the time. There was thus a danger that they would consume a significant fraction of the energy that had been saved by installing solid-state lighting in the first place. In future, a balance between adding smarts and saving energy would have to be struck.

  And what of my 2007 prediction about LEDs, that “by 2020 the tiny lights will likely have superseded all conventional forms of lighting?” The good news was that, according to a Department of Energy report published in September 2016 that drew on various forecasts, “LEDs will experience tremendous growth … reaching anywhere from a quarter to upwards of eighty percent of lighting sales by 2020.” The report went on to predict that “LEDs will dominate every general lighting niche.” As a result, energy consumption for lighting in the US would be reduced by 15 percent in 2020 (and by a whopping 40 percent in 2030). Regarding global markets, according to market researcher Strategies Unlimited, sales of LED bulbs were 57% in 2016 and projected to reach 80% in 2021. Sales of LED luminaires (indoor
and outdoor) were 49% in 2016 and projected to reach 70% in 2021. The bad news was that there were still billions of sockets out there with legacy lights that needed to be replaced. As of mid 2016 LED bulb penetration was only 11 percent globally; by 2020 it was projected to reach just over 40 percent. The war was over; LEDs had won, but much mopping-up remained to be done.

  It is early days, however, not yet 25 years since the breakthrough in brightness that kick-started the LED revolution; not yet ten since the first solid-state lighting fixture appeared on the market. Clearly the revolution still has a long way to go. Meanwhile, the technology continues to advance on all fronts. LEDs are becoming very cheap, making it easy for designers to build them into almost anything. The tiny lights are popping up in all sorts of new and unexpected places, such as clothes, shoes, even in accessories like handbags. LEDs are also becoming easier to program. Public spaces host magical installations that feature hundreds of thousands of individually-controlled interactive dancing lights, bringing joy to those who behold them. Lighting is no longer “just lighting.” The play of brilliants has begun.

  E P I L O G

  LEDs and Me I have been writing about LEDs and the people who make them on and off now for about twentyfive years. In 2014, my wife and I bought a loft in

  a warehouse in the East End of London and set about refurbishing it. This seemed like an ideal opportunity to put my (or, more accurately, our) money where my mouth was, and equip our new living quarters with lighting that was all solid-state. What follows is an account of the process of design and installation, plus some thoughts about the experience of living with LED lighting for the past three years.

  The first step was to hire a lighting designer. I asked a contact in the industry who recommended a highly competent young German. Though the job was small and our budget tight, she graciously agreed to take it on. Unfortunately, our architect Nick refused to work with her, explaining that he had had bad experiences with lighting designers he did not know. He insisted on hiring another lighting designer, a South African woman with whom he had worked before. We explained what we wanted. In particular, I was keen to have color-tunable lights in the living room and the study, to help stave off the winter blues. Also, to have lights come on automatically the moment the front door opened. And a night-light in the bathroom that would not jolt us fully awake when nature called in the wee small hours.

  The designer came up with a plan. It included some decorative features that we would not have thought of ourselves. Like two floor-toceiling slot lights in the hall and living room; cove lights at floor level in the corridor and bedroom, and just below the ceiling in the bathroom; and spotlights along the iron I-beams that support the living-room ceiling. Our architect chipped in with what turned out to be one of the best ideas: a strip-light hidden under the long low wooden shoe-cupboard in the hall that reflected pleasantly off the polished-concrete floor. The lighting plan turned into a formidably complex-looking diagram that mapped the wiring and switches onto Nick’s technical drawings. This was given to our Italian electrician, Manuel, to implement.

  An initial problem was finding lights that could change from cool white to warm. In early 2014, no such fixtures were available, or at least none that we could afford. Our designer suggested that the best option would be to use Hue, Philips’ Internet-controlled lighting system. So I bought a Hue kit that came with three bulbs and an Internet hub. It cost around $250. I added another Hue bulb for a pendant to hang above our dining table for another $50. Price was our biggest concern. The lights that our designer specified blew our limited budget. As it happened, she and I both attended that year’s Light + Building show in Frankfurt. We met up and I explained the problem. She promised to send us a list of more affordable alternatives as soon as she got back to the UK. We never heard from her again. (Lesson learned: pay when the job is finished, not when the invoice is submitted.)

  Surely it would be possible to obtain similar, but less expensive items from other suppliers? “No problem,” cried Manual, “I order them from Italy!” So we asked him to go ahead and do that. In retrospect, this was a mistake. In order to avoid paying value-added tax on the lights, Manuel elected to adopt a byzantine funds transfer scheme. I had my doubts about this stratagem, but eventually decided that Manuel must know what he was doing, so better let him get on with it. The lights were duly ordered but somehow the payment for them got held up, and remained lost in financial limbo. Worse, in what was perhaps a misguided attempt to avoid losing face, Manuel omitted to tell us that this had happened. So we did not realise until much too late that, so far from being about to arrive on the doorstep, our lights had not even left the manufacturer in Trento.

  The lights finally showed up, several weeks behind schedule. This long drawn-out process had been extremely wearing, and my patience was sorely tried. It finally ran out late one Friday afternoon when Manuel told us that he could not purchase screw-base sockets locally for our Hue lamps (the UK favours an archaic variant known as a “bayonet” socket). This despite the fact that he had known, for months, that we had these bulbs. “No problem,” he said brightly, “I order them from Italy!” And it was at that moment something inside me snapped and I began to shout at him.

  Manuel caused us seemingly endless delays, both in the lights he had ordered and in his general tardiness in getting things connected. Over the course of several weeks Manuel, a tall, almost cadaverously skinny individual with a piercing above one eyebrow, revealed himself to be a man of constant sorrow. The overwhelming burdens of the Italian tax system had driven him from his native land, to start anew in a country whose language he was very far from mastering. In so doing he had left behind a wife and infant son. Piteous were the tales he told us of birthday greetings to his little one remotely delivered via iPad. Then the police caught him talking on his mobile phone while driving - he swore blind he was not texting - and impounded his car. Then his business partner and boyhood friend abruptly decamped to Argentina, pausing only to empty their joint bank account. Then he was diagnosed with cancer and had to go for a biopsy. He was forever claiming that his clients had not paid him for services rendered: we would hear him yelling at them in broken English on his phone.

  With Manuel, something was always going wrong, his life seemed to be one long never-ending melodrama. At first, feeling sorry for him, we commiserated with him over his woes. But as the days went by and our lights were not delivered and his excuses for their non-delivery became ever more improbable, I belatedly realized that Manuel was in fact a pathological liar. As a consequence we could no longer believe a word he said. Worse, it seemed that he had also a drug problem, which he had been trying to shake, but now under the stress of multiple misfortunes he had relapsed and was heading rapidly towards a full-blown methamphetamine-fuelled psychosis. Things finally came to a head when, after our lights had finally arrived, Manuel demanded more money to finish the job. He also asked to be paid for having done things that were not agreed to or were outright figments of his imagination. Neven, our Bulgarian builder, refused to cough up. So Manuel packed up his tools and departed, taking with him various items of lighting kit that he had bought for us in Italy, and for which we had already paid. Negotiations conducted via email with the help of Google Translate fell through. A harshly-worded ultimatum from Neven was rejected and thus, amid considerably acrimony, the relationship ended. Now, believing his reputation to have been besmirched, Neven was hell-bent on extracting some unspeakable Bulgarian-style retribution. For the moment, however, he had to content himself with reporting Manuel to the police for the theft of our stuff.

  That left us needing an electrician to finish the job pronto (a word seemingly not in Manuel’s vocabulary). Neven asked around and was recommended Kassim, who happily for us agreed to take over at short notice. Apart from his ability to speak and read English - a major improvement over his predecessor - Kassim had a reassuring demeanour. Nothing seemed to phase him — again, in stark contrast to Manuel, who was temperam
entally unstable. Perhaps Kassim's calmness came a consequence of his devout faith: one day on entering our living room I discovered him and Hassan, his Pakistani deputy, prostrating themselves in the direction of Mecca (unbeknownst to me, he had previously asked my wife for permission to pray). What was particularly impressive was that Kassim and Hassan began working for us during Ramadan, which meant that they could not eat or drink during daylight hours. It was just a week or two away from the summer solstice —dawn was around 4AM, dusk 10PM. That made for one heck of a long fast.35

  With the interior walls already in place, Kassim and Hassan were obliged to run a tracer over the plasterboard in order to find out where the wiring was. Or was not, because it turned out that Manuel had not carried out all the cabling specified in the plan. They proceeded methodically, but painfully slowly. It was a learning curve for everyone. For example, I explained to them about color temperature, the difference between cool and warm white light, and that the latter was what we wanted. Somehow we still managed to end up with one cove of cool light in the bathroom. But since nobody has ever said anything, I expect that I am the only one who notices. (Larger point: I have come to realize that most people, most of the time, are entirely oblivious to lighting in their surroundings that is not egregiously awful. Lighting companies clearly need to spend more on educating their customers about the difference that good lighting can make in the home and elsewhere.)

  Our Hue lights were fun to play with, for the first few weeks at least. Using the touch-screen on my smartphone, I could show off to guests, changing the color emitted by the solitary bulb above the dining table from orange to green to blue to white. But the thrill soon wore off. The three Hue bulbs installed on the I-beam high above my desk in the study were not nearly bright enough for their light to have any effect on my circadian rhythms. Happily, my desk is located next to a large window so I usually absorb enough daylight to keep the winter blues at bay.