Under the WEEE Regulations a producer is anyone who puts electrical or electronic equipment on to the UK market for the first time, which includes importers and own-branders. In the lighting industry all Gas Discharge Lamps are classed as in-scope. This includes Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs – or energy-saving light bulbs), fluorescent tubes, metal halide lamps, mercury and blended lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps and low-pressure sodium lamps.

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The future of solid state lighting offers potential of energy reduction, environmental friendly, long lifetime & future proof design.

You have been involved in a number of projects during your career; could you outline what your work with the Welsh Government’s Solid State Lighting project entailed?

The aim of the R&D project at Swansea University funded by the Welsh Energy Research Centre (WERC) was to demonstrate potential energy reduction using LED over conventional lighting within the Welsh School of Architecture building at Cardiff University…

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To find out more about the new SNP slim line form factor LED drivers from Stontronics please contact us on 0118 931 1199, email us on sales@stontronics.co.uk or visit our stand at the exhibition – LED521. These drivers are now also available to buy from Rapid Online.

What brings Pro-Lite to euroLED again in 2012?

I’ve supported euroLED from its outset and seen the event grow into one of the most important dates in our PR calendar. euroLED provides a unique forum for networking with industry leaders, it allows us to reach out to both new and existing customers and it also provides us with a showcase for our latest photometric test equipment for measuring lamps, LEDs and luminaires. We value the opportunity of providing live demonstrations of our equipment which helps customers appreciate what our products are and what they can do for them.

What trends do you see emerging in the LED lighting industry?

I see a more mature attitude to testing and publishing accurate specifications. Probably the single biggest source of customer dissatisfaction in solid state lighting are products which don’t meet their quoted brightness and colour performance specifications. The reason for this is quite simple – lighting manufacturers do what they’ve always done, which is base the specification of the luminaire upon the rated outputs of the lamps used in the fitting. This is absolutely fine for traditional lamps, but with LEDs, the rated colour and lumen values of an LED change dramatically as a result of thermal and other effects when the LED is installed in a fitting. It is not uncommon for the lumen output from an array of LEDs fitted to a luminaire to drop by 30% compared to their rated flux. At the same time, the colour temperature also increases by hundreds if not thousands of Kelvin and even colour rendering shifts significantly. Those manufacturers who test the luminous flux, colour temperature and colour rendering of their finished products put themselves ahead of the game – those who try to get away with just estimating luminaire specifications on rated LED outputs will come unstuck.

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Well the lighting industry has been a relatively slow mover in technology terms.  Let’s look at the key turning points. I’d say the first was Homo Sapiens’ first control of fire, perhaps 500,000 years ago.  Next up we have the invention of incandescent light bulbs in the late 19^th century.  Then the development of fluorescent lighting in the early 20^th century.  So its hardly surprising that the latest lighting technology step change – LEDs – is so “hot” given that its only really been around for a few years and has a long way to go yet!

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Uvox today announced that they will again be exhibiting at euroLED, at its new venue, the NEC, Birmingham on 13^th & 14^th June, 2012. Alongside the highly-successfully Log-In AC-Direct LED Driver product, Uvox will show their range of complementary products for LED designers. These include multi-LED chips; thermal interface materials; custom heatsinks and heat-pipes.

In addition, Uvox will demonstrate their range of finished lighting products, including LED tubes; LED panels; LED dome-lights and LED bulbs.

E-mail:info@uvox.co.uk      Web Site:         www.uvox.co.uk

LEDs are still emerging into mainstream lighting and the opportunities for them are increasing as the quality, performance and price of them become more favourable.  They are hot because they represent such a compelling alternative to traditional lighting in terms of energy efficiency, low (no) maintenance, small footprint, low voltage supply, lack of UV or IR content, lack of mercury and other toxic materials, flexibility of beam profile, colour temperature, the ability to colour change, dim and turn on and off very quickly with no re-strike time.  Many markets request the use of LED even though other light source may still be better in terms of lifetime cost but this just shows how well the market is inevitably shifting to LED. LEDs are being used extensively for displays and lighting applications but also being used in a variety of other applications such as medical, printing, entertainment and military applications.

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