Leading Distributor Offering PolyBrite’s Borealis® LED Lamps
Chestnut Ridge, NY. – Tuesday, June 29, 2010 – Millennium Visual Systems today announced it has signed a distribution agreement with PolyBrite International, Inc., manufacturer of Borealis® LED Lamps and Lighting Systems. Millennium is adding the new line of Borealis products to their existing portfolio of LED lighting technology solutions. The company is an established national supplier of both indoor and outdoor LED lighting solutions.

Millennium will offer the new Borealis® line of LED lamps including patented A19, B10, PAR38, R20, MR16, T8, Panel and Street Lights, High and Low Bay lighting in a variety of color temperatures. The Borealis brand utilizes PolyBrite’s proprietary polymer technology, and achieves maximum brightness, unparalleled performance, and unrivaled light quality. The Borealis line is designed with dimming capabilities and fit into standard fixtures.

Borealis® LED products consume up to 90% less energy than traditional lighting with no radiant heat or Ultraviolet Rays (UV). Providing at least 50,000 hours of operation, Borealis lamps are virtually unbreakable and shock resistant resulting is a significant reduction on energy consumption, maintenance and recycling cost without compromising the quality of light and the environment.

“Our customers will now have the option of using a safe lighting alternative to environmentally taxing Incandescent and Fluorescent lighting.” said Dave Goldberg, Chief Operating Officer of Millennium Visual Systems. “Our agreement with PolyBrite follows our company’s ongoing commitment to earth conscious practices.” Mr. Goldberg further noted that “At Millennium we are deeply committed to providing earth friendly, energy efficient products to promote living a “green” lifestyle.”

“PolyBrite is delighted to appoint Millennium as a stocking distributor for Borealis® LED products. Our agreement strengthens our distribution channels within the lighting industry,” said Carl Scianna, President and CEO for PolyBrite International. “Millennium will stock Borealis products in-house, and provide customers with their highly regarded customer service when purchasing PolyBrite’s Borealis LED products.”

About Millennium Visual Systems: Headquartered in Woodcliff Lake, NJ with business operations in Chestnut Ridge, NY, Millennium Visual Systems designs, produces, sells, and services electronic signs, programmable displays, LED bulbs and emergency lighting that is widely used in government, schools, hospitals, offices, factories, restaurants and retail businesses. Millennium is nationally known for their reputation of delivering quality, reliable products, supported by a high level of professionalism to ensure customer satisfaction. For more information on Millennium’s line of LED products call (845) 356-4100 or visit at www.millenniumvisuals.com, Facebook, Twitter, or Linkedin.

About PolyBrite International: PolyBrite International, Inc. has established itself as an innovative global LED lighting technology company since 1995. PolyBrite designs, develops and maintains complete control in manufacturing solid-state lighting products, creating LED lamps, Street Lighting, Panel and Tube Lighting and complete Signage lighting systems under its Borealis® Lighting brand. The Borealis brand of products utilizes PolyBrite’s proprietary polymer technology and patent pending designs, bringing the energy efficiency, environmental sustainability and economic advantages of LED technology to the marketplace. More information on PolyBrite’s Borealis brand of products is available on the Internet at www.polybrite.com or www.borealislighting.com or by calling 1-800-320-3801.

Ledon supplies Langenegg with retrofit LED lamps at cost to help the municipality provide its citizens with the e5 Energy Box

The municipality of Langenegg won an EUR 8,000 prize in an Austria-wide competition called “Austria’s Climate Protection Municipality 2009.” The city will use the funds to provide its citizens with an e5 Energy Box that includes a CFL energy-saving lamp, a switchable plug, an ammeter, and a LEDON led retrofit lamp that Ledon supplied at cost to show support for the energy saving initiative.

“We are at the same time very happy and proud to provide our residents with this e5 Energy Box put together with the help of the prize money. Due to the innovative technology of Ledon LED lamps, it is particularly easy for everyone to contribute one’s share in reducing energy costs and increasing energy efficiency,“ says Georg Moosbrugger, mayor of Langenegg.

The Ledon LED lamp is a 6W replacement for a 40W incandescent lamp. It is 30% more efficient than a CFL and runs 85% more efficient than an incandescent light bulb. Moreover, the LED lamp has no warm up time, is dimmable, and contains no mercury allowing for easy recycling.

The e5 program is dedicated to sustainable energy across the state of Voralberg in Austria. There are 30 different municipalities that participate including Langenegg. Each municipality has its own e5 energy team, and the Langenegg team put together the e5 Energy Box that citizens can pick up for free at the town hall. The team also supplies citizens with information on minimizing energy usage.

The Climate Protection Municipality program is an annual competition sponsored jointly by the Verbund electrical utility, the Austrian Association of Municipalities, and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management. The 2010 program is now underway.

A new packaging company will target the LED-backlit TV market, with operations based in JiangSu Province, China.

LED-packaging specialists Everlight Electronics has announced its intention to launch a new company focused on LEDs for TV backlights with partners LG Display and Amtran Technology. The joint venture will be capitalized with $30 million, will be based in WeJiang City, JiangSu Province, China, and plans to start mass production by year’s end.

The joint venture will enter the LED backlight market at a time of high demand. Just last week, analyst iSuppli reaffirmed its belief that a shortage of LEDs for TV applications would persist through this year. The firm projects shipment of large-sized LCD panels with LED backlights to reach 276.7 million this year with the number growing to 477.6 million units in 2011 and 817.9 million units by 2014.

Jointly, the three partners in the new venture have shared experience relative to all key aspects of LED-backlit LCD TV technologies. Taiwan-based Everlight has deep experience in LED packaging. Korea-based LG Display is one of the leading manufacturers of thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD panels for TVs, monitors, and notebook computers.

Amtran technology is a contract manufacturer of computer monitors and TVs based in Taipei, Taiwan. The company has a close partnership with Vizio and in fact owns a stake in the company that was the market leader for TVs in the US for 2009.

The companies believe that their shared experience will enable the yet-to-be-named venture to rapidly offer state-of-the art LEDs for the backlight market.

Epistar, already the largest LED chip manufacturer in Taiwan will take a stake in the second largest manufacturer Huga, and GaAs foundry Win Semiconductor will invest as well.

Apparently driven by the ramping demands for LED backlights in LCD TVs, the leading Taiwanese LED chip maker Epistar will invest in and partner with Huga Optotech. Epistar will become Huga’s largest shareholder and in related news gallium arsenide (GaAs) foundry specialist Win Semiconductor will also invest in Huga.

Epistar’s board of directors has approved a plan to issue 78 million new shares that it will exchange for 184.08 million Huga shares. Huga is also issuing 100 million new shares at NT $30 (USD $0.94) to raise additional capital. Epistar will subscribe to 44.79 million of the new shares with a NT $1.5 billion (USD $50 million) cash investment.

The Epistar deal with Huga is scheduled to close July 19. At that time Epistar will hold a 47.88% stake in Huga worth NT $8.6 billion (USD $268 million). Epistar hopes the consolidation will boost capacity and efficiency so it can better serve the escalating TV market.

Win Semiconductor, meanwhile, is expected to buy the remaining new shares issued by Huga according to Taiwan semiconductor news specialist DigiTimes. Win Semiconductor Chairman Dennis Chen is also the current Chairman of Huga.

Epistar has previously been active in the acquisition market. In October 2009 Epistar acquired a 19.3% stake in Tekore Co, and earlier acquired a 40.75% stake in Na Ya Photonics. All of the acquisitions provide Epistar with access to additional MOCVD reactors needed for LED production, but which are currently in short supply.

Lighting accounts for about 17.5% of global electricity use and, within the United States, the majority of lighting energy is consumed in commercial buildings. Recent innovations in lighting technologies, particularly the development of solid state lighting using light emitting diodes (LEDs), hold significant long-term potential for energy savings in the commercial building sector.

According to a new report from Pike Research, LED lighting will become an increasingly important segment of the market, and by 2020 it will achieve a 46% penetration of the $4.4 billion U.S. market for lamps in the commercial, industrial, and outdoor stationary sectors.

“LED lighting will reach an inflection point in the next five years,” says managing director Clint Wheelock. “As solid state lighting costs come down and performance increases, LEDs will become a practical option for an increasing number of commercial applications.” Wheelock adds that LEDs are already widely used in traffic signals and exit sign lighting, and Pike Research anticipates that those markets will become saturated within the next few years. The outdoor stationary sector will be the next growth area for LED lighting, followed by retail and office/professional and institutional buildings.

However, despite the strong long-term prospects for LED lighting, Pike Research’s analysis indicates that the category still faces a number of technological and economic hurdles. As a result, while the cost and efficacy of solid state lighting are rapidly improving, it will be a number of years before LEDs lead the commercial lighting market. During this period of transition, fluorescent T8 and T5 lamps, which offer good efficacy and life at very reasonable prices, will overtake incandescent lamps as the leading technology prior to the coming of age for LED lighting products.

Pike Research’s study, “Energy Efficient Lighting for Commercial Markets”, examines the key technology and market trends that are driving the use of LED and other high-efficiency lighting in the Commercial, Industrial, and Outdoor Stationary sectors. The report includes a 10-year forecast for lamp and luminaire sales in the U.S. across 10 different lighting technology categories in seven major building types and application sectors. In addition, the study provides SWOT analyses of 16 key industry players. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the firm’s website.

Pike Research is a market research and consulting firm that provides in-depth analysis of global clean technology markets. The company’s research methodology combines supply-side industry analysis, end-user primary research and demand assessment, and deep examination of technology trends to provide a comprehensive view of the Smart Energy, Clean Transportation, Clean Industry, Corporate Sustainability, and Building Efficiency sectors.

Novaled announces a new top-emitting white OLED, while Universal Display receives $4 million from the DOE to build pilot OLED production line

Universal Display will have two years and $4 million to demonstrate the scalability of its UniversalPHOLED technology for the general illumination market, and together with Moser Baer Technologies will build a pilot production line. Novaled, meanwhile has a new top-emitting white OLED technology that is made on a metal substrate, doesn’t require brittle and expensive Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), and is rated for 50,000 hours of life.

Novaled developed the new OLED using its P-doped, Intrinsic, N-doped (PIN) OLED technology that leverages proprietary host and doping materials, and blue fluorescent emitting material from SFC Korea. The company also adds a proprietary light-extraction layer that eliminates color shift and increases efficiency.

The metal substrate in the new PIN-OLED-based design offers improved heat dissipation, mechanical stability, and flexibility, and offers compatibility with roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques.

The new Novaled OLED outputs 30 lm/W with an initial luminance of 1,000 cd/m². With this achievement Novaled demonstrates once again the robustness and potential of its PIN technology”, says Gildas Sorin, Novaled CEO. “Configurations like top or bottom, inverted or non-inverted organic structures with various emitting materials and metal electrodes bring the proper high performance for each specific market request in the display and lighting domain.”

Universal, meanwhile, is a technology leader in phosphorescent OLED technology and materials and has claimed a 4x energy efficiency advantage over competing technologies. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has invested $4 million in Universal under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for a program titled “Creation of a U.S. Phosphorescent OLED Lighting Panel Manufacturing Facility.”

Universal will use the funding to prove out the technology, materials, and manufacturability of its UniversalPHOLED technology for commercial lighting. Moser Baer Technologies (US subsidiary of Moser Baer India) will design and build a US-based pilot production facility for Universal.

“This new U.S. DOE program represents a very important step towards the establishment of high-volume manufacturing of white OLED lighting panels in the U.S.,” stated Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Display. “We are delighted to have this opportunity to team with Moser Baer Technologies, with its experienced leadership in manufacturing of thin-film, high-volume products. By combining our highly-efficient UniversalPHOLED technology and materials with Moser Baer Technologies’ proprietary manufacturing technology, we believe that the new pilot facility can demonstrate a cost-effective route to high-volume production of energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly white OLED lighting products, which in turn can serve as a basis for new manufacturing investment and job growth in the U.S.”

The future of light is plastic, says Cyberlux.

The company, which specializes in light emitting diodes (LEDs, will come out with prototypes of a new type of white light LEDs in about four months that will cost substantially less to manufacture than conventional LEDs and provide more light at the same time.

In conventional white light LEDs, a semiconductor emits blue light. The blue light passes through the phosphor and becomes white light. The phosphor is thin film on a substrate; the substrate has to be placed in intricate proximity to the semiconductor. Positioning the phosphor is one of the more expensive steps in creating an LED, said Mark Schmidt.

LEDs cost a lot. But they use less energy than conventional lights and come in multiple colors, so you can decorate your house so it looks like Peter Max lives there, as this photo at the Lumileds headquarters shows.

In the coming prototype, the conventional phosphor is replaced with a sheet of polymer, which sort of applies itself into the LED, almost like a layer of shrink wrap. The technology was invented by The University of California Santa Barbara’s Stephen DenBaars, who has been a big advocate of LEDs and Nobel Prize winner Alan Heeger.

Meanwhile, the prototype will have a greater efficiency than conventional LEDs because more photons will get through the phosphor and emerge as white light because of technology from RPI.

View MVS’s most recent LED products and technology here!

APEC LED-driver-IC announcements highlight PFC and efficiency, along with TRIAC dimming capabilities and single-stage power supplies

The 2010 APEC (Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition) kicked off in Palm Springs Monday, and among the early highlights you will find several LED-centric developments. The power-electronics IC community has embraced LED lighting as a key application going forward, and the current trend appears to be more efficiency and power factor correction (PFC).

On Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Infineon have all made news in the LED space. Along with efficiency, other headlines include TRIAC dimming and varying power-supply topologies.

On Semiconductor launched the NCL30000 driver that is mainly used in critical-conduction-mode flyback supply architectures, although it can also support buck topologies. The IC can implement a single power stage working from the AC line, eliminating the need for a DC/DC stage.
On Semiconductor NCL30000

The design includes power factor correction (PFC). In a power supply, PFC circuits control input current to the load attempting to keep voltage and current in phase and to make the load appear purely resistive. A resistive load allows most efficient usage of AC mains power. PFC is expressed as a fraction of unity and the On Semiconductor component achieves a 0.95 rating.

Targeting residential and commercial applications, the NCL30000 also offers the efficiency needed for certifications such as Energy Star. In fact the IC can maintain efficiency even at very light loads and can implement TRIAC dimming to less than 2% of full light output.

Infineon also introduced a dimming capable IC at APEC. The company claims that the ICL8001G achieves 90% overall efficiency and a PFC rating of greater than 0.98. Moreover, the IC maintains efficiency of over 80% across the entire dimming range.

The Infineon IC targets residential applications including 40W to 100W incandescent bulb replacement. The AC-driven IC includes digital soft-start capability to limit in-rush current as well short-circuit, over-voltage, and over-temperature protection.

The Fairchild offerings include the FSEZ1307, FSEZ1317, and FAN103 PWM drivers. All of the products use primary-side regulation (PSR) techniques that don’t require feedback from the secondary side of the supply. The constant-current drivers dissipate only 30 mW of standby power and achieve efficiency levels needed for Energy Star compliance.

Stay tuned for more APEC news later in the week.

The new investment fully funds the company’s operating plan to expand production and enable growth with minimal debt.

Investors including Argonaut Private Equity, Braemar Energy Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and Stata Venture Partners have led a new investment round in Luminus Devices. Luminus specializes in LEDs for specialty applications such as projection displays, digital signage, and ultra-violet industrial processes.

The new funding will allow Luminus to expand product offerings and the breadth of target applications. Keith T.S. Ward, president and CEO, Luminus Devices, said “This financing has dramatically improved our balance sheet, simplified our equity structure, while better aligning investor objectives with management’s market-focused strategy.”

Luminus’ PhlatLight LEDs are currently designed into products such as projectors at leading consumer electronics companies such as Acer, LG, Philips, Sony, Samsung, and Toshiba. The products are in DLP, 3LCD, and LCOS projection products. The company targets the range of applications from pico projectors to home theater.

The investment group sees a bright future for Luminus. “We continue to be bullish on energy efficiency, especially in the area of LEDs and solid state lighting, which makes up a large portion of our portfolio. With our expertise in the area and Luminus’ dominance as a LED manufacturer and supplier across multiple market segments, it provides a great investment opportunity for Braemar,” said Dennis Costello, managing partner, Braemar Energy Ventures.

Dr Paul Conley, principal at Paladin Capital group, added, ” We invest in companies with strong leadership and breakthrough innovations in high growth markets. We’re proud to back the Luminus team again. It’s incredibly rewarding to see the rapid adoption of the PhlatLight LED products in a diverse range of commercial, industrial and defense applications.”

Ironically, Luminus was almost force from business in early January (see related stories at right for details). Now the company appears both stable and ready for growth.

Over two decades, LED-based SSL deployment could generate $120 billion in energy savings assuming products achieve forecasted performance objectives.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released a new report that analyzes the potential energy savings of broadly deployed solid-state lighting (SSL) sources – predominantly LED- and OLED-based products. The DOE projects that between 2010 and 2030, SSL could save 1,488 terawatt-hours representing a savings of $120 billion at today’s energy prices.

The DOE has taken an active role in supporting and funding SSL lighting both to achieve energy savings and to position the US as a global leader in SSL technology. This latest report updates previous projections the DOE made in SSL lighting over the last decade.

The multi-faceted reports begins with an examination of lighting inventory and lumen demand. It continues with a look at the installed base and the technology improvements in conventional light sources.

The LED-centric content examines the improvements and cost savings expected in SSL over two decades. For instance, the report projects efficacy improvements. In high CRI (76-90) SSL lights, the DOE expects efficacy to go from 64.3 lm/W today to 147.3 lm/W in 2020 and to 176.3 lm/W in 2030.

From a cost perspective, the DOE projects SSL to go from $169.49 per klm today to $5.03 per klm by 2030 for high CRI products. The report makes projections for other CRI ranges and for OLED lighting as well.

The latter portion of the report focuses on projected market penetration and energy savings calculations. The analysis attempts to take a balanced view on the gradual replacement of technologies such as fluorescent with SSL alternatives.

The conclusion as stated up front is certainly impressive. The DOE expects SSL to completely displace all other technologies in commercial, residential, industrial and outdoor segments by 2030. The projected savings, however, come primarily from the replacement of fluorescent and halogen lamps in the commercial sector.